xinhui

China catching up with leading countries in basic science research
English_Xinhua 2006-11-16 20:00:33

BEIJING, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- China is catching up with the forerunners in basic science research, with an increasing number of theses and journals complied by Chinese scientists being referenced by the Science Citation Index (SCI), according to China's Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST).

China was ranked fifth in the world in terms of the number of its journals cited by the SCI in 2004 and 2005, up from 15th place in 1991, MOST statistics showed.

"The number of our theses and journals cited by the SCI is an important indicator of the success of our research progress in basic science fields," said Zhang Xianen, the director of MOST's scientific research department.

"The greater number of Chinese scientists winning international prizes and occupying senior positions in major international research organizations also proves that China is catching up with leading countries in the field of science and technology," Zhang said.

In the last two years, 14 Chinese scientists have won international prizes including the Fresnel Prize awarded by the European Physical Society, and 40 Chinese have been granted memberships to international academic organizations and science academies of other countries, he said.

MOST statistics show that there were 115,400 basic science researchers in China in 2005, 46.5 percent higher than in 2001.

The Chinese government has promised to increase the country's investment in basic science research in an attempt to build a "self-innovative" country.

xinhui

FT.com / Asia-Pacific / China - China overtakes Japan on R&D

China overtakes Japan on R&D

By Geoff Dyer in Shanghai

Published: December 3 2006 21:42 | Last updated: December 3 2006 21:42

China has overtaken Japan to become the second biggest spender on research and development behind the US, a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development revealed.

The country is expected to invest $136bn in research and development this year after growing by more than 20 per cent in the past year, ahead of the the $130bn from Japan but still well behind the $330bn the US will invest, the OECD said.
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Rule changes propel banks onto list - Oct-29

The report is the latest indication of the dramatic rise in research spending in China, which is beginning to cause concerns among western governments.

Dirk Pilat, head of the OECD’s science and technology division, said the surge in Chinese research was “stunning”. He added: “Chinese investment has been growing rapidly for some time, but it is still a surprise that it has overtaken Japan so quickly.”

Mr Pilat said that the bulk of the spending in China was on development work, to alter products for the fast-growing Chinese market, rather than basic scientific research.

The number of patents coming from China that were registered with the patent office in the US, Europe and Japan is still low and a string of recent scandals over academic fraud have also raised questions about how well the money is spent.

But Mr Pilat added that some multinationals were beginning to move genuine research to China because of the high numbers of skilled scientists they could recruit in Shanghai or Beijing. “There are some signs that they are starting to do fundamental or breakthrough work in China,” he said.

As well as increasing spending on university science departments, the government has also been eager to attract multinational companies to open research centres in the country.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

xinhui

Innovation, Chinese Style
By THOMAS HOUT
January 2, 2007
Innovation, Chinese Style - WSJ.com
Chinese authorities are finding it harder to build an innovation economy than it was to construct a production economy. Alarmed by the increasing dominance of foreign firms in China's high technology industries, Beijing is pouring money into research and development institutes and subsidies for Chinese companies. But the kind of innovation China wants can't be bought -- and the kind the country needs to acquire can't be invented by the government.

China now spends 1.6% of its GDP, or about $40 billion, on R&D -- up from 1% only five years ago. On a relative basis, this outlay is far smaller than what the U.S. spends, at 2.6% of its economy, and Japan, at 3.2%. The aim is to narrow the gap in the invention of high-technology products. China is rapidly growing its patent base. But only 12% of all patents awarded to Chinese companies in China are for genuine inventions, while the corresponding number for foreign companies in China is 80%. Government performs a quarter of China's R&D -- three times the equivalent government share in the U.S. -- and funds state-owned company research. R&D spending in China is increasing at 17% per year. That's four times the rate of similar spending in America.

xinhui

FT.com / Asia-Pacific / China - How China is rising through the innovation ranks

How China is rising through the innovation ranks
By Geoff Dyer

Published: January 4 2007 22:00 | Last updated: January 4 2007 22:00

One of the specialities of modern China is an ability to generate statistics that strike fear into governments and boardrooms around the world.

Companies talk endlessly about the “China price” – how Chinese manufacturers have driven down the cost of goods, from socks to semiconductors. At other times it has been the number of mobile phone users in China (440m) or the proportion of world cement it consumes (40 per cent).

