China may be set to overtake the US in scientific output as soon as two years from now, according to an alarmist BBC news article:
The country that invented the compass, gunpowder, paper and printing is set for a globally important comeback.
An analysis of published research – one of the key measures of scientific effort – reveals an “especially striking” rise by Chinese science.
The study, Knowledge, Networks and Nations, charts the challenge to the traditional dominance of the United States, Europe and Japan.
The figures are based on the papers published in recognised international journals listed by the Scopus service of the publishers Elsevier.
In 1996, the first year of the analysis, the US published 292,513 papers – more than 10 times China’s 25,474.
By 2008, the US total had increased very slightly to 316,317 while China’s had surged more than seven-fold to 184,080.
Previous estimates for the rate of expansion of Chinese science had suggested that China might overtake the US sometime after 2020.
At first glance, looking at the trendlines – and keeping in mind that trends do not necessarily go on forever – the thing I initially found discouraging is less China’s rise in academic output, than America’s decline in this rather terrifying graph:
But then – because the news media have taught us nothing if not to be skeptical, I took a harder look.
The first place to look is the x-axis, where statisticians with pet theories all too often jigger the graphs by playing with scales. But the Beeb (and the Royal Society) get a break here – the scale is internally consistent (although cutting it off above 35% does tend to sharpen the trendlines).
So next we look at what we’re actually measuring: The rate of change in scientific articles’ citation rather than absolute output, far less quality.
We are not told the absolute number of citations there have been in the academic and scientific literature between the US vs China. This is crucial because we are measuring rates of change, and the identical number of events on a small data sample represents a much higher rate of change than it would on a large one. But if the rate of citations tracks the rate of output – and that’s is a mighty big if, because quality continues to lag output in the PRC – we can estimate that (interpolating the chart above from 2008 to 2013) if China experiences an average 14% rate of growth on 108,040 articles published in 2008, they will have grown to 209,851 in 2013. The US on the other hand, starting at the higher figure of 316,317 and growing at “only” 17% per year will publish 370,091 if the trendlines remain constant.
By 2013, this would yield 76% more US articles published in than Chinese, representing a four percent rise over the 72% US advantage in 2008. See also: sensitivity analysis.
There may be an important point on scientific competitiveness to make with these findings. Unfortunately, by comparing apples to lawnmowers – and throwing in a “scare” chart – the BBC doesn’t make it.
Cui bono from this method of data representation?
Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith, chair of the report, said he was “not surprised” by this increase because of China’s massive boost to investment in R&D.
Chinese spending has grown by 20% per year since 1999, now reaching over $100bn, and as many as 1.5 million science and engineering students graduated from Chinese universities in 2006.
“I think this is positive, of great benefit, though some might see it as a threat and it does serve as a wake-up call for us not to become complacent.”
Always follow the money.
Most R&D in America is privately funded, with the government kicking in 29% in 2007 (pdf). The same is true in the UK: 2007 showed a government expenditure of 31%. This is just a two percentage point difference, but using the BBC’s methodology it represents a 6.5% difference.
Round it up to ten.
With a billion more people than the US you would think that China would have significantly higher number of published papers. Also, given the consequences of failure of a scientist/researcher in the US (maybe loss of job) v. the consequences in the workers paradise (20+ years hard labor or death) again, no surprise.
Throw in that finally China is no longer a closed society but is now allowing research papers to go outside its borders, and of course citations will go up.
Joe, one factor often neglected re China is that approximately (reliable numbers from China being challeging), 70% of Chinese are farmers. I would not think that many farmers have time to engage in academic work. http://bit.ly/ik3v2D
True, Ron. But that still leaves a population roughly a third, well, a quarter anyway, larger than the US that are not farmers.
Have to wonder how many great minds are being wasted on farms.
A lot Joe, which is truly a shame.
I do think that if all our politicians spent a year or two on a working farm that both their mind and character would benefit.
Just draft ‘em into the Marine Corps. Send ‘em straight to a Motivation Battalion.
Agree, good insights. Allow me to add another. More important than proJected citations in guesstimates of scientific effort are proTections of any underlying intangible proPerties produced by such science.
China, and every other nation lacks the vast army of patent lawyers currently headquartered in the U.S. China must soon (2013?) contemplate an unthinkable choice: import/educate more patent attorneys, or; increase retainers to U.S. firms.
Although many of us long for China to further crack its iron curtain with a profession that tends to grow quickly, it will likely continue quarantine the parasitic profession and pay hefty commissions to experts in Geneva, D.C., and Brussels.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Still, in a knowledge economy, the output of a nation ought to be directly proportional to the number of brains engaged.
China has a huge 4:1 advantage in population, but a rather enormous discount for the rate of engagement of those brains.
US still benefits from siphoning off some of the smartest people from around the world to come here and live free and/or make their fortune. Though we seem to be doing our best to discourage that lately.
Flat/
I’m very late here but a REALLY EXCELLENT set of twin posts and comments/discussion on this subject may be had at Whiskeys Place. The first, “China’s Weakness” on 16 Mar and the second on 21 Mar “The Power and Vulnerability of the West” may be found (I can’t direct link to each art. for some reason) at Whiskey’s Place @
http://whiskeys-place.blogspot.com
Run! DON’T WALK! and go see…just scroll down..
This should link to the other article Mr. Xenophon: http://bit.ly/gynPYE
There is quantity and then there is quality. This is an instance where quantity doesn’t = increased quality. I had a chinese office mate in grad school (along with a really shapely South African). The guy was smart as a whip but papers like “Use of a fast fourier transform to analyze perturbations in snail slime trails” didn’t really do much for making the world better.
In college we called stats “sadistics” cause it was always a painful course…..little has changed.
No one can say what will REALLY happen over the next 10-20 years as China could have a “life altering event” that could come along and throw them for a loop…or we could…or who knows?
To quote POTUS as he has chosen to deal with the key issues that concern our nation,
“WHATEVER”
What we called Thermodynamics is not printable on this family friendly blog.
…and with R&D privately funded and seeking ROI in our semi-capitalist society, there is an inherent disincentive to publish. Well, not as much lately when you can’t count on your data/IP security and occasionally worldwide internet traffic reroutes through China.
Speaking of which, lately I’ve noticed most searches for video news (especially recent military events) items link to pages of Russian Times media? RT also led reporting on A-10′s in Italy, posting lots of near real time video of the taxi que for departure with load outs, type & number, etc…
That’s Russia Today. IIRC, they’re owned by Pravda.
Interresant, Nicht Wahr?
As a sometime worker in science, I can testify that comparing raw numbers of articles for China vs. everyone else isn’t a good comparison. There are a large number of Chinese language journals that are peer-reviewed in name only and don’t apply the editorial standards that most other journals do. Most journals won’t publish an article about experiments unless it finds something significant, but they’ll print pretty much anything that’s submitted.
Why do this? Because publication count used to be the gold standard for scientific credibility, so China’s leadership mandated the creation of all these journals *for the purpose* of increasing the amount of published Chinese research. They were betting that nobody would notice how trivial most of the articles were because most of the journals don’t circulate outside a small area in China and comparatively few people outside the PRC can read technical Chinese. It worked for a while, but by the time I left academia for the real world most places just flat-out didn’t count any articles published in Chinese journals when assessing publication count.
The solution is probably going to lie with some new computer-based metrics that people are working up- basically, rather than just counting how many articles someone publishes, you look to see how many times each article they write is cited elsewhere as a source and figure out an “impact score”. The thought is that the number of times an article is referenced is a decent proxy for how useful the information is.
What has “The country that invented the compass, gunpowder, paper and printing” invented in the last several centuries?
They’ve become a culture of counterfeiters — not just in the modern era either. What we think of as IP piracy is viewed as worthy, even laudable bit of cleverness in China.
It goes back centuries and is reflected in the difficulty in appraising old Chinese art. Counterfeiting is the stuff of legends and song in China. It was honored by emperors and would even result in individuals being lifted to places of prominence on the basis of their skill in copying art.
Until China learns to actually innovate again, they will always stall at some point on the tech curve waiting for others to move ahead.
Quantity isn’t quality where science is concerned, so long as quantity > 0.
At the risk of sounding like I’m whistling past the graveyard, I might also posit that among the large number of papers written by Chinese science and engineering graduate students many of those are citing preciously published Chinese research papers in their own work. Not for any eeeeevil google bomb type of statistic slanting, but because of availability and language issues.
And since by virtue of their much larger population the sheer number of those students is probably very large, it’s not really surprising that there’d be so many more citations.
It still doesn’t mean that I’d like to see us keep our levels high.
I’d also consider that a lot of privately funded R&D projects that generate new research papers might not be publishing the results for all to see until they secure intellectual property protection. But I could be wrong.
Notwithstanding questionable graphs, can there be any disagreement that China is rapidly on the rise on many fronts while the US, if not in decline is certainly stagnated?
Indeed many economists project China’s GDP exceeding ours sometime in the 2020s. That China far outnumbers us in population is little consolation to this.
In the 15th Century, China was far ahead of the Western World by all measures. The Americas were populated with native tribes and most of Europe was a backwater, ravaged by plague, bad sanitation, and incessant wars. Subsequently, China declined and the West prevailed.
Why? Six major reasons:
1. Science
2. Medicine
3. Protestant Work Ethic
4. Competition
5. Property Rights
6. A Consumer Society
Unfortunately, the US is now beginning to lose its long monopoly on these six essential elements to new, rising economies.
Complex systems like ours tend to move quite suddenly, from stability to instability. Witness Ancient Rome, the Ming dynasty, the 18th century Bourbons, and 20th century USSR and Great Britain. In fact it may be our financial rot from within that leads to our demise as a world power.
Hopefully we can share and live in our new, competitive world and maintain