News on China's scientific and technological development.

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voyager1

Captain
Registered Member
weig2000 said:
The most comprehensive and authoritative measures for research productivity are the Nature Index. It's compiled by the respectable Nature journal annually. CAS is ranked as the world's #1 in quality publications among world-wide research institutions. Here is the latest (2020) ranking:

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View attachment 71148
CAS has been consistently ranked as #1 by Nature for many years now. As for funding, you probably can find it somewhere, say Chinese government statistics, since it's a civilian institution.
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Quality is not the only thing it matters, the CAS is a huge national organisation while Harvard is just one of the many universities in the US.

Whats more important is quality, funding and researchers. After you combine all these 3 statistics you can get a clear image of how "good" a research insitution is
 
W

weig2000

Captain
voyager1 said:
Quality is not the only thing it matters, the CAS is a huge national organisation while Harvard is just one of the many universities in the US.

Whats more important is quality, funding and researchers. After you combine all these 3 statistics you can get a clear image of how "good" a research insitution is
Click to expand...

I understand where you're coming from. Note that I said "quality publications," which is defined by Nature as papers published in world-leading and quality science journals. So there is no ambiguity and no real dispute about my statement. Read the Nature Index explanations.

I also understand there is this instinct, if subconsciously, that anything China produces are of low quality, and if China leads in anything, it must be first and foremost in quantity, but not necessarily in quality. This is so wrong, so out of step with reality, in so many ways and in so many areas.

If you want to quip about the productivity of quality publications, that would be a separate discussion. Harvard is no doubt among the finest research institutions in the world. But it's hard to make apple to apple comparison between CAS and Harvard. CAS is a much larger institution, with very different missions compared to Harvard. There are institutes in CAS which are mostly into academic research such as Institute of High Energy Physics or Institute of Mathematics, but the majority of them are in the applied research business, examples include what we've talked about here at SDF such as research and engineering associated with lithography machine and other semiconductor manufacturing equipment. In fact, the head of CAS made a even more clear commitment to conduct choke-point research within CAS, after the US made further tech sanctions against Chinese companies and institutions last year. Clearly, those research are mostly NOT publication-type academic research.

Despite all the above caveats, if you follow Nature Index over the years, there is a clear trend: that is the singular ascendance of Chinese research quantity and quality. The US still leads, but China is not far behind and is closing the gap rapidly. All other countries are distantly behind. This trend is less known to the general public than, say, the GDP, the auto manufacturing, the trade volumes etc. But it is an extremely important indicator under-girding the rise of China.

For a very informative and interesting presentation on China's achievements and its collaborations with the international research community, watch this video by an education professor from Oxford.

 
V

voyager1

Captain
Registered Member
weig2000 said:
I understand where you're coming from. Note that I said "quality publications," which is defined by Nature as papers published in world-leading and quality science journals. So there is no ambiguity and no real dispute about my statement. Read the Nature Index explanations.

I also understand there is this instinct, if subconsciously, that anything China produces are of low quality, and if China leads in anything, it must be first and foremost in quantity, but not necessarily in quality. This is so wrong, so out of step with reality, in so many ways and in so many areas.

If you want to quip about the productivity of quality publications, that would be a separate discussion. Harvard is no doubt among the finest research institutions in the world. But it's hard to make apple to apple comparison between CAS and Harvard. CAS is a much larger institution, with very different missions compared to Harvard. There are institutes in CAS which are mostly into academic research such as Institute of High Energy Physics or Institute of Mathematics, but the majority of them are in the applied research business, examples include what we've talked about here at SDF such as research and engineering associated with lithography machine and other semiconductor manufacturing equipment. In fact, the head of CAS made a even more clear commitment to conduct choke-point research within CAS, after the US made further tech sanctions against Chinese companies and institutions last year. Clearly, those research are mostly NOT publication-type academic research.

Despite all the above caveats, if you follow Nature Index over the years, there is a clear trend: that is the singular ascendance of Chinese research quantity and quality. The US still leads, but China is not far behind and is closing the gap rapidly. All other countries are distantly behind. This trend is less known to the general public than, say, the GDP, the auto manufacturing, the trade volumes etc. But it is an extremely important indicator under-girding the rise of China.

For a very informative and interesting presentation on China's achievements and its collaborations with the international research community, watch this video by an education professor from Oxford.

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Oh yes I dont doubt that the quality of Chinese publications have dramatically increased in the past decade.
And yes i know that CAS will play a central role on "choke-point" research

However what I would like to have is statistics on their funding and researchers to get an overall view of the efficiency of the institution.

