1. China’s Long-Term and Strategic S&T Investment Strategy: Targeting of Technologies and High-Technology Industries of Particular Strategic Importance to Economic Development or National Security
The 10 WTEC studies that have included coverage of Chinese R&D activities and programs over the past 15 years have gatheredinsights into the PRC government’s strategy of maximizing the impact of its S&T investments on economic and national security. Nanotechnology, biotechnology, and information technology (and the convergence of those technologies with cognitive science) have been identified by the PRC government as of strategic importance, and have received priority in national and local government investment strategies. One notable example is Suzhou Nanopolis, which combines national, local, and foreign investment in exploiting synergies at the intersections of these disciplines.[1] Several WTEC studies have either visited or commented on this project, including the NMSD,[2] Biomanufacturing,[3] NBIC2,[4] and NANO2[5] studies.
Several other S&T areas (outside of those documented by WTEC studies) that are highly visible internationally and that contribute to national prestige have been given particular emphasis in sustained PRC government investments. Most notable among these in recent years have been the Chinese space program and China’s investments in semiconductor manufacturing and high-end computing technologies.
-Space Program: Since the 1950s, the PRC government has put a high priority on the development of nuclear weapons and the technologies for delivering them—the requisite technologies for “superpower” status. As in many other countries (including the United States), this has been accompanied by the development of a civilian-focused space program. The rapid development of China’s space program has been well documented on an ongoing basis by the U.S.-based publication, Aviation Week and Space Technology – which in 2013 named Qian Xuesen, the pioneering leader and visionary of China’s space program as “Person of the Year.”[6] China’s space program now includes capabilities and plans that rival those of Russia and Western countries, including space stations, lunar exploration, and commercial space development.[7]China currently has the ability to launch humans into space, a capability that the United States gave up when it retired the Space Shuttle in 2011 and is still working to restore.
-Semiconductor Manufacturing and High-End Computing: As of November 2016, Chinahad 171 of the world’s “top 500” supercomputers.[8] Perhaps more significantly, China’s was responsible for the #1 and #2-ranked supercomputers in overall performance, and China’s top-performing machine, the Sunway TaihuLight, at 93 petaflops, uses no U.S. components (e.g., microprocessors) and is more efficient in terms of power consumption than comparable U.S. machines. Even more significantly, it is also reported to perform well in terms of solving practical computing problems, vs. just standard benchmarking tests.[9]
-Commercial Aviation: Other areas of prioritized strategic investment by the Chinese government include the commercial aircraft manufacturing industry, where the Chinese C919 project aims to compete with Boeing and Airbus in the large commercial jet airliner business. As part of this strategic investment, China has also prioritized advanced materials (essential for lightweighting of airframes and for the development of energy-efficient and long-range jet engines) and additive manufacturing (including of large metal structures for airframes). These Chinese advances have also been well documented in the pages of Aviation Week and Space Technology over the past several years.[10] While progress in this area has been slower than originally anticipated,[11]China is pursuing a consistent, and persistent, investment strategy that is likely to pay off in the long run. Metrics documented elsewhere in this paper demonstrate that China is now leading the world by some measures in academic research in the fields of materials science and engineering, both critical to leadership in the aviation industry.
2. China’s S&T Education and Workforce Strategy: Sending Young Talent for Training Abroad, Attracting Overseas Chinese to Return Home, and Building the Domestic Educational Infrastructure and Talent Base
Since the late 1980s, China has sent thousands of young scientists and engineers abroad to train in leading Western universities. Whereas in the past many of these people chose to stay in the West, there has been a concerted effort by the Chinese government in recent years to encourage them to return home. WTEC panelists visiting China in the past 15 years have cited the following examples:
-The Nanomodular Materials and Systems by Design (NMSD) study panelists noted that in 2015 they visited with outstanding Chinese scientists who had been offered research positions in China with excellent startup and support terms after they had started their careers in the United States (Chapter 6, p. 80).
-Biological Engineering & Manufacturing study panelists visited the National Natural Science Foundation of China in 2014 and learned about a variety of programs to encourage international S&T cooperation, including a Joint Research Fund for Overseas Chinese Scholars and Scholars and a Research Fund for International Young Scientists (p. 194).
-The 2013 WTEC Panel on Convergence of Knowledge, Technology, and Society (“NBIC2”) noted the establishment in China of several international convergence research “hubsites” inside China, building on collaborations between Chinese and foreign universities—a strategy well suited to building up the international competitiveness of China’s domestic R&D enterprise (Chapter 8, p. 279). The panel’s report states that “China’s overarching goal is to develop an ‘indigenous innovation’ capability that would enable it to become less dependent on foreign technology transfer” (Chapter 10, p. 391), and then goes on to state that “Current U.S. visa policies virtually assure that most of these [foreign] students will return home after earning their degrees. China benefits from this shortsighted approach, enticing the best and brightest Chinese students and expatriates to return to China through highly attractive start-up packages (for example, the ‘Thousand Talents’ and ‘Thousand Young Talents’ programs)” (p. 392).
