By Kenneth H. Keller
China may have come from behind as a science and technology player, but already its newly competitive spirit is paying off. Just one indicator of its success: The nation now produces 30 percent more physical and biological scientists than the United States each year—and almost six times as many engineers. Science and technology comparisons among countries are not a simple matter. Science and technology are, themselves, quite different fields, and each is embedded in social, political and economic systems that strongly affect its development. Where China is concerned, there is the added complication of trying to make sense of very large numbers, the inevitable consequence of dealing with a country of 1.3 billion people.
For example, in 2000, although a relatively small percentage of Chinese had completed a post-secondary degree, China accounted for 11 percent of the people in the world with a tertiary, or college, education (the United States accounted for 26 percent). A similar statistic affected by sheer numbers is the production of Ph.D.s in science and engineering: In 2002, the number was about 7,500 in China, compared with 25,000 in the United States. China already has caught up with the United Kingdom and is rapidly closing in on Germany. A Global Player
The trends reinforce the story. China graduated a negligible number of Ph.D.s as recently as 1987, making the rise to its present position extraordinary. Other data suggest that trend will continue. The fraction of China’s 24-year-olds with a tertiary, or bachelor’s, degree, while only half that in the United States, is increasing each year, and 57 percent of those degrees are in science or engineering—the pool for future Ph.D.s. And, as noted above, China is already producing more physical and biological scientists and many more engineers than the United States. Research activity has paralleled this growth in numbers. In 2003, Chinese scientists authored 4 percent of the world’s science and technology articles, up from
1 percent in 1988. Moreover, co-authorship- with the United States was down, suggesting a greater degree of autonomy in their efforts. Even as the number of Chinese scientists and engineers has grown, the number coming to the United States for graduate study has decreased—another indication of China’s expanding capacity. Not surprisingly, the areas of emphasis differ from those in the United States. Where some 55 percent of U.S.-authored- research articles concern the life sciences, such as biology, medicine, anthropology and sociology, fewer than 25 percent of Chinese articles concentrate on these areas. The Chinese place more emphasis on physical sciences and engineering, including computer science, probably reflecting the belief that the payoff in industrial development will be greater in the short run. That may be true, but neglecting the life sciences could be a problem for China over time. Generally, new technologies arise from the most rapidly changing fields of science. There is no field where fundamental understanding is evolving more quickly than in the life sciences and—along with materials science and computer science (where China has activity)—the area of life sciences is most likely to lead to technological breakthroughs. What about technological development? China’s research and development (R&D) funding, heavily skewed toward development, grew from $20 billion to $80 billion from 1993 to 2003. The comparable figure for the United States in 2003 was $280 billion, but the gap is considerably smaller when purchasing power is considered. A recent National Science Foundation report on science and engineering indicators identified China as second only to Israel among emerging nations in its potential to be a major global player in high technology over the next 15 years, based on a variety of factors related to infrastructure, government and productive capacity. Certainly, the evidence suggests that the country is moving in that direction. China’s share of the global high-technology market rose from 1 percent in 1980 to 9.3 percent in 2003. China surpassed Japan in 2001 as Asia’s largest producer of office and computer machinery and now accounts for about 27 percent of global production in that sector, well ahead of the European Union. In addition, China has significant export market share in scientific instruments and communication equipment. In 2004, it was the largest foreign supplier of high technology products to the United States, although it lagged in certain important areas, including biotechnology, the life sciences and advanced materials. Technology and Politics
But obstacles remain. Major among them is the tension between economic growth and political control, most obvious in information technology. In modern development, IT is both means and end—a tool and resource for technological advances and, because of its wide range of potential applications, a goal of product development. China sees its importance and has put great effort in recent years into building an IT-based infrastructure and making an increasingly wide range of databases available. At the same time, China has imposed laws and attempted to put in place technical barriers to the widespread use of the Internet for transmitting political information or organizing unsanctioned political activity. The technical barriers have been largely ineffectual because of the inherent properties of information networks, and the laws have been enforced sporadically, with periods of strict enforcement alternating with periods of their being more or less ignored. In fact, one can argue that the strategy of encouraging certain uses of information networks while proscribing others is bound to fail over time because it is impractical. Since China is unlikely to forego the advantages of a strong information infrastructure, this technology could well play an important role in increasing political openness in the country. China, along with the rest of the world, must confront the energy needs and environmental consequences of its economic growth. The two, of course, are tightly linked. Since 1995, China’s consumption of energy has exceeded production, and the nation is now second only to the United States in total energy use. Approximately 70 percent of China’s energy comes from coal, which it has in sufficient quantity, but growth in the transportation sector makes that area an increasing competitor for oil. China already imports about half its oil (about 3.5 million barrels a day). In the past, like most other developing nations, China’s use of energy was highly inefficient. In the early 1970s, its energy intensity (the energy required to produce a dollar of product) was about 120,000 BTU/dollars of gross domestic product, compared with the United States at about 20,000 BTU/dollars of gross domestic product. But by 2004, China had improved to one-third of that level, and it should approach the U.S. value in the next 10 or 15 years. However, economic growth has more than offset the improvement in efficiency, so China’s energy demand is likely to grow at 4 percent to 5 percent per year over the next 10 years. That means China’s fossil fuel carbon emissions also will increase. China is already second to the United States and should pass it by 2015. Since China’s emissions per capita (and energy use per capita) are well below that of the United States, some argue that China is “entitled” to continue to grow its economy and should not be constrained in carbon emissions. On the other hand, local pollution caused by coal plants and global competition for oil are motivating factors for the Chinese to seek other energy sources. China uses little nuclear power at present, but reliance on that source can be expected to grow. China will complete its Three Gorges hydroelectric project—the largest in the world—by 2008, to the dismay of environmentalists throughout the world (even though the new project will replace carbon-emitting technologies). In sum, in science and technology terms, China is clearly becoming an important global player. Its science is likely to make a welcome contribution to the world’s knowledge base, and its technology will make the nation a serious competitor. Although the United States will not be displaced soon or easily in many technological areas, particularly in the life sciences, the relative stagnation in the U.S. training of scientists and engineers is a concern. The competitiveness between the two countries for oil, and the shared problem of their contributions to global climate change, could play out either in increased political tension or cooperative technology development. With respect to science and technology in general, that statement may be the best summary of the choices. The preferable direction is clear. Kenneth H. Keller, director of the Bologna Center, holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from The Johns Hopkins University and has been recognized for his work in biomedical engineering.
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