Post by swamprat on Jun 4, 2018 19:17:40 GMT
China increasingly challenges American dominance of science
By Ben Guarino, Emily Rauhala and William Wan
June 3
Like many ambitious young scientists, José Pastor-Pareja came to the United States to supercharge his career. At Yale University, he worked in cutting-edge laboratories, collaborated with experts in his field and published in prestigious journals.
But the allure of America soon began to wear off. The Spanish geneticist struggled to renew his visa and was even detained for two hours of questioning at a New York City airport after he returned from a trip abroad. In 2012, he made the surprising decision to leave his Ivy League research position and move to China.
“It is an opportunity not many take,” Pastor-Pareja said. But the perks were hard to resist — a lucrative signing bonus, guaranteed research funding, ample tech staff and the chance to build a genetics research center from scratch.
After decades of American dominance, Chinese science is ascendant, and it is luring scientists like Pastor-Pareja away from the United States. Even more China-born scientists are returning from abroad to a land of new scientific opportunity.
The United States spends half a trillion dollars a year on scientific research — more than any other nation on Earth — Even after Trump cut the budget??---but China has pulled into second place, with the European Union third and Japan a distant fourth.
China is on track to surpass the United States by the end of this year, according to the National Science Board. In 2016, annual scientific publications from China outnumbered those from the United States for the first time.
“There seems to be a sea change in how people are talking about Chinese science,” said Alanna Krolikowski, a Chinese science expert at Missouri University of Science and Technology. Foreign observers, many of whom were once condescending, now “are rather in awe at what the Chinese policies have accomplished.”
The scientific advances are a small piece of China’s larger ambitions. President Xi Jinping aims to supplant the United States as the world’s economic superpower within three decades. In October, Xi vowed to produce “a world-class army by 2050.”
Meanwhile, China is spending more on infrastructure than the United States or Europe, and the middle class has ballooned — making relocation more attractive.
“More and more people keep coming, that’s for sure,” Pastor-Pareja said. “Right now, China is the best place in the world to start your own laboratory.”
Under the Trump administration, many U.S. researchers say their work has been devalued, threatened by budget cuts and hampered by stricter immigration policies that could deter international collaborations and the influx of talent that has long fueled American innovation.
“We are in deep doo-doo for two reasons,” said Denis Simon, who has studied Chinese science for 40 years and is the executive vice chancellor of Duke Kunshan University. In his view, the White House, without a science adviser for more than a year, lacks scientific leadership.
And collaboration between U.S. and Chinese researchers is under threat, he said. Recent restrictions on H-1B visas sent a message to Chinese graduate students that “it’s time to go home when you finish your degree.” Since 1979, China and the United States have maintained a bilateral agreement, the Cooperation in Science and Technology, to jointly study fields like biomedicine and high-energy physics. In the past the agreement was signed as a routine matter, Simon said, but that’s no longer the case.
The field is struggling in the United States, Pastor-Pareja said, as funding has declined. In China, there are now 30 drosophila laboratories in Beijing, he said — more than in either Boston or San Francisco — and scientists have begun meeting every two months to share their latest work.
“At this rate, China may soon eclipse the U.S.,” Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) warned at a January congressional hearing on the state of American science, “and we will lose the competitive advantage that has made us the most powerful economy in the world.”
The biggest and fastest
The burgeoning science race is hugely important to China’s leaders, in part because of what it says about the country’s growing global standing. In recent years, the government has invested in scientific endeavors for strategic advantage — and also boasting rights.
China has 202 of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers — 60 more systems than in the United States. The largest radio telescope ever built — a massive, 500-meter, $180 million dish called the Aperture Spherical Telescope that hunts for distant black holes — is in the southern province of Guizhou, where its construction required 9,000 Chinese residents to relocate.
President Trump has directed NASA to return astronauts to the moon. But the moon may be crowded when they arrive: Both China and India are planning to launch landers toward the moon this year. China is collaborating with the European Space Agency on a potential moon base.
Last year, Chinese scientists produced “entangled photons,” light particles linked together on a quantum physics level, aboard a satellite in orbit 300 miles up. The particles were beamed to locations on Earth 750 miles apart and remained linked — which could potentially be a step toward a new form of instant and secure communication.
Also last year, biologists in China became the first to successfully clone a monkey using the technique that created Dolly the sheep. Genetically identical primates, their creators said, would speed medical research because the effects of any drug being tested could be traced to the treatment, not differences in genes.
Chinese leaders recently unveiled plans to become the world leader in artificial intelligence, aiming to turn the field into a $150 billion industry by 2030. Already, China’s artificial intelligence boom has led to advanced facial recognition. At a KFC restaurant in the eastern city of Hangzhou, for example, customers can now pay for their fried chicken using a machine that scans their faces. Baidu, China’s search-engine giant, plans to partner with an airport to roll out facial recognition for airline passengers this year.
Growing from stumps
The recent scientific advancements are especially notable, given China’s fraught history. Its scientific community was devastated during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, when academics were denounced as “counterrevolutionary” and universities were closed, halting almost all research and scientific training.
Only with the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 did China’s research community begin to regrow around its stumps. In the following decades, China’s leaders tackled their lagging status with a method their authoritarian Communist Party has become known for: top-down, long-term strategic planning.
During the early 2000s, party leaders declared an ambitious 15-year goal of devoting 2.5 percent of China’s total gross domestic product to scientific research and development by 2020. They enacted rules that required Western companies, hungry for access to China’s market, to share technology with their Chinese counterparts. According to U.S. agencies, China’s military and intelligence agencies also stole research from key U.S. technology companies and sectors.