-The WTEC Panel on Stem Cell Engineering visited the Institute of Zoology, ChineseAcademy of Sciences (CAS) in late 2011 and met four leading Chinese researchers in this field who had included extensive study and research abroad as part of their training. Two of them had returned to continue their work in China under the CAS’s “hundred talents program” (p. 136), which has the goal of “recruiting 100 outstanding scholars from both home and abroad by the end of the 20th century.”[12] The same panel visited Peking University and noted that their host there, who received the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges in Global Health Award, left China in 1989 to study at work at UCLA, NYU, and Perkin Elmer, but had returned to Beijing when the Chinese Ministry of Education offered him the Cheung Kong Scholar Professorship at Peking University (p. 182). In the same site visit report, the panel described the “…Thousand Young Talents program (wherein the government offers 1 million yuan (U.S. $146,000) in subsidies to help recruit overseas researchers)… used to try and bring internationally renowned scientists (ideally full professors with a strong publication record) back to China” (p. 184)
3. Examples of Excellence in Chinese S&T Cited by Recent WTEC Panel Studies
All 10 of the WTEC international comparative S&T studies that have included coverage of the PRC since 2000 have found examples of excellence in the PRC that they have cited in their reports. Elite Chinese universities that were singled out by multiple WTEC panels for particular praise include TsinghuaUniversity, Peking University, Zhejiang University. In some cases, specific companies, or academic/industry collaborations, were also singled out for praise. Some selected examples from a few of the most recent studies[13] include the following:
-Biomanufacturing: This WTEC panel noted that theShanghai Institute for Bone and Joint research is “well known internationally” (p. 40). The panel was also impressed by the Shanghai Key Laboratory for Orthopedic Implants and its activities in training talented young clinical scientists (p. 42). The panelists praised China’s pioneering Chinese work on additive manufacturing of metals for biomedical implants (p. 58). They also called out TsinghuaUniversity’sBiomanufacturing Institute as a “leader in the field of 3D tissue constructs” (p. 59).
-Nanomodular Materials and Systems by Design (NMSD): This WTEC panel identified Cnano as a world leader in industrial-scale manufacturing and supply of multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT)-based products and conductive pastes for applications ranging from lithium ion batteries to conductive plastics, anti-static paints, and reinforced rubber tires. (p. 68). More broadly, the panel concluded that “China is already the leading producer of carbon nanotubes in the world, and the situation is going to be very similar for graphene. (p. 111). The panel particularly praised the Tsinghua-FoxconnNanotechnologyR&DCenter: “established at TsinghuaUniversity in 2004, [it] is a unique case of a strong industry–university cooperation that has successfully translated fundamental research in nanotechnology to commercial applications” (p. 32). This panel co-organized a number of workshops on NMSD topics around China; in the report the panelists commented that “The universities and research institutes involved in this workshop are very rapidly becoming (or have become) leaders in the basic science and advanced applications of nanostructures, including nanomodular systems” (p. 159). They also offered the following rather broad statement: “Given the outstanding quality, the number of researchers involved, and the willingness to adapt best practices and policies from international research efforts, the research from these institutions in China will continue to play a leading role in the development of 2D materials and technologically relevant nanomodular systems (p. 111).
-Convergence of Nano-Bio-Info-Cognitive Technologies(NBIC2): This panel noted that “In China, important steps have already been made in tearing down the traditional boundaries of individual scientific disciplines. For example, the CAS has set up entirely new research entities to explore convergent technologies. In Shenzhen, Chongqing, and several cities, China is organizing research institutes that combine information science, advanced manufacturing, and biomedicine” (p. 167). The panelists also commented that “In the early 1990s China took the above convergence models [from other countries] to another level of sophistication and grandeur” (p. 279). The report includes several other comments praising China’s international partnerships in this arena.
-Stem Cell Engineering: This panel named one Chinese researcher, Prof. Hongkui Deng of PekingUniversity, for particular praise: he was one of two Chinese scientists (among 43 international winners) awarded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges in Global Health Award. The panelists commented more broadly that “research in Peking University has made significant international contributions, including: establishment of the world's first monkey iPS cells, establishment of new molecular adjuvants to accelerate human iPSC generation; significant advances in the directed differentiation of human pluripotent cells to islets; methods to establish nuclear transfer (NT) mouse ES cell lines, including differentiation into islet cells and transplantation into mouse models (demonstrating the therapeutic feasibility of NT strategies technology to treat diabetes)” (pp. 182-183). Also called out for honorable mention in this report was the work at the State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering (p. 191), Tongji University (p. 202), and Tsinghau University, which the panelists referred to as “the MIT of China” (p. 205).
[1]See
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[9]Ref ATIP report – which I don’t have currently but hope to get soon.
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[13]See footnotes above for URLs of WTEC reports that the quotes in this section are taken from.