News on China's scientific and technological development.

AndrewS said:

Nature Magazine excerpt on Chinese R&D. Note that this only covers the period to 2014, so since then, I would expect at least another 20% increase in Chinese output if they were to measure the situation for this April 2016.



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This analysis is very interesting. Obviously, the article paints a very rosy picture of science advancement in China. However, I would like to bring up a few points based on my own personal experience and my quick Google search on Nature Index, .

I had a quick look at the list of high-impact journals included in the Nature Index. First of all, I am absolutely shocked that JACS (Journal of American Chemical Society) is not included. A few other top notch chemistry journals are also not on the list. On the other hand, Physical Review A/B/D are all on the list. These journals are good specialized journals, but definitely not the level of high impact journals like PRL. A quick read on the details of Nature Index explains that, indeed, the decision of which journals should be included was entirely subjective, based almost solely on personal impression. This is evident that ALL Nature journals have been included. And out of the 2 neurobiology journals on the list, Journal of Neuroscience is only a decent but average journal among hundreds if not thousands of decent and average neurobiology journals. How they decided to include it in a list along with Science, Nature and Cell is puzzling to me... I personally am not sure how usable this index is without any scientific support for its selection process... It sounds more like a publicity stunt...


The above website is the actual article published in Nature in 2015 on global high impact publication.
So it looks like China's drastic increase in WFC was almost entirely driven by its dominance in Chemistry alone but little else. I am intrigued by the absolute dominance of Chinese Academy of Sciences in chemistry. I have no clue why that is...

I think the theme of the article is that funding directly correlates with high quality research and high impact publication. I think it is much more than just money. Of course money helps. I would definitely like more funding for my lab... With that said, From what I heard from my colleagues, China is investing heavily on life science. Out of the 1000 returning scholars, overwhelming majority is in the life science field. However, The Nature Index shows that China's WFC influence on life science is so small that it is even less than Africa. The kind of heavy investment certainly does not correlate with the small influence...

My own experience. Chinese students are getting less qualified these days. Not only capabilities, but work ethics. It is commonly accepted in the field that you have gotten a gold mine if you can find a Chinese research associate in their 50's and 60's. That generation of Chinese are not only highly capable but have high standard of work ethics. I can attest that. I have several Chinese research associates in their 50's in my lab. they are highly capable researchers. even more, they are so passionate about science. Many times, they would insist on doing more experiments to make my papers stronger, even when I try my best to convince them that they don't need to do it. that kind of passion is simply amazing. I feel absolutely fortunate to have them to help me. And I feel flattered that they care so much about me and my lab.

Young Chinese students who were born after the 90's? Avoid at all cost!!! I also have a Chinese student in the lab. We went to a conference last year. He was sitting in the conference room with all of us. It turned out that he spent the entire time playing video game on his iPad... One of my colleagues happened to sit next to him at one point and was so disgusted by his lack of motivation. I was hugely embarrassed when my colleague mentioned this to me later. And this kind of behavior seems to be a common theme among young Chinese students and postdocs. they simply don't care. They just want to get the degree and make boat load of money... How they plan to do that is simply beyond me. I guess they hope cash simply falls on their lap when they play video games...

vesicles said:

My own experience. Chinese students are getting less qualified these days. Not only capabilities, but work ethics. It is commonly accepted in the field that you have gotten a gold mine if you can find a Chinese research associate in their 50's and 60's. That generation of Chinese are not only highly capable but have high standard of work ethics. I can attest that. I have several Chinese research associates in their 50's in my lab. they are highly capable researchers. even more, they are so passionate about science. Many times, they would insist on doing more experiments to make my papers stronger, even when I try my best to convince them that they don't need to do it. that kind of passion is simply amazing. I feel absolutely fortunate to have them to help me. And I feel flattered that they care so much about me and my lab.

Young Chinese students who were born after the 90's? Avoid at all cost!!! I also have a Chinese student in the lab. We went to a conference last year. He was sitting in the conference room with all of us. It turned out that he spent the entire time playing video game on his iPad... One of my colleagues happened to sit next to him at one point and was so disgusted by his lack of motivation. I was hugely embarrassed when my colleague mentioned this to me later. And this kind of behavior seems to be a common theme among young Chinese students and postdocs. they simply don't care. They just want to get the degree and make boat load of money... How they plan to do that is simply beyond me. I guess they hope cash simply falls on their lap when they play video games...

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I think part of the reason that you are experiencing this difference between generations of Chinese is how and why they left China in the first place.

