China's R&D growth!

[longbow]

China's R&D prowess. How can Singapore compete? Article from Financial Times.


China scientists lead world in research growth

By Clive Cookson

Published: January 25 2010 18:06 | Last updated: January 25 2010 18:06

China has experienced the strongest growth in scientific research over the past three decades of any country, according to figures compiled for the Financial Times, and the pace shows no sign of slowing.
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Jonathan Adams, research evaluation director at Thomson Reuters, said China’s “awe-inspiring” growth had put it in second place to the US – and if it continues on its trajectory it will be the largest producer of scientific knowledge by 2020.

Thomson Reuters, which indexes scientific papers from 10,500 journals worldwide, analysed the performance of four emerging markets countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China, over the past 30 years.

peer-reviewed-journals.jpg

China far outperformed every other nation, with a 64-fold increase in peer-reviewed scientific papers since 1981, with particular strength in chemistry and materials science.

“China is out on its own, far ahead of the pack,” said James Wilsdon, science policy director at the Royal Society in London. “If anything, China’s recent research performance has exceeded even the high expectations of four or five years ago, while India has not moved as fast as expected and may have missed an opportunity.”

Although its quality remains mixed, Chinese research has also become more collaborative, with almost 9 per cent of papers originating in China having at least one US-based co-author.

Brazil has also been building up a formidable research effort, particularly in agricultural and life sciences. In 1981 its output of scientific papers was one-seventh that of India; by 2008 it had almost caught up with India.

At the opposite extreme is Russia, which produced fewer research papers than Brazil or India in 2008.

Just 20 years ago, on the eve of the Soviet Union’s disintegration, Russia was a scientific superpower, carrying out more research than China, India and Brazil combined. Since then it has been left behind.

The Thomson Reuters figures show not only the “awe-inspiring” expansion of Chinese science but also a very powerful performance by Brazil, much slower growth in India and relative decline in Russia.

According to James Wilsdon, science policy director at the Royal Society in London, three main factors are driving Chinese research. First is the government’s enormous investment, with funding increases far above the rate of inflation, at all levels of the system from schools to postgraduate research.

Second is the organised flow of knowledge from basic science to commercial applications. Third is the efficient and flexible way in which China is tapping the expertise of its extensive scientific diaspora in north America and Europe, tempting back mid-career scientists with deals that allow them to spend part of the year working in the west and part in China.

Although the statistics measure papers in peer-reviewed journals that pass a threshold of respectability, “the quality [in China] is still rather mixed,” says Jonathan Adams, research evaluation director at Thomson Reuters. But it is improving, he adds: “They have some pretty good incentives to produce higher quality research in future.”

Like China, India has a large diaspora – and many scientifically trained NRIs (non-resident Indians) are returning but they go mainly into business rather research. “In India there is a very poor connection between high-tech companies and the local research base,” says Mr Wilsdon. “Even the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the highest level institutions in the system, find it difficult to recruit top faculty.”

A symptom of this is the poor performance of India in international comparisons of university standards. The 2009 Asian University Rankings, prepared by the higher education consultancy QS, shows the top Indian institution to be IIT Bombay at number 30; 10 universities in China and Hong Kong are higher in the table.

Part of India’s academic problem may be the way red tape ties up its universities, says Ben Sowter, head of the QS intelligence unit. Another issue is that the best institutions are so overwhelmed with applications from would-be students and faculty within India that they do not cultivate the international outlook essential for world-class universities. This looks set to change as India’s human resource minister has stepped up efforts to build links with US and UK institutions.

In contrast to China, India and Russia, whose research strengths tend to be in the physical sciences, chemistry and engineering, Brazil stands out in health, life sciences, agriculture and environmental research. It is a world leader in using biofuels in auto and aero engines.

Russia produced fewer research papers than Brazil or India in 2008.

“The issue is the huge reduction in funding for research and development in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union,” says Mr Adams. “Although there has been an exodus of many of the rising stars of Russian research, there is still a great pool of talent there. It is not in the interests of the rest of the world for the exodus to continue, and we need more co-funding arrangements to help Russian research get back up to speed.”

 

[Leongsam]

"Chinese R & D"???.. another entry for oxymoron of the year award.:p

The only R & D the Chinese might be doing is research on how to improve their fakes and speed up their piracy efforts.

 

[zuoom]

if so, then where's all the money been spent on?

 

[annexa]

if so, then where's all the money been spent on?

Wine, Women

 

[hahaho]

Wine, Women

cover ups ?

 

[longbow]

I donch know - so says Financial Times and Reuters Thomson. Can get more mainstream media than that.

But in a way makes sense. All races are just as smart. If so then the Chinese will have the most smart people (largest pop). With its communist past, there is less discrimination against girls. Go girls gets access to edu too. But remember that although statistically all races are just as smart, poverty, hunger, not enough food will impact a child's development/mental capacity. So in countries with high infant mortality we can probably see skewing of IQ in kids away from norm because kids did not have enough food. China has done a good job of doing away with poverty, infant mortality etc.

However no point being smart if your contry has low literacy rate like Haiti. But then the Chinese have a high literacy rate. This gives the smart ones the chance to learn, make it to Uni etc etc.

Both India and China have lots of students in the US and many stay on to work in the US. Now just imagine you are a PHD biotech researcher working at Genetech.

