The conclusion is actually quite contrary to the title, and far more interesting: the author uses that example to debunk the idea that more research leads to more innovation and more prosperity.
I have been tinkering around the same idea for a while, thinking that the state of a country's democracy matters way more than its research output.
I'll quote this article in the future!
In his own words: "Does any of it matter? Many people believe, or assume, that great output in terms of research articles should cause economic prosperity and innovation. I have post entitled Does academic research cause economic growth? that makes the contrary point. That is, though China is catching up in terms of scientific output, this may be a consequence of their prosperity: they can now afford to have their very best minds work on producing research articles. It is much easier for rich countries to fund people so that they can publish in Nature. So being rich will allow you to catch up. But Japan shows that you can be a very rich country and choose not to produce many great research articles. In the least, this establishes that you do not need to produce many great research articles to be prosperous."
> I have been tinkering around the same idea for a while, thinking that the state of a country's democracy matters way more than its research output.
While I agree with democracy as a whole, I think
0. A thorough understanding of the state of China is needed. In order for democracy to actually work, you need a population that is educated enough to make the right choices for the country. You also need to fight corruption first, or else people will take advantage of the democratic system. In the past 40 years there have been a lot of much higher priority things to the average Chinese citizen than having a fully democratic system. The last thing people want is another period of socioeconomic upheaval and chaos. Stability is the first priority of many. Democracy will come with time and I'm sure everyone wants it, but most people don't want to lose well-being on the road to get there.
1. Democracy isn't the biggest driver of scientific advancement. It's kind of irrelevant. Rather, you need:
- capitalism to distribute money to things that people want (China has a booming VC and startup ecosystem now)
- government funding for longer-term scientific research that has not yet identified a business model, and a system to distribute that funding to people that are worthy of it (funding is there in China; the distribution system needs improvement)
- education that trains the individual to self-learn and nurtures self-exploration rather than rote memorization (work is needed here in China and throughout Asia); education should encourage taking side projects and research seriously, if not more seriously, than classes
- good universities with skilled faculty (there are a few world-class institutions in China, but far too few good universities for China's population -- hence the competition)
Another issue is what defines progress. We have defined it thus far as GDP. But in the future we need new methods of defining progress. The world cannot just grow indefinitely, and we are hitting environmental and resource constraints in a number of ways already.
Maybe by 'democracy' you mean 'intelligent social organization'.
At the end of the day we don't need that much tech to have a great civilization and 'how to do it' is not rocket science.
Eating shellfish, having a glass of wine with a beautiful woman on the cost of the Med recently made me realize that someone could have had this very nice pleasure 2000 years ago.
If people act intelligently and responsibly both in life, in work and in governance, there's no reason any country can't be fairly advanced.
Especially since the dawn of the industrial revolution - we have surpluses of almost everything.
Especially since mass information/media the knowledge for how to do this is widespread.
If individual actors act intelligently then they can make generally a high standard of living for themselves in whatever region.
For about 100 years now most people have not had to work on farms to establish the food base, and are freed up to do all sorts of other things, so it's a matter how how to efficiently deploy them.
If that's the argument it's fallacious. China and USA is not an apples to apples comparison. China would need the kind of explosive growth we have seen just to get everyone a refrigerator, while the USA is struggling with the "what now?" question of advanced nations. All the easy stuff is behind us and there is nobody for us to just copy.
This post goes over science and research, which to me is a consequence to other, "big picture", areas of the Chinese growth. Areas such as economy, geopolitcs and finances. China is no longer a contender - It's the true looming power of the East. And depending on how internal politics play out, it will be interesting to see where exactly China stands in as little as 10-20 years in the future.
One thing that strikes me about China is their attitude towards foreign politics - They still want the world to consider them as a "developing country". Sure, it's a gigantic country, both in land and population - There are still many challenges to overcome, but this is now a country with enormous cash reserves, who own a significant lump of US debt, and making truly gigantic strides on all levels of society.
I have lived in Shenzhen for many years, traveled to tons of cities in China, and recently am back to silicon valley. From what I can tell on the ground, China is going to be in decline for the next 10-20 years. (I have a good hunch most people that comment favorabily on China here, have never been)
- Myth: China is developed. Truth: Start in Shanghai Huangpu (very rich neighborhood, in a very rich city). Take a subway a few stops in any direction. When you come out, you are surrounded by dilapidated communist blocks and electric bikees. Take another ride a few more stops, you are surrounded in villages that are right out of middle ages (shoddy huts with shared toilets). This is the same for any of the rich city in China. 90% of people in China live in middle ages. 9.99999% of people live in 1950s. 0.00001% of people live very richly.
- Myth: Chinese citizens saves and are rich. Truth: most rich people have left China already. The remaining middle class ($1000/month, many of my Chinese friends) are able to buy into the massive inflated housing with savings from parents. The savings, borrowed money from relatives, credit card debts are now stuck in real estate. My friends all have (fake) gucci, LV, brand name products. They take out loans to afford conspicuous lifestyle. These things are all for show. Some of them are paying all of their salaries into the mortgage payment every month!
- Myth: Chinese economy is doing fine. Truth: Many of my banker friends (expats and locals) know that it's all propped up by debts that will collapse any day now. There's a massive inflation happening everywhere, from food to housing to foreign products. It's harder to harder to get money out of China (I'm helping some with bitcoins). Most of them aren't optimistic.
- Myth: China is leading in green-tech, research, innovation, etc. Truth: tons of copy, chabuduo (good enough), cheating in classes and in business, pollution in Shanghai and Shenzhen is still cancer causing, most smart people want to go abroad.
China is no longer a contender - It's the true looming power of the East. And depending on how internal politics play out, it will be interesting to see where exactly China stands in as little as 10-20 years in the future.
For most of the 20th century the UK did disproportionately well in the metrics of scientific research - Nobel prizes, key articles.. The UK has not had the kind of outstanding economic success that should have accrued to it if these things matter economically. Especially once north sea oil is removed from the calculation.
Maybe it has to do with deindustrialization. ICI in its days was a scientific and economic force. Nowadays no one does chemistry any longer, especially not in Britain. The only thing that is produced in Britain nowadays is financial malfeasance.
UK does well in UK-based/influenced rankings. There is this magic "reputation score" where Oxbridge are near 100% while lacking significantly in other areas comparing to competition; yet due to this magic value are always in top 5. If this is the source of national pride, then good luck competing with China!
Maybe because the upper class and the educated class have abandoned the lower classes.
Scientific excellence is not worth very much economically if it does not trickle down into society. This didn't happen in the UK and that's why the economy is suffering.
With all this talk of publication output, I'd like to see some examples of good research coming out of mainland Chinese universities.
In my field (programming languages), I can name one total paper that I liked that came from a mainland Chinese university. It stood out for that reason. A friend in another field (CS theory) complained similarly: massive amounts of shoddy work comes out of China, but nothing worth reading.
Meanwhile, China now has a spam journal called "Nature and Science," so you can tell your friends "I have 5 papers in Nature and Science."
Ah, can I ask what paper it is? I’m in PL, and unless it’s coming out of MSR China, I haven’t seen PL papers that are interesting. China isn’t into PL, though, and it gets better in systems (big data, cloud, whatever is hot these days), there are some good labs with good output (Andy Yao’s algo lab at qinghua). Many of the researchers are foreigners however (just like in the USA).
I’m curious about the quality of published work coming out of china in ML. Has anyone who does ML research read recently a paper that came out of china that had something really useful to them in it? I think those are fairly good measures of output (a contribution found useful).
Agreed. These couple of sentences deflate the click-baity title a bit:
"The report echoes my earlier observations: lots of new countries are become scientific powers in terms of publication output, with China leading the charge. The major claim made by the report is that developed countries continue to dominate in terms of highly cited publications."
The trend the article is talking about is China is catching up in terms of publication output. I've heard elsewhere that in Chinese universities things like tenure, promotions etc. are heavily weighted by publication output - perhaps without much respect for the research quality. I could see some fields/journals becoming echo chambers where researchers spam publications without actually making meaningful technical accomplishments. That's probably what we're seeing.
Does it seem like "productivity" shouldn't be measured in number of papers?
The fact that in many places it is measured in number of publications gave us Hindawi/Elsevier open access and OMICS spam conferences.
That said, the number of really good publications from China in Western journals has risen from almost none in 1995 to a few in 2005 and nowadays they are plentiful. India, not so much, Japan, not so much.
> Furthermore, the data presented in the paper clearly indicate that countries like China are bridging the gap with respect to how impactful their work is (see Fig. 2 in the report), on top of bridging the gap with respect to the total volume (see Table 1 in the report).
This is an enormous exercise in trying to prove that, despite reality, China doesn't matter in research and related areas. It is futile. The results of scientific production are a lagging indicator, and China nowadays produces almost as much research as the US. China is a growing society, with growing life standards, while the US life standards are stagnating. I was once a China doubter, these days are over however. While the US is constantly worried about supporting its oligarchy, China is using all its resources to invest in a better society. While this battle is not completely lost to the US, it seems more and more like the situation that lead the UK to its downfall.
Seems obvious to me that it's because of language. China cares more about rankings so they'll force people to push in english journals (to their own detriment) where they get cited. Most of the world doesn't speak Japanese so japanese papers don't get cited.
The problrm is that Japanese journals are less competitive. So, second-rate researchers can continue to publish in these and "work" (i.e., look productive).
The biggest problem with Japanese universities is not funding (there is to much), but the old chaff with tenure.
Unfortunately old second-rate researchers has a lot of institutional power (and funding).
The premise of this headline is that the USA is indisputably in the lead and that the winner is whoever catches up the USA. After spending years in Asia, my impression is that there is another game being played entirely, and the USA is merely a player whose ability to interfere in the outcome is being carefully managed. (And the same is true about Russia, incidentally.) I won't be at all surprised if Asia rules the world by the time I'm an old man.
> the USA is merely a player whose ability to interfere in the outcome is being carefully managed. (And the same is true about Russia, incidentally.)
Agreed. The world rests on China's and soon also India's shoulders. They already rule the world economically and diplomatically, the next domino to fall will be cultural influence. Russia is a good demonstration of the impotence of military power alone, and hard power is looking like the US' only advantage over China.
When you stop to think why every major nation in the world today spends tens to hundreds of billions of dollars on military spending each and every year, it should be clear that it is.
We have all grown up in an era of unprecedented peace, and I think it's easy to take that peace for granted. But that would be unwise. When you look at history since time immemorial people constantly have disagreements on the right path forward. And the group that decides which path is taken is the most powerful group - which is often decided by force. I see no reason to believe that this has changed. But the peace? What has changed is that we've created an international stalemate thanks to nukes. Mutually assured destruction makes military enforcement of will a nonstarter.
Consider the very recent comments made by USAF General Kwast a few days ago [1]. He is not concerned about China militarizing space - that is taken as a granted. He is concerned about the militarizing space before we do. In his words: "Militaries will soon work more extensively in the space between the earth and moon. That realm is the next high ground, where nations are straining to gain a strategic advantage." It's not even a question of if there will be another great conflict but rather when will it be. Whenever it is, it's likely that this conflict -like so many before- will be decided not by man, but by the technology of man.
IMHO, I think it is a good thing as now it implies a knowledge-race (akin to the arms-race). Whatever happens, eventually all humanity benefits from the development.
I found that so many people are stupy which cannot think about a question with a bit of intelligence. One of the evilest thing is the argument of orient-west politics. Let's despise them. Most people is just small potato, politics is really matter no you. Just push forward to the future of human being!
`coupled with strong racist immigration policies towards asian in USA ` - Elaborate, please. I was looking at GRE scores the other day out of curiosity (white American) and they have it broken down by country and China, for example, does a lot better than Saudi Arabia. Netherlands does a lot better in reading, than say, Pakistan. Some countries might just have better candidates?
[+] [-] soufron|8 years ago|reply
I have been tinkering around the same idea for a while, thinking that the state of a country's democracy matters way more than its research output.
I'll quote this article in the future!
In his own words: "Does any of it matter? Many people believe, or assume, that great output in terms of research articles should cause economic prosperity and innovation. I have post entitled Does academic research cause economic growth? that makes the contrary point. That is, though China is catching up in terms of scientific output, this may be a consequence of their prosperity: they can now afford to have their very best minds work on producing research articles. It is much easier for rich countries to fund people so that they can publish in Nature. So being rich will allow you to catch up. But Japan shows that you can be a very rich country and choose not to produce many great research articles. In the least, this establishes that you do not need to produce many great research articles to be prosperous."
[+] [-] dheera|8 years ago|reply
While I agree with democracy as a whole, I think
0. A thorough understanding of the state of China is needed. In order for democracy to actually work, you need a population that is educated enough to make the right choices for the country. You also need to fight corruption first, or else people will take advantage of the democratic system. In the past 40 years there have been a lot of much higher priority things to the average Chinese citizen than having a fully democratic system. The last thing people want is another period of socioeconomic upheaval and chaos. Stability is the first priority of many. Democracy will come with time and I'm sure everyone wants it, but most people don't want to lose well-being on the road to get there.
1. Democracy isn't the biggest driver of scientific advancement. It's kind of irrelevant. Rather, you need:
- capitalism to distribute money to things that people want (China has a booming VC and startup ecosystem now)
- government funding for longer-term scientific research that has not yet identified a business model, and a system to distribute that funding to people that are worthy of it (funding is there in China; the distribution system needs improvement)
- education that trains the individual to self-learn and nurtures self-exploration rather than rote memorization (work is needed here in China and throughout Asia); education should encourage taking side projects and research seriously, if not more seriously, than classes
- good universities with skilled faculty (there are a few world-class institutions in China, but far too few good universities for China's population -- hence the competition)
Another issue is what defines progress. We have defined it thus far as GDP. But in the future we need new methods of defining progress. The world cannot just grow indefinitely, and we are hitting environmental and resource constraints in a number of ways already.
[+] [-] alexasmyths|8 years ago|reply
At the end of the day we don't need that much tech to have a great civilization and 'how to do it' is not rocket science.
Eating shellfish, having a glass of wine with a beautiful woman on the cost of the Med recently made me realize that someone could have had this very nice pleasure 2000 years ago.
If people act intelligently and responsibly both in life, in work and in governance, there's no reason any country can't be fairly advanced.
Especially since the dawn of the industrial revolution - we have surpluses of almost everything.
Especially since mass information/media the knowledge for how to do this is widespread.
If individual actors act intelligently then they can make generally a high standard of living for themselves in whatever region.
For about 100 years now most people have not had to work on farms to establish the food base, and are freed up to do all sorts of other things, so it's a matter how how to efficiently deploy them.
[+] [-] api|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joaodlf|8 years ago|reply
One thing that strikes me about China is their attitude towards foreign politics - They still want the world to consider them as a "developing country". Sure, it's a gigantic country, both in land and population - There are still many challenges to overcome, but this is now a country with enormous cash reserves, who own a significant lump of US debt, and making truly gigantic strides on all levels of society.
[+] [-] matchsetpoint|8 years ago|reply
- Myth: China is developed. Truth: Start in Shanghai Huangpu (very rich neighborhood, in a very rich city). Take a subway a few stops in any direction. When you come out, you are surrounded by dilapidated communist blocks and electric bikees. Take another ride a few more stops, you are surrounded in villages that are right out of middle ages (shoddy huts with shared toilets). This is the same for any of the rich city in China. 90% of people in China live in middle ages. 9.99999% of people live in 1950s. 0.00001% of people live very richly.
- Myth: Chinese citizens saves and are rich. Truth: most rich people have left China already. The remaining middle class ($1000/month, many of my Chinese friends) are able to buy into the massive inflated housing with savings from parents. The savings, borrowed money from relatives, credit card debts are now stuck in real estate. My friends all have (fake) gucci, LV, brand name products. They take out loans to afford conspicuous lifestyle. These things are all for show. Some of them are paying all of their salaries into the mortgage payment every month!
- Myth: Chinese economy is doing fine. Truth: Many of my banker friends (expats and locals) know that it's all propped up by debts that will collapse any day now. There's a massive inflation happening everywhere, from food to housing to foreign products. It's harder to harder to get money out of China (I'm helping some with bitcoins). Most of them aren't optimistic.
- Myth: China is leading in green-tech, research, innovation, etc. Truth: tons of copy, chabuduo (good enough), cheating in classes and in business, pollution in Shanghai and Shenzhen is still cancer causing, most smart people want to go abroad.
[+] [-] sillysaurus3|8 years ago|reply
Exactly that:
https://i.imgur.com/kjF57Sy.png
https://i.imgur.com/OkOQWkj.png
[+] [-] sgt101|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HarryHirsch|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitL|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] konschubert|8 years ago|reply
Scientific excellence is not worth very much economically if it does not trickle down into society. This didn't happen in the UK and that's why the economy is suffering.
[+] [-] Darmani|8 years ago|reply
In my field (programming languages), I can name one total paper that I liked that came from a mainland Chinese university. It stood out for that reason. A friend in another field (CS theory) complained similarly: massive amounts of shoddy work comes out of China, but nothing worth reading.
Meanwhile, China now has a spam journal called "Nature and Science," so you can tell your friends "I have 5 papers in Nature and Science."
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|8 years ago|reply
I’m curious about the quality of published work coming out of china in ML. Has anyone who does ML research read recently a paper that came out of china that had something really useful to them in it? I think those are fairly good measures of output (a contribution found useful).
[+] [-] tarboreus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomkat0789|8 years ago|reply
"The report echoes my earlier observations: lots of new countries are become scientific powers in terms of publication output, with China leading the charge. The major claim made by the report is that developed countries continue to dominate in terms of highly cited publications."
The trend the article is talking about is China is catching up in terms of publication output. I've heard elsewhere that in Chinese universities things like tenure, promotions etc. are heavily weighted by publication output - perhaps without much respect for the research quality. I could see some fields/journals becoming echo chambers where researchers spam publications without actually making meaningful technical accomplishments. That's probably what we're seeing.
[+] [-] HarryHirsch|8 years ago|reply
The fact that in many places it is measured in number of publications gave us Hindawi/Elsevier open access and OMICS spam conferences.
That said, the number of really good publications from China in Western journals has risen from almost none in 1995 to a few in 2005 and nowadays they are plentiful. India, not so much, Japan, not so much.
[+] [-] Nokinside|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boomboomsubban|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coliveira|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dionian|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KaoruAoiShiho|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ausvisaissues|8 years ago|reply
The biggest problem with Japanese universities is not funding (there is to much), but the old chaff with tenure.
Unfortunately old second-rate researchers has a lot of institutional power (and funding).
[+] [-] projectramo|8 years ago|reply
This is a little self congratulatory in HN, but entrepreneurship is the application of research. So you need that to "activate" research.
China is catching up not (just) because of research but also because they're applying it.
[+] [-] thatcat|8 years ago|reply
Engineering is applied research, entrepreneurship is one method of funding engineering.
[+] [-] nihonde|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jquery|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whathaschanged|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thesmallestcat|8 years ago|reply
Agreed. The world rests on China's and soon also India's shoulders. They already rule the world economically and diplomatically, the next domino to fall will be cultural influence. Russia is a good demonstration of the impotence of military power alone, and hard power is looking like the US' only advantage over China.
[+] [-] oihssovhusvoh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] indubitable|8 years ago|reply
We have all grown up in an era of unprecedented peace, and I think it's easy to take that peace for granted. But that would be unwise. When you look at history since time immemorial people constantly have disagreements on the right path forward. And the group that decides which path is taken is the most powerful group - which is often decided by force. I see no reason to believe that this has changed. But the peace? What has changed is that we've created an international stalemate thanks to nukes. Mutually assured destruction makes military enforcement of will a nonstarter.
Consider the very recent comments made by USAF General Kwast a few days ago [1]. He is not concerned about China militarizing space - that is taken as a granted. He is concerned about the militarizing space before we do. In his words: "Militaries will soon work more extensively in the space between the earth and moon. That realm is the next high ground, where nations are straining to gain a strategic advantage." It's not even a question of if there will be another great conflict but rather when will it be. Whenever it is, it's likely that this conflict -like so many before- will be decided not by man, but by the technology of man.
[1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/10/usaf-general-steve-kwast-chi...
[+] [-] Animats|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] melling|8 years ago|reply
India vs China vs Japan vs the United States vs ...
Trillions of dollars invested into research.
[+] [-] visarga|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mythrwy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tritium|8 years ago|reply
It is not a statement about "things in general" around the world.
[+] [-] mfrw|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wiineeth|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ihaveahadron|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] lyrachord|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ihaveahadron|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] subterfudge46|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] loblollyboy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] partycoder|8 years ago|reply