The Chinese you mentioned who are in their 50's and 60's, which are my parent's age, left China through their own efforts. My father, for example, applied for dozens of universities throughout the US and Canada, and ended up getting an offer by Laval university in Quebec. It wasn't exactly an ideal opportunity: Quebec is a french-language city while my dad had only learned English, and it climate there is very arduous for someone used to the climate in Shanghai. Nevertheless, he took the opportunity and even brought his family over (me and my mom).

So that generation of Chinese are highly motivated.

In contrast, the post-90's kids you are talking about were sent out of China on their parents' dime. They often come from wealthy families and many were sent abroad because they had no chance of getting into the best, highly competitive, Chinese universities. They don't care about doing well since they believe they can always fall back on their parents wealth and connections.

On the other hand, if you were able to go to China and pick out some students from China's top universities, I bet you will find a much more different work ethic.

It's also interesting to mention that in my parents time, the Chinese were assigned to jobs that, at least everyone believed at the time, would be for life. So the only people who left the country were those who wanted something more for themselves. These days, it's the unmotivated kids who come abroad, stay for a few years to "get a coat of gold", and go back to China with a foreign education on their resume despite not having done much learning while abroad.

China overtakes US as top nation for technology acquisitions

China has overtaken the United States for the first time as the world’s biggest “acquiring nation” for mergers and acquisitions in the technology industry, accounting for a 45 per cent share of the market in the first four months of this year, according to a report from Dealogic.

It estimated that Chinese technology acquisitions reached a new high of US$65.7 billion through 456 transactions, up from the previous record of US$41.6 billion through 434 deals in the same period last year.

“Historically, the US had consistently been the biggest buying nation per year-to-date period and annually since 1995 [in technology mergers and acquisitions],” the report said.
US mergers and acquisitions in the technology sector totaled US$45.6 billion in the first four months of this year.

China’s new record came amid the increasing deal sizes in the tech sector led by Chinese technology companies, which are making a big foray into the global information technology industry.

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From my experiences in the field of Architecture and Engineering many of the top notch American companies would out source their core work to China to produce the construction documents for large projects. This is also true for computer renderings and scale size model making of buildings. I am lucky to have over 10 years of AutoCAD drafting experiences in order to have a job (mostly designing gas stations, restaurants, and lease spaces).

solarz said:

I think part of the reason that you are experiencing this difference between generations of Chinese is how and why they left China in the first place.

The Chinese you mentioned who are in their 50's and 60's, which are my parent's age, left China through their own efforts. My father, for example, applied for dozens of universities throughout the US and Canada, and ended up getting an offer by Laval university in Quebec. It wasn't exactly an ideal opportunity: Quebec is a french-language city while my dad had only learned English, and it climate there is very arduous for someone used to the climate in Shanghai. Nevertheless, he took the opportunity and even brought his family over (me and my mom).

So that generation of Chinese are highly motivated.

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Yes, I get what you are saying. My parents came to the US in the mid 80's to go to graduate school. So in a sense, we share similar experience. I do have the appreciation for the kind of dedication that the older generation Chinese have.

solarz said:

In contrast, the post-90's kids you are talking about were sent out of China on their parents' dime. They often come from wealthy families and many were sent abroad because they had no chance of getting into the best, highly competitive, Chinese universities. They don't care about doing well since they believe they can always fall back on their parents wealth and connections.

On the other hand, if you were able to go to China and pick out some students from China's top universities, I bet you will find a much more different work ethic.

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the Chinese students in our department are all graduate students. They all have finished college in China. And almost all of them got their BS at top notch universities in China. Many of the young postdocs got their BS at top-tier universities in China and Tier-One universities in the US. So most of them are cream of the crop, I would say... Still, the dedication and passion is seriously lacking. Sometimes, talking to them is almost insulting since all they want to do is to do least amount of work and get the max amount of money. They even laughed at me once when I said I love science. they thought I was only saying it because I was talking to students. And they thought that what I said must be pure propaganda. "No one is dumb enough to love science". This is their exact words. And this came from a student who was top-3 in his class at Tsinghua Univ and has a near perfect GRE score. What a shame...

Hey guys, I've been a member of this forum for around 6 years now but haven't posted anything until now because I've always felt that my knowledge in the military is quite lacking to post any meaningful comments.

On the issue of mainland Chinese, I think it is largely dependent on the circumstance in which the person was brought up. I personally like to categorize them into four "stereotypes":

The first type is the people who were born in the 50s to 60s. These people usually came to the West around the 80s and 90s for master's/PhD with very minimal financial support from home. My uncle, for example, went to Japan in the early 90s to pursue a PhD degree in biology had to work in a restaurant for part-time simply because the financial burden was too great. Keep in mind that these are the people that went through the horrors of the Cultural Revolution and are some of the most hardworking individuals I've ever encountered.