By Ben Guarino, Emily Rauhala and William Wan
June 3
Like many ambitious young scientists, José Pastor-Pareja came to the United States to supercharge his career. At Yale University, he worked in cutting-edge laboratories, collaborated with experts in his field and published in prestigious journals.
But the allure of America soon began to wear off. The Spanish geneticist struggled to renew his visa and was even detained for two hours of questioning at a New York City airport after he returned from a trip abroad. In 2012, he made the surprising decision to leave his Ivy League research position and move to China.
“It is an opportunity not many take,” Pastor-Pareja said. But the perks were hard to resist — a lucrative signing bonus, guaranteed research funding, ample tech staff and the chance to build a genetics research center from scratch.
After decades of American dominance, Chinese science is ascendant, and it is luring scientists like Pastor-Pareja away from the United States. Even more China-born scientists are returning from abroad to a land of new scientific opportunity.
The United States spends half a trillion dollars a year on scientific research — more than any other nation on Earth — Even after Trump cut the budget??---but China has pulled into second place, with the European Union third and Japan a distant fourth.
China is on track to surpass the United States by the end of this year, according to the National Science Board. In 2016, annual scientific publications from China outnumbered those from the United States for the first time.
“There seems to be a sea change in how people are talking about Chinese science,” said Alanna Krolikowski, a Chinese science expert at Missouri University of Science and Technology. Foreign observers, many of whom were once condescending, now “are rather in awe at what the Chinese policies have accomplished.”
The scientific advances are a small piece of China’s larger ambitions. President Xi Jinping aims to supplant the United States as the world’s economic superpower within three decades. In October, Xi vowed to produce “a world-class army by 2050.”
Meanwhile, China is spending more on infrastructure than the United States or Europe, and the middle class has ballooned — making relocation more attractive.
“More and more people keep coming, that’s for sure,” Pastor-Pareja said. “Right now, China is the best place in the world to start your own laboratory.”
Under the Trump administration, many U.S. researchers say their work has been devalued, threatened by budget cuts and hampered by stricter immigration policies that could deter international collaborations and the influx of talent that has long fueled American innovation.
“We are in deep doo-doo for two reasons,” said Denis Simon, who has studied Chinese science for 40 years and is the executive vice chancellor of Duke Kunshan University. In his view, the White House, without a science adviser for more than a year, lacks scientific leadership.
And collaboration between U.S. and Chinese researchers is under threat, he said. Recent restrictions on H-1B visas sent a message to Chinese graduate students that “it’s time to go home when you finish your degree.” Since 1979, China and the United States have maintained a bilateral agreement, the Cooperation in Science and Technology, to jointly study fields like biomedicine and high-energy physics. In the past the agreement was signed as a routine matter, Simon said, but that’s no longer the case.
The field is struggling in the United States, Pastor-Pareja said, as funding has declined. In China, there are now 30 drosophila laboratories in Beijing, he said — more than in either Boston or San Francisco — and scientists have begun meeting every two months to share their latest work.
“At this rate, China may soon eclipse the U.S.,” Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) warned at a January congressional hearing on the state of American science, “and we will lose the competitive advantage that has made us the most powerful economy in the world.”
The biggest and fastest
The burgeoning science race is hugely important to China’s leaders, in part because of what it says about the country’s growing global standing. In recent years, the government has invested in scientific endeavors for strategic advantage — and also boasting rights.
China has 202 of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers — 60 more systems than in the United States. The largest radio telescope ever built — a massive, 500-meter, $180 million dish called the Aperture Spherical Telescope that hunts for distant black holes — is in the southern province of Guizhou, where its construction required 9,000 Chinese residents to relocate.
President Trump has directed NASA to return astronauts to the moon. But the moon may be crowded when they arrive: Both China and India are planning to launch landers toward the moon this year. China is collaborating with the European Space Agency on a potential moon base.
Last year, Chinese scientists produced “entangled photons,” light particles linked together on a quantum physics level, aboard a satellite in orbit 300 miles up. The particles were beamed to locations on Earth 750 miles apart and remained linked — which could potentially be a step toward a new form of instant and secure communication.
Also last year, biologists in China became the first to successfully clone a monkey using the technique that created Dolly the sheep. Genetically identical primates, their creators said, would speed medical research because the effects of any drug being tested could be traced to the treatment, not differences in genes.
Chinese leaders recently unveiled plans to become the world leader in artificial intelligence, aiming to turn the field into a $150 billion industry by 2030. Already, China’s artificial intelligence boom has led to advanced facial recognition. At a KFC restaurant in the eastern city of Hangzhou, for example, customers can now pay for their fried chicken using a machine that scans their faces. Baidu, China’s search-engine giant, plans to partner with an airport to roll out facial recognition for airline passengers this year.
Growing from stumps
The recent scientific advancements are especially notable, given China’s fraught history. Its scientific community was devastated during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, when academics were denounced as “counterrevolutionary” and universities were closed, halting almost all research and scientific training.
Only with the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 did China’s research community begin to regrow around its stumps. In the following decades, China’s leaders tackled their lagging status with a method their authoritarian Communist Party has become known for: top-down, long-term strategic planning.
During the early 2000s, party leaders declared an ambitious 15-year goal of devoting 2.5 percent of China’s total gross domestic product to scientific research and development by 2020. They enacted rules that required Western companies, hungry for access to China’s market, to share technology with their Chinese counterparts. According to U.S. agencies, China’s military and intelligence agencies also stole research from key U.S. technology companies and sectors.
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