You would be tempted to go back to work for some Chinese Uni or lead a research dept in Shanghai because, hey you carryin US passport so who cares about Beijing politics. They can give you same pay that you get in the US with house and car (Beijing Gov has lots of $$$). Your wife is ok with it because Shanghai is pretty cosmopolitan and have all the great shopping brands, place looks super modern with latest fashion etc etc - so wife is happy (not to mention thta she can now see her parents more often. Also US is a direct flight from Shanghai. Children should be fine as there are lots of international schools to cater to the expat MNC staff.

Put an Indian researcher in same position. Indian Uni has no money to match US pay. Wife says no way i am moving to Mumbai - not developed enough - too big of a difference from Silicon Valley USA. Much fewer international schools. And the general env is just dirtier, lots of shanty towns (even in the good parts of town, dirt, smell, and chao is just down the street. Flights perpetually delayed. Hmmm may not be a good place for kids to grow up. On top of that, hubby is a Dalit class. Brillant man ( a dalit who made it due to his IQ), who topped IIT but should he return some might still treat him as a dalit. Better just remain in the US.

Everyday these questions are being asked and perhaps that is why the Chinese are having this R&D explosion. Lots of Us trained scientists going back to work in China. And with their US passports who cares about politics.

 

[longbow]

Here is a recent NYT article


Uneasy Engagement
Fighting Trend, China Is Luring Scientists Home
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
Shi Yigong resigned from the faculty of Princeton University and became the dean of life sciences at Tsinghua University in Beijing.



By SHARON LaFRANIERE
Published: January 6, 2010
BEIJING — Scientists in the United States were not overly surprised in 2008 when the prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland awarded a $10 million research grant to a Princeton University molecular biologist, Shi Yigong.


Uneasy Engagement
This is the 10th in a series of articles examining stresses and strains of China’s emergence as a global power.Previous Articles in the Series »


Shiho Fukada for The New York Times
Shi Yigong, a Princeton University molecular biologist, rejected a prestigious $10 million grant to return to China in 2008.
Dr. Shi’s cell studies had already opened a new line of research into cancer treatment. At Princeton, his laboratory occupied an entire floor and had a $2 million annual budget.

The surprise — shock, actually — came a few months later, when Dr. Shi, a naturalized American citizen and 18-year resident of the United States, announced that he was leaving for good to pursue science in China. He declined the grant, resigned from Princeton’s faculty and became the dean of life sciences at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

“To this day, many people don’t understand why I came back to China,” he said recently between a crush of visitors to his Tsinghua office. “Especially in my position, giving up all I had.”

“He was one of our stars,” Robert H. Austin, a Princeton physics professor, said by telephone. “I thought it was completely crazy.”

China’s leaders do not. Determined to reverse the drain of top talent that accompanied its opening to the outside world over the past three decades, they are using their now ample financial resources — and a dollop of national pride — to entice scientists and scholars home.

The West, and the United States in particular, remain more attractive places for many Chinese scholars to study and do research. But the return of Dr. Shi and some other high-profile scientists is a sign that China is succeeding more quickly than many experts expected at narrowing the gap that separates it from technologically advanced nations.

China’s spending on research and development has steadily increased for a decade and now amounts to 1.5 percent of gross domestic product. The United States devotes 2.7 percent of its G.D.P. to research and development, but China’s share is far higher than that of most other developing countries.

Chinese scientists are also under more pressure to compete with those abroad, and in the past decade they quadrupled the number of scientific papers they published a year. Their 2007 total was second only to that of the United States. About 5,000 Chinese scientists are engaged in the emerging field of nanotechnology alone, according to a recent book, “China’s Emerging Technological Edge,” by Denis Fred Simon and Cong Cao, two United States-based experts on China.

A 2008 study by the Georgia Institute of Technology concluded that within the next decade or two, China would pass the United States in its ability to transform its research and development into products and services that can be marketed to the world.

“As China becomes more proficient at innovation processes linking its burgeoning R.&D. to commercial enterprises, watch out,” the study concluded.

Quantity is not quality, and despite its huge investment, China still struggles in many areas of science and technology. No Chinese-born scientist has ever been awarded a Nobel Prize for research conducted in mainland China, although several have received one for work done in the West. While climbing, China ranked only 10th in the number of patents granted in the United States in 2008.

Chinese students continue to leave in droves. Nearly 180,000 left in 2008, almost 25 percent more than in 2007, as more families were able to pay overseas tuition. For every four students who left in the past decade, only one returned, Chinese government statistics show. Those who obtained science or engineering doctorates from American universities were among the least likely to return.

Recently, though, China has begun to exert a reverse pull. In the past three years, renowned scientists like Dr. Shi have begun to trickle back. And they are returning with a mission: to shake up China’s scientific culture of cronyism and mediocrity, often cited as its biggest impediment to scientific achievement.

They are lured by their patriotism, their desire to serve as catalysts for change and their belief that the Chinese government will back them.

“I felt I owed China something,” said Dr. Shi, 42, who is described by Tsinghua students as caring and intensely driven. “In the United States, everything is more or less set up. Whatever I do here, the impact is probably tenfold, or a hundredfold.”

He and others like him left the United States with fewer regrets than some Americans might assume. While he was courted by a clutch of top American universities and rose swiftly through Princeton’s academic ranks, Dr. Shi said he believed many Asians confronted a glass ceiling in the United States.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/07/world/asia/07scholar.html