The second type is the people that came over in the 2000s to present day for graduate studies. These people are also likely to be excellent researchers/engineering but they tend to be not as hardworking as the first type because the financial burdens on them are much less severe due to the Chinese economic reforms.

The third type is the people that came to the West with their parents as a kid. I, myself, belong to this group. Depending on the level of "westernization", they're probably the most varied group of the four.

The last type is the one that's the most notorious. They are the people that came over during their undergraduate or even high school times and came over as solarz said, on their parents' dime. They usually come over to escape the rigorous gaokao systems.

But then again, these are just the general trend that I observed and there are obviously both successful and unsuccessful people in all of the four groups. My personal experience with a Tsinghua graduate student at Johns Hopkins and a few undergrads from Peking University when I was in China has been excellent. So I guess it really depends on the person.

phynex92 said:

Hey guys, I've been a member of this forum for around 6 years now but haven't posted anything until now because I've always felt that my knowledge in the military is quite lacking to post any meaningful comments.

On the issue of mainland Chinese, I think it is largely dependent on the circumstance in which the person was brought up. I personally like to categorize them into four "stereotypes":

The first type is the people who were born in the 50s to 60s. These people usually came to the West around the 80s and 90s for master's/PhD with very minimal financial support from home. My uncle, for example, went to Japan in the early 90s to pursue a PhD degree in biology had to work in a restaurant for part-time simply because the financial burden was too great. Keep in mind that these are the people that went through the horrors of the Cultural Revolution and are some of the most hardworking individuals I've ever encountered.

The second type is the people that came over in the 2000s to present day for graduate studies. These people are also likely to be excellent researchers/engineering but they tend to be not as hardworking as the first type because the financial burdens on them are much less severe due to the Chinese economic reforms.

The third type is the people that came to the West with their parents as a kid. I, myself, belong to this group. Depending on the level of "westernization", they're probably the most varied group of the four.

The last type is the one that's the most notorious. They are the people that came over during their undergraduate or even high school times and came over as solarz said, on their parents' dime. They usually come over to escape the rigorous gaokao systems.

But then again, these are just the general trend that I observed and there are obviously both successful and unsuccessful people in all of the four groups. My personal experience with a Tsinghua graduate student at Johns Hopkins and a few undergrads from Peking University when I was in China has been excellent. So I guess it really depends on the person.

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Yes, I think it's important to always be cautious of generalizing a few personal experiences to the nature or character of a whole population.

On a psychological basis it's obviously inevitable -- if one has one or two bad experiences with XYZ they're obviously going to generalize, but it's always important to ask whether one's own experience can be judged to be a representative sample of the entire group.

And this goes for everything, from experiences at a food joint, to experiences with people of other ethnicities, to Chinese post doc students (lol) so on and so forth...

Funnily enough the subject of Chinese higher education and research has popped up over on CDF a week or so ago as well, and there was also quite a range of anecdotes. I'm not sure if zzabur is over here on SDF, but based on his stated depth and longevity of experiences he seems quite impressed with the overall direction of the system and the results they're producing.

In Pharma related news...



China leads the world in pharma innovation, study shows

The world's leading region for pharmaceutical innovation is China.

That is one of the findings of the 2016 State of Innovation study, released today by the Intellectual Property & Science business of Thomson Reuters, the world's leading provider of intelligent information for businesses and professionals.

Now in its seventh year, the annual study analyzes global intellectual property data, including worldwide patent application activity and scientific literature publications, as a leading indicator of innovation across 12 key technology areas, including the pharmaceutical sector.

The key findings for the sector included a 4% rise in pharma innovation since last year, with the most significant rise coming in inorganics, which include all non-carbon-based chemical compounds. They feature an array of metallic compounds as well as those that are synthesized in a chemical plant or lab.

Geographically, a major finding of the study is that 50% of the top global innovators in pharmaceuticals are based in China, in terms of the number of new inventions credited to companies, universities or other centers in 2015.

Only five of the top 10 come from outside China, including Swiss pharma giant Roche (ROG: SIX), France’s Sanofi (Euronext: SAN) and the University of California.

In terms of coming up with new heterocyclics, cyclic compounds with atoms of at least two different elements as members of its rings, the USA’s Merck & Co (NYSE: MRK), Roche, another Swiss firm Novartis (NOVN: VX) and Germany’s Bayer (BAYN: DE) are among a more international list of the leading inventors from the last five years, although the University of China Pharmaceuticals has the fourth most.

China's academic strength

A further list of the most influential scientific research institutions in pharmaceuticals during the last decade, based on the number and importance of cited papers, puts China’s Tianjin University at the top, followed by Denmark’s Lundbeck Corporation and US biotech Gilead Sciences (Nasdaq: GILD).

Again China has a strong presence in the list, with its three representatives in the top 10 matched only by the USA.

Addressing China’s dominance in many of these areas, the report summary notes: “The collabovation between the public and private sectors is also clear in this industry, as all of China’s representatives are from academia."

Looking at the sector’s growth overall, the report adds: “The current pharmaceutical-success trend is a result of a concoction featuring an increased focus on rare diseases, ongoing development of more convenient fixed dose combination regimens and the continuation of the conflict between price versus access to medicines.

“These, alongside new treatments involving bio-organisms, several new vaccines - such as for malaria and dengue fever – and immune-therapies have given the sector a burst of adrenaline.”

The report also addresses some of the increasing trends in the industry.

“Collaboration is a prerequisite for future pharmaceutical growth in order to meet the health and drug needs of a larger population, especially in developing nations, and to ensure the longevity of an aging demographic as well.

“Research and development models will increasingly shift to involve partnerships between pharmas and either their suppliers or partners, allowing each party to focus on its respective area of expertise.

“Testing of ‘virtual beings’ is also expected to expedite development and trial cycles, bringing drugs to market faster and with more successful outcomes.”

Biotech dip despite huge potential

The Thomson Reuters report, which is now in its seventh year, also looks at the biotech industry and finds it is the only sector analysed to slow since last year.

A 2% drop in innovation in the sector is one of the points noted in the report, and there is a list on the top inventors from 2015 headed by DuPont Pharma, which is owned by US pharma giant Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMS).

The USA’s Broad Institute is named as the most influential scientific institution in biotech from the last 10 years, followed by the European Molecular Biology Lab and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Noting the huge potential of the sequencing of the human genome, the report’s summary of the sector states: “Biotechnology experienced a large number of firsts over the last year.

“One of the most significant, and potentially most life transforming, was that of the CRISPR initiative and the editing of a human-embryo germline. CRISPR interference involved making targeted modifications to segments of DNA to alter its immunity.

“Another set of firsts involved a series of bio-based approvals by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), including the first biospecific antibody, Amgen’s (Nasdaq: AMGN) Blincyto and the first biosimilar drug: Novartis’ Zarxio

“While this is cutting-edge work, the pace of innovation fell slightly short of where it was a year earlier.”

Bltizo said:

Yes, I think it's important to always be cautious of generalizing a few personal experiences to the nature or character of a whole population.

On a psychological basis it's obviously inevitable -- if one has one or two bad experiences with XYZ they're obviously going to generalize, but it's always important to ask whether one's own experience can be judged to be a representative sample of the entire group.

And this goes for everything, from experiences at a food joint, to experiences with people of other ethnicities, to Chinese post doc students (lol) so on and so forth...

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Well, please keep in mind that I have been in fields that have been traditionally Chinese-heavy, such as chemistry, biochemistry, biophysics, molecular biology, etc. I currently work at the Texas Medical Center, where Chinese population is highly concentrated. It has been said that, in some departments, you don't even need to speak English. As long as you know Chinese, you will be fine...

Out of the 15 years in active research as a PhD student, a postdoc and then a PI, I would say that I have had the pleasure to work and interact with thousands of Chinese students and scholars. That's a decent sample size, IMHO...

vesicles said:

Well, please keep in mind that I have been in fields that have been traditionally Chinese-heavy, such as chemistry, biochemistry, biophysics, molecular biology, etc. I currently work at the Texas Medical Center, where Chinese population is highly concentrated. It has been said that, in some departments, you don't even need to speak English. As long as you know Chinese, you will be fine...

Out of the 15 years in active research as a PhD student, a postdoc and then a PI, I would say that I have had the pleasure to work and interact with thousands of Chinese students and scholars. That's a decent sample size, IMHO...

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Yes, but is it representative (controlling for an sample biases such as self selection bias), especially if seeking to stratify between "generations" of Chinese students and academics, and to judge the efficacy of the current generation of Chinese students and academics?


Btw when I use the phrase "few personal experiences" I wasn't necessarily directing it at you, but rather in general that representative samples are important for generalizing anything (though I'm sure this doesn't need to be explained to you). I obviously had no idea how extensive or limited your actual experience with Chinese academia were, nor do I know how extensive and representative your interactions with current generation Chinese students and academics are.