Now the theme is turning to science. Having spent two decades muscling in on one manufacturing sector after another, China wants to spend the next two decades moving from “Made in China” to “Invented in China”. Here, too, it has some numbers to show it is serious.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, China overtook Japan last year in terms of spending on research and development and ranks in second place behind only the US. In the last decade, R&D has more than doubled as a share of the country’s gross domestic product. China has also just overtaken Germany in terms of patent filings to stand fifth in international rankings.

Japan and South Korea invested heavily in universities to modernise their economies in the past and China is doing the same. The number of university students has more than quadrupled since 1998 to 16m. While the US produces 137,000 engineers a year with at least a bachelor’s degree, China churns out 352,000.

Not only are one-quarter of foreign PhD candidates in the US Chinese but a growing number of them are heading back home: Beijing says 170,000 Chinese who studied abroad have returned, 30,000 of them last year.

Multinationals are lining up to open research centres in China, inspired in part by the abundance of local scientists who are paid only about 20 per cent of that which western counterparts receive. Academics estimate that 250-300 foreign companies have R&D centres in China.

Having watched first Japan, then Taiwan and South Korea develop knowledge-based economies, China’s leaders are in a hurry to do the same, especially given the rapid rise in the country’s own labour costs. President Hu Jintao in speeches regularly extols the cause of “independent innovation”.

It all looks like another episode in the relentless advance of the Chinese economic juggernaut. Yet beneath the surface, China’s science drive faces a host of problems, ranging from academic fraud to weak financial markets. At the corporate level, Chinese innovation remains weak. Having a top-down government plan for fostering innovation is one thing; turning it into reality is a much harder task.

Indeed, the problems are so entrenched that a recent report by CLSA, the regional brokerage, maintains that China lacks the legal and economic environment to foster innovation. It concludes: “China is not an innovative economy and has no innovative companies.”

The sheer weight of numbers and scale of the Chinese economy will ensure that some research-based companies come through. But whether it is a trickle or a flood will depend on how well China overcomes these obstacles.

The problems begin with academic research. China may be spending a lot more money in the laboratory but there are big questions about the results. Many potential worries were brought to the fore by a recent scandal at Jiaotong University in Shanghai where Chen Jin, a dean, claimed to have invented a sophisticated form of microchip that could process 200m instructions per second. Instead, an inquiry revealed he had scraped the name off a Motorola product and claimed the work as his own.

The scandal was not as damaging as the one in South Korea involving Hwang Woo-suk, a scientist whose claims to have produced the world’s first stem cells cloned from human embryos were revealed to be a fraud. But it did expose the same problem of a government desperate to show off research triumphs. Like Mr Hwang, Mr Chen had been given generous public grants, while the announcement of his chip design was trumpeted at a press conference attended by leading government officials and which made front-page news. Wen Jiabao, the prime minister, even visited his lab.

Even before the Jiaotong revelations, Chinese academia was witnessing a slew of allegations about endemic plagiarism and fraudulent research. A Chinese magazine article exposed academics and students who had created counterfeit versions of respected journals so that it would seem their work had been published.

“People used to think that only officials could be corrupt,” says Tang Anguo, director of the higher education institute at East China Normal University in Shanghai. “But I can tell you that in Chinese academia, there are many similar cases [to the Chen one].”

The statistics show quality might be suffering. In 2004, China was in ninth place in the ranking of published scientific papers and a handful of Chinese scientists have made the cover of international journals such as Nature and Science. However, China ranked only 124th in the average number of citations per paper – a measure of the modest influence of much of its scientific output.

Some Chinese academics say the low quality of research reflects not just the growing pains of a rapidly expanding system but is a direct result of political meddling. Liu Ming, a professor at Zheijiang University, says most important decisions in universities – such as promotions, funding and publications in periodicals – are made by administrators and politicians rather than as a result of peer review. “In university circles there is common agreement that the greatest barrier to academic development is the improper interference of the government,” he says.

It is not just the academic research apparatus that needs an overhaul if China is to be more innovative, according to many observers, but also the education system. University teachers say there is too much emphasis on theory and rote learning and insufficient attention given to problem-solving and working in a team. Classes are also overloaded: some doctoral advisers have more than 50 candidates to supervise.

A report by McKinsey estimates that only 10 per cent of the engineering graduates of Chinese universities have the practical and language skills needed to work for a multinational company. The consultancy warns of a looming talent shortage. The Chinese even have a phrase for this type of student – “stuffed ducks” who are good at memorising facts and passing exams but have little initiative.

