The rise of Chinese science

 

"IF THERE IS one thing the Chinese Communist Party and America’s security hawks agree on, it is that innovation is the secret to geopolitical, economic and military superiority. President Xi Jinping hopes that science and technology will help his country overtake America. 

Using a mix of export controls and sanctions, politicians in Washington are trying to prevent China from gaining a technological advantage.

America’s strategy is unlikely to work. As we report this week, Chinese science and innovation are making rapid progress. America’s strategy is also misguided. If America wants to maintain its lead—and to get the most benefit from the research of China’s talented scientists—it would do better to focus less on keeping Chinese science down and more on pushing itself ahead.

For centuries the West sniffed at Chinese technology. Self-regarding Europeans struggled to accept that such a far-flung place could possibly have invented the compass, the crossbow and the blast furnace. In recent decades, as China joined the world economy, its rapid catch-up and abuse of Western intellectual property meant that it was more often an imitator and a thief than an innovator. Meanwhile, its science was disparaged, partly because it encouraged researchers to churn out high volumes of poor-quality scientific papers.

It is time to lay these old ideas to rest. China is now a leading scientific power. Its scientists produce some of the world’s best research, particularly in chemistry, physics and materials science. They contribute to more papers in prestigious journals than their colleagues from America and the European Union and they produce more work that is highly cited. Tsinghua and Zhejiang universities each carry out as much cutting-edge research as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Chinese laboratories contain some of the most advanced kit, from supercomputers and ultra-high-energy detectors to cryogenic electron microscopes. These do not yet match the crown jewels of Europe and America, but they are impressive. And China hosts a wealth of talent. Many researchers who studied or worked in the West have returned home. 

China is training scientists, too: more than twice as many of the world’s top ai researchers got their first degree in China as in America.

In commercial innovation China is also overturning old assumptions. The batteries and electric vehicles it exports are not just cheap, but state-of-the-art. Huawei, a Chinese telecoms firm brought low after most American firms were barred from dealing with it by 2020, is resurgent today and has weaned itself off many foreign suppliers. Although it earns a third of the revenue of Apple or Microsoft, it spends nearly as much as they do on R&D.

China is not yet the world’s dominant technological power. Huawei still has limited access to advanced chips; self-sufficiency is costly. The country’s many state-owned firms are sclerotic. Much of the spending on research is guided by the state’s heavy hand. And some mediocre universities still produce mediocre research. China’s innovation, in other words, is inefficient. Yet it is an inefficiency that Mr Xi is willing to tolerate in order to produce a sheaf of world-class results.

All this poses a dilemma for America. With more good science comes new knowledge that benefits all humanity, by solving the world’s problems and improving lives, as well as deepening understanding. 

Thanks to China’s agronomists, farmers everywhere could reap more bountiful harvests. Its perovskite-based solar panels will work just as well in Gabon as in the Gobi desert. But a more innovative China may also thrive in fields with military uses, such as quantum computing or hypersonic weapons. It will also aim to convert its technological prowess into economic and diplomatic influence.

So far America has focused on the threats, by trying to stymie China using sanctions and by limiting the flow of data, talent and ideas. After all, hawks say, China is itself notoriously secretive. It failed to share its early work on the virus that causes covid-19, a shocking breach of its responsibilities that could have cost lives—possibly millions of them. If Chinese science is thriving thanks to these tactics, then perhaps America should simply be even harder line and more restrictive.

That overestimates America’s ability to constrain the whole of Chinese science. Even Huawei has prospered despite foreign sanctions. And it underestimates the cost to America’s own science—including the technology that underpins its security. Rather than copy China’s tactics, America should sharpen its own innovative edge, by enhancing the traits that made it successful.

One of its strengths is openness. America has long been a magnet for the world’s brightest minds, and it should continue to attract them—even from China. Some work needs to be secret, obviously, but a presumption against hiring Chinese researchers would deprive America of precious talent. America must also be open to ideas. Citations have increased, but too few Western scientists take note of Chinese papers. A deal in the 1970s by Deng Xiaoping and Jimmy Carter to enhance academic collaboration was grudgingly extended in March for only six months, because of Republicans’ fears about national security. It should be renewed for longer. American and Soviet scientists worked together even in the depths of the cold war.

Another strength is America’s dynamic economy, in which the best universities, government agencies and companies innovate. But too much of a scientist’s time is spent on bureaucracy. Finding faster ways to allocate grants, say by lottery, could help. Last, America should not blunt its market mechanism. In China most research money comes from the state; in America the private sector is a bigger spender. It is not White House edicts that find and develop the best ideas, but markets powered by competition.

The fact that an authoritarian regime is nearing the technological frontier is alarming. Yet America should not strive to become more like China, but to draw on its own distinctive strengths. The result will be more scientific discovery and technical ingenuity—and ultimately more security." [1]

1.  The rise of Chinese science. The Economist; London Vol. 451, Iss. 9401,  (Jun 15, 2024): 9.