I ask this because from a report I read "Global Innovation Index 2020" China was in direct competition with the most advanced and developed economies (amazing feat as China is a developing country rn), but it was ranked ~55th in the world regarding its research institutions/organisations effectiveness. To me, this shows a severe problem which will drain money out of the state coffers without producing too many results


I think the CPC itself has realised this which is why on the 5yr plan they mentioned that research institutions should be strengthened and get more autonomy on funding research programs.

Here is the full report below. Just Ctrl+F "China" and look for Charts
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W

weig2000

Captain
voyager1 said:
Oh yes I dont doubt that the quality of Chinese publications have dramatically increased in the past decade.
And yes i know that CAS will play a central role on "choke-point" research

However what I would like to have is statistics on their funding and researchers to get an overall view of the efficiency of the institution.

I ask this because from a report I read "Global Innovation Index 2020" China was in direct competition with the most advanced and developed economies (amazing feat as China is a developing country rn), but it was ranked ~55th in the world regarding its research institutions/organisations effectiveness. To me, this shows a severe problem which will drain money out of the state coffers without producing too many results


I think the CPC itself has realised this which is why on the 5yr plan they mentioned that research institutions should be strengthened and get more autonomy on funding research programs.

Here is the full report below. Just Ctrl+F "China" and look for Charts
Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!
Click to expand...

Be very careful with western ranking of anything. Lots of them are softie, self-serving and feel-good materials. The overly complex ones are particularly meant to show quality, sophistication and air of authority to deter the readers from questioning its validity. Most of them end up reinforcing the notion of western superiority.

Remember that (in)famous, authoritative report ranking the capability of countries to deal with pandemic published right before the COVID-19? US and UK were among the top 3 overall and in most categories, followed by the usual suspects: the mostly western countries or "our friends and allies." Sure, pretty much all of them are high-income countries, so it's not difficult to find some numbers and statistics to support the conclusion, like the hospital beds per capita, etc. China was ranked in 50s or 60s (as I remember). The results from COVID19? We all know now that ranking is a joke.

Take this one. How do you define innovation? It's hard for me to find where they define them in the copious report (must be somewhere in there I suppose but I don't want to waste my time since I'm quite familiar with this type of rankings). It's actually very subjective, like quality of living by country. Most of the time, they collect a bunch of data, divided into some subcategories which seemingly make superficial sense. They can adjust the subcategories and the items within them and the corresponding weights to come up with some ranking that is more or less consistent with the usual perception, and call it a ranking.

I like Nature Index because it's by an authoritative publication, the methodology is straightforward, objective and simple, leaving not much room for subjective and arbitrary massaging of data and interpretations.

Still, the overall ranking of GII from this report has China at 14, the only upper-middle income country in the top-30. They manage a subtle dig at Chinese research institutions at only 62. It's a lot like they have to admit, however un-reluctantly, China's economy delivers unprecedented growth in the shortest period of time, Chinese companies are in so many high-tech industries giving the run for their money, etc., etc., yet Chinese government sucks, CCP is evil, Chinese lack of creative and innovative capability, and any achievements they have must be stolen from the west.

To me, to measure the research capability of a country simply, you need only data from two categories: 1) the quantity and quality of your research institutions; 2) the input and output.

1) because you could be a very small countries focused in a few areas with world-class results, or you're a huge country with copious but mostly low-quality research results. Neither of which should be considered high in country ranking.

2) is somewhat related to 1), but is more of an indication of efficiency. Look at page 25 of the report. China is ranked #5 from an input-output standpoint.

In short, I would rank China as the #2 science and tech power in the world as a country. The institutions collectively that deliver such results can't be so bad as being ranked 62 in the world.
 
A

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
weig2000 said:
Still, the overall ranking of GII from this report has China at 14, the only upper-middle income country in the top-30.
Click to expand...

weig2000 said:
In short, I would rank China as the #2 science and tech power in the world as a country. The institutions collectively that deliver such results can't be so bad as being ranked 62 in the world.
Click to expand...

I keep it very simple.

Chinese R&D spending is now at 2.4% of GDP and still growing explosively.
If you compare to other countries, that is an exceptionally high level compared to any other middle-income or low-income country.

So you have a huge amount of R&D spending combined with a Chinese low-cost base.
And most of this spending is conducted by private companies, as per the stats.
Plus there are ample scientific personnel along with a huge domestic market for new products.

So given time, China can support the development of world-class companies in every field, and produce technology products at a lower cost than their competitors.
 
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