With its Confucian heritage, China places great emphasis on education, but there is also a heavy deference towards authority. Employers regularly complain that although they hire graduates who seem brilliant on paper, it can be very hard to get them to voice opinions. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all had to overcome this sort of reticence in their young graduates and the Chinese government is trying to address some of these problems. It has introduced changes in the curriculum that emphasise communication and teamwork and a core of elite universities has been established, which will be given additional resources. Yet even top universities operate under very tight budgets.

One of the biggest obstacles to innovation might not be in the lab or the classroom, however, but the fate of stock market. Over the last couple of decades, small private companies have been one of the main engines of innovation, yet China’s financial system does not provide enough support to private entrepreneurs. State-controlled groups garner around 75 per cent of bank credit in China and dominate the ranks of the 1,300 companies on the stock market.

Although research companies sometimes need years and millions of dollars to get a product to market, China’s entrepreneurs often have to raise start-up capital from family members or informal networks of lenders. “Informal networks work really well to set up a backyard factory,” says Andrew Grant, head of the China practice at McKinsey. “But they do not work if you want to shift to an operation of 1,000 people.”

In Japan and South Korea, research has been concentrated in big companies with the resources to take chances, such as Sony or Samsung. But in China the large companies are mostly state-owned and run by executives allergic to taking big risks. “One of the keys will be the financial system,” says Andy Rothman, an economist at CLSA who prepared its report on China’s science drive. “The question is, can it become a genuine system that allocates funds to private sector companies to fund their own research?”

On top of these obstacles, Chinese innovation faces the further threat of intellectual property theft. The immediate threat to research from patent violations can be exaggerated: companies are usually more concerned about someone making fakes of a finished product than having secrets stolen from a lab. But both Chinese and foreign groups regularly warn that such legal uncertainties will inhibit investment in knowledge industries.

Against these deep-seated problems, there are two wild cards that could work in China’s favour. The first is the role of the multi*nationals. The extent of multinational research is hard to gauge because some of the R&D centres in China are more about public relations than science. Sylvia Schwaag Serger, science counsellor at the Swedish embassy in Beijing who has written several papers on Chinese research, estimates that only 30 overseas companies are doing innovative research.

In the long run, however, multi*nationals could provide a strong platform for China’s innovation push. A young generation of scientists is being trained at Microsoft, Intel and other leading companies in how to manage complex research projects that span different disciplines, how to establish links with university researchers and how to collaborate with other companies that have niches of expertise.

Armed with such skills, some of these young scientists are bound to strike out on their own. “There will inevitably be a spill-over from the multi*nationals into the Chinese economy,” says Ms Schwaag Serger.


The other swing factor is the returnees. Of the 30,000 overseas graduates who returned last year, some will have been enticed by government grants and others by the booming economy. Many talk about a patriotic urge to make a contribution to their country. The returnees bring not just the skills they learnt abroad but also a greater willingness to throw ideas around.

“The success of Chinese scientists in the west shows that they can be innovative,” says Wang Baoping, research director in China at Novo Nordisk, the Danish diabetes specialist. “What they need is the right environment.”

In addition to returnees, China has the advantage of attracting many *Taiwanese nationals who have watched their own country establish research-based industries. Indeed, Taiwanese companies and returnees are already a driving force in corporate innovation in China. According to Douglas Fuller at the American University in Washington, companies founded by ethnic Chinese or returnees are responsible for 503 of China’s 616 US utility patents in information technology. (Utility patents are for genuine innovations rather than adaptations).

For two decades, the huge Chinese diaspora has helped accelerate the country’s entry into manufacturing, with both capital and management know-how. Now it could provide the same crucial boost to China’s innovation drive.

xinhui

China is world's top spot for R&D

BEIJING - China has become the most popular country in the world for setting up new research and development (R&D) facilities, according to the United Nations.

Sixty-one per cent of foreign enterprises establishing new R&D centers choosing to set up in China, compared to 41% in the US and 29% in India, says a report from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Asia Times Online :: China Business News - China is world's top spot for R&D

xinhui

Ok guys,

I am not a nationalist, nor it is my interest to defend China. However, this thread has way too much "mis-conception". as noted, the source of the articles are from WJS, FT.com, Time.com, none of them from Commie-ist PR release.

xinhui

Chinese patents 'in sharp rise'
By Quentin Sommerville
BBC News, Shanghai


China has seen a sharp increase in requests for patents, according to the UN's intellectual property agency.

The number of requests for patents in China grew by 33% in 2005 compared to the previous year.

That gives it the world's third highest number behind Japan and the United States, the agency said.

China's leaders have been urging companies to become more creative, and put more of their money into developing new technology.

Backing innovation

China has established itself as the heart of the world economy but it is not the brains.

Most of the products it produces are invented and designed elsewhere.

So the profit that China makes on every laptop or DVD player it produces is very small. Cheap labour and huge volumes are what drive profits in China.

But that may be changing. China appears to be becoming more creative.

The country filed over 170,000 patents in 2005, up by a third on the year before, according to the World Intellectual Property Agency.

The survey is a good indication of innovation.

So that is good news for China's leadership, who have been encouraging companies to invest in research and development.

China knows it cannot bet its future economic success on low wages alone. Other countries are already cheaper.

"Made by China" rather than simply "Made in China" will mean that the country's economic miracle stands a far better chance of lasting longer.


BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | 'Sharp rise' in Chinese patents

kuku

As Mr. xinhui has pointed out in several successive threads that is not the case, the Chinese Apparently have a stronger R&D base then Japan.

As long as you have the money, sending it on R&D is not a problem, hell as long as you have money nothing really is.

I actually know some importers who import all of the second grade knock off stuff from china and sell it in India, man o man that stuff is nearly as good as the real, i always though why on earth they do not sell that cheap stuff under their own brands (everything including Furniture, shoes, clothes...... ).

As for the Chinese Hackers, this will become far more intense with commercial competition, far more than it ever will with the defence services.

xinhui, nothing wrong with being a nationalist.

kams

I am sorry Xinhui, problem with Chinese IP theft has not left even the Chinese Acadamics and so called basic research untouched. While touting the numbers , % increase, international awards etc look impressive, they are also masking far more serious diseace aflicting Chinese Academia. Just last month my company had to terminate 3 of our Scientists from China due to plagiariasm. (Ph D thesis to the precise).
Chinese researchers debate rash of plagiarism case 1996

2006 and nothing has really changed

kams

He He...look I am not trying to put down Chinese research..many of my colleagues are Chinese..but that is funny.

No. of citation/article published - China Ranks 124 in the world! I am just trying to point out - Statistics doesn't mean anything...

Beijing's Better Mousetraps

kuku

IP theft or not,

i know some people in Gurgaon selling Chinese made furniture under a their name and under other international brand names at a good profit, mostly the global design type stuff which the new "IT manager" crowd goes for.
They re Making a killing doing this.
Chinese stuff is good money and acceptable quality (sometimes good quality).
This is the trend in some other sectors too.
I bet most of the international brands dont even know that their brands are making so much profit in India.

TopHatter

Thank you xinhui, this is exactly what I was referring to.

Between the rampant and all-pervasive counterfeiting (and/or faking, which is potentially deadly when you're talking about microchips and not merely knock-off shoes or purses) and the surge in genuine innovation, China will most definitely catapult itself ahead of it's Asian neighbors and the West.

I do find it hilarious that the PRC is registering all of these patents.

When in fact the concept and the word itself have ZERO meaning to...well, pretty much everybody in the country, from the top on down.

xinhui

kams,

there is no need for a sorry.


I have no issues either way, but reading the thread, there is alot of opinions based on impressions. In order to a have serous discussion, good supporting references (like the one you posted) are needed.

xinhui

I am not a lawyer, but regarding to all-pervasive counterfeiting, and other IP issues, which is very serious and need to to addressed, that is not an argument , some of critic cited in kams posted articles are Chinese themselves.

I recall Hong Kong , Korea and TW were the sources of counterfeiting in the 1980s, Counterfeiting like other goods, seller will buy from the cheapest source.

kams

Xinhui,

I have noticed that generally Chinese from Hongkong universities fare much better than main land universities. I have not noticed much difference b/w mainland and Taiwan based institutions.

My observation is strictly based on my own experience for the last 4 years, and based on exposure to very limited number of Scientists. I may be totally wrong or my perception may be due to better communication skills of Hongkong origin Scientists (only 2 of them) I have come across.