antiterror13
Brigadier
I don't understand, what are the main differences between the first and second table ?
News on China's scientific and technological development.
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I don't understand, what are the main differences between the first and second table ?
First table is composed of all papers published in a bunch of good journals. 60+ of them. This is good to great science.
Second table is composed of papers only in the flagship Nature and Science journal. Just 2 of them, and the most prestigious among all journals. This is exceptional science.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
What's the purpose of measuring yourself on your enemy's stage? Nature and Science are both American journals; it's like judging the best scientists by the Nobel Prize (which Westerners falsly do). You have China moving faster technologically than the US at pretty much every major scientific field as shown by results, then you have prizes/publications that are Western/US controlled. You cannot get your answer from the real world so you need to seek validation from your enemy?
By the way, I am intimately familiar with publishing in these journals. There is massive discontent in the scientific community at what it takes to publish in a "high impact" journal, with many professors saying that the difference between publishing in PLOS and Nature/Science is not necessarily in the quality of reseatch but how many hoops you are willing to jump through in engaging thier editorial team and whom you know (whose name you can honor-add to the authorship list).
I remember in my first year as a PhD student a lecture given by a prominant professor in his field in which he complained that when he was 25, he published his first paper in Science with a summer's worth of work and was accepted with minimal revisions but at age 65, he published his last Science paper last year and will never attempt to do so again because they made him jump through 3 years of beaurocratic bullshit and nonsensical requests from editors whom he had to pretend to respect before they allowed him to publish a paper that was so mangled with unwanted edits that it was unrecognizable from his original intent. He encouraged everyone not to put stock and store in impact factors.
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Nature, Science, and Nobles retain their reputation even among Chinese scientists despite the problems they face. These problems still don't take away from the quality of research or achievement that is exemplified by them.
That's not completely true. US is still a giant in innovation, and it still leads in various fields. In space for example, SpaceX dominates the field with a decade plus lead over any other company. Even the second company to land a rocket was American. And this lead is increasing currently because Blue Glenn is a larger rocket and SpaceX is already working on Starship. Not to mention the humongous network that Starlink already has.
There are many more fields.
Other than what you are mentioning is the catching up phase in Applied sciences and technology.
Nature and Science are good proxies for foundational research where US is still producing 3 times China's output. China was catching up until last year, but right now US is growing faster there too.
The Nature Index's other journals are also Western. Everyone on this forum keeps mentioning Nature Index. Why don't you point out then that they are all western journals. There is no point in choosing and picking metrics only when they align with your thought and leave them when they don't.
manqiangrexue
Brigadier
Yes, they enjoy a reputation, but that doesn't mean that the best research is published there or that research published there is significantly better than elsewhere, especially when their reputation now is that are just plain bitchy journals. As we see in many cases of Western decline, the reputation often lags greatly when mirroring current truth.
I said pretty much every area. This is 90%. What you have left is cherry-picking.
Also, I noticed that like some other members (often gone now from depression sue to China's rise), when China's car technology was poor, all they mentioned was cars; when China's semiconductor was facing its first challenges, all they talked about was semiconductors. Now they never mention these again. And now, I see you mentioning SpaceX quite alot LOL How long do you think you have to talk about that? China busted Musk's electric car dominance; if reusable or heavy rockets is something the CCP deemed important, I have no doubt they will bust his SpaceX too, and in less than a decade.
Foundational science is much more often than not, hollow; oftentimes, it's smarter to see what starts to make sense, then drastically integrate it rather than spend mountains of efforts to find the one or 2 things that work, especially because when published, your rivals can catch on very quickly. And Nature and Science are American journals. China has been focused on 1. raising up its own journals and 2. doing science not for publication but for use. (There is a story about this; many years ago, when a group discovered a gene in fruit flies that would cause male homosexuality, the publication was huge and the discovery lauded. But this gene had no human homologue and thus no application to humans, so the Chinese government pulled this case out as an example of the type of science that Chinese people should not waste efforts on. "Do science to improve people's lives, not just to publish papers," was the instruction from the CCP.) China's dominance in industrial patents shows more translational and application science. This is where all the movement on the ground happens; foundational science is mostly pie in the sky until something seems to materialize, and even then, it's often not a race in favor of the discoverer but of the fastest mover.
1. Nature Index encompasses journals from all over the world including China's.
2. Biases become much more significant and politically motivated when a journal is considered an elite honor rather than most, which simply aim to broadcast science. This is amplified the greatest at the Nobel Prize level. Just like if you were a regular guy with an average-looking daughter, the decision to wed her off (in the old days) would be personal and simple. But if you were a king and your daughter was rumored to be the most beautiful princess in the world, now you have the be very careful and political in deciding which princes to accept and reject as her suitors. And what makes this analogy even more accurate is that at the end of the day, the princess may enjoy a bloated and flattering reputation of her majestic beauty whilst in real life, there are many common girls who are prettier than she is.
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Do you publish? What gets published in these journals is highly political and not even evaluated on the scientific rigor, but what is subjectively labelled as novel or high impact. Your author list and university names matters as much if not more than the content under review, and guess where the majority of editors and associates editors are from? The same US Ivy or Ivy equivalent universities based in West. I wouldn't use Western journals as a proxy for China's scientific progress as that is fundamentally biased towards English language and US-based universities.