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China's science and tech less than meets the eye
By Yu Zheng |
July 5, 2011, Tuesday
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Print Edition
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I met six US information technology experts in a single week and not one of them failed to praise the China-made supercomputer, Tianhe-1A, which was once the world's fastest.
In the latest ranking of the world's top 500 supercomputers, Tianhe-1A and another Chinese brand Nebulae took two high slots in the top 10, Tianhe-A ranked second and Nebulae ranked fourth. Together with another 59 China-made systems, they won Team China the second place, next to the United States, in developing super-computing technologies.
The international science community often cites how many super supercomputers a country is able to create to demonstrate national research superiority. Sounds reasonable. Supercomputer manufacturing requires high-caliber research capability as well as sophisticated technologies and engineering. Supercomputers are used to process vast amounts of data for, to name just a few, finance, aerospace, geophysics, weather and climate forecasts, logistic services and defense.
Statistics seem to say that China has done a fairly good job.
Wait a moment. One vital aspect people might overlook is that all the China-made bodies employed American hearts, either Intel or AMD central processing units (CPUs). Years after a leading Chinese CPU manufacturer said it would put indigenous chips into Chinese supercomputers, most Chinese CPUs are still mounted to drive low-end laptops and set-top boxes. However, Chinese computing architects did make some gizmos to upgrade system functionality and energy efficiency for those supercomputers.
Published papers
Another indicator, often used to described China's advances in research power, is the number of published research papers by Chinese scientists.
Science Watch ranked China the fourth, following the United States, Japan and Germany, in producing 719,971 research papers on Science Citation Index journals from 2000 to 2010. But in terms of average citations per paper - a benchmark for merit of research papers - China was nowhere among the world's top 20, with 5.87, a far cry from that of the most innovative countries. Switzerland had an average 16.62 citings, the United States 15.77 and the Netherlands 15.37. What China had scored was close to 6.28 for Brazil and 5.62 of for India.
Even for the less-cited papers originally authored by Chinese researchers, most citations were done by domestic peers and in many cases were self citations.
Statistics also showed one quarter of the total Chinese authored research papers in the past decade were in collaboration with international colleagues, mostly American scientists.
The huge scientific research and technological development (R&D) investment in China mainly contributed to the explosive increase in numbers of research papers. In 2007 China exceeded the 1.5 percent threshold of R&D share in gross domestic product (GDP), from 0.6 percent in 1996. In most developed economies, the R&D share in GDP is usually around three percent. In absolute calculations, the United States in 2007 invested US$369 billion in research and development, more than that of all Asian countries in aggregate, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development .
Research funds in China are used not only to build labs, buy research facilities and recruit global talent, but also to spread bonuses to scientists who are able to publish research papers in peer-reviewed journals, particularly those with high-impact factors.
In academic fields like geology and paleoanthropology where the vast land of China allow Chinese scientists a unique access to resources, it is not unusual for home researchers to publish outstanding papers, based on studies on fossils or primitive layers, in even the highest-rated publications, such as Science and Nature.
Monetary bonus
However, for most research papers, gaining monetary bonus is the priority for their writers. The biggest chunk of all the published papers by Chinese writers were less innovative than others and might not be a basis for new thinking or key technological know-how - which is attested to by patenting.
In 2008, the US Patent and Trademark Office granted 49 percent of patents to US applicants, 22 percent to Japanese and 14 percent to Europeans. Chinese companies and individuals were granted less than 1 percent of all US patents in the same year. In the most innovative and valuable patents, such as inventions, Chinese got only 1 percent while Americans 30 percent.
That seems to demonstrate China's lack of competitive edge in science and technology.
Nonetheless, the wise policy of opening itself to the outside world has made China quite a success, at face value or not. Science in China greatly benefited from the ever-easier logistics and human resource flows in and out.
Take 2007 for example. Among all 22,500 people who got doctorates in natural sciences and engineering in US institutions, 31 percent originated in China.
After getting advanced degrees, some found senior research positions back in China; many of those who chose to stay in the United States played key roles in international partnerships, including turning out research papers. Until those expats change to foreign citizenship, their outputs are calculated for China, although they always utilize Western state-of-the-art labs for the most innovative work.
(The author is a Xinhua writer.)
In the latest ranking of the world's top 500 supercomputers, Tianhe-1A and another Chinese brand Nebulae took two high slots in the top 10, Tianhe-A ranked second and Nebulae ranked fourth. Together with another 59 China-made systems, they won Team China the second place, next to the United States, in developing super-computing technologies.
The international science community often cites how many super supercomputers a country is able to create to demonstrate national research superiority. Sounds reasonable. Supercomputer manufacturing requires high-caliber research capability as well as sophisticated technologies and engineering. Supercomputers are used to process vast amounts of data for, to name just a few, finance, aerospace, geophysics, weather and climate forecasts, logistic services and defense.
Statistics seem to say that China has done a fairly good job.
Wait a moment. One vital aspect people might overlook is that all the China-made bodies employed American hearts, either Intel or AMD central processing units (CPUs). Years after a leading Chinese CPU manufacturer said it would put indigenous chips into Chinese supercomputers, most Chinese CPUs are still mounted to drive low-end laptops and set-top boxes. However, Chinese computing architects did make some gizmos to upgrade system functionality and energy efficiency for those supercomputers.
Published papers
Another indicator, often used to described China's advances in research power, is the number of published research papers by Chinese scientists.
Science Watch ranked China the fourth, following the United States, Japan and Germany, in producing 719,971 research papers on Science Citation Index journals from 2000 to 2010. But in terms of average citations per paper - a benchmark for merit of research papers - China was nowhere among the world's top 20, with 5.87, a far cry from that of the most innovative countries. Switzerland had an average 16.62 citings, the United States 15.77 and the Netherlands 15.37. What China had scored was close to 6.28 for Brazil and 5.62 of for India.
Even for the less-cited papers originally authored by Chinese researchers, most citations were done by domestic peers and in many cases were self citations.
Statistics also showed one quarter of the total Chinese authored research papers in the past decade were in collaboration with international colleagues, mostly American scientists.
The huge scientific research and technological development (R&D) investment in China mainly contributed to the explosive increase in numbers of research papers. In 2007 China exceeded the 1.5 percent threshold of R&D share in gross domestic product (GDP), from 0.6 percent in 1996. In most developed economies, the R&D share in GDP is usually around three percent. In absolute calculations, the United States in 2007 invested US$369 billion in research and development, more than that of all Asian countries in aggregate, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development .
Research funds in China are used not only to build labs, buy research facilities and recruit global talent, but also to spread bonuses to scientists who are able to publish research papers in peer-reviewed journals, particularly those with high-impact factors.
In academic fields like geology and paleoanthropology where the vast land of China allow Chinese scientists a unique access to resources, it is not unusual for home researchers to publish outstanding papers, based on studies on fossils or primitive layers, in even the highest-rated publications, such as Science and Nature.
Monetary bonus
However, for most research papers, gaining monetary bonus is the priority for their writers. The biggest chunk of all the published papers by Chinese writers were less innovative than others and might not be a basis for new thinking or key technological know-how - which is attested to by patenting.
In 2008, the US Patent and Trademark Office granted 49 percent of patents to US applicants, 22 percent to Japanese and 14 percent to Europeans. Chinese companies and individuals were granted less than 1 percent of all US patents in the same year. In the most innovative and valuable patents, such as inventions, Chinese got only 1 percent while Americans 30 percent.
That seems to demonstrate China's lack of competitive edge in science and technology.
Nonetheless, the wise policy of opening itself to the outside world has made China quite a success, at face value or not. Science in China greatly benefited from the ever-easier logistics and human resource flows in and out.
Take 2007 for example. Among all 22,500 people who got doctorates in natural sciences and engineering in US institutions, 31 percent originated in China.
After getting advanced degrees, some found senior research positions back in China; many of those who chose to stay in the United States played key roles in international partnerships, including turning out research papers. Until those expats change to foreign citizenship, their outputs are calculated for China, although they always utilize Western state-of-the-art labs for the most innovative work.
(The author is a Xinhua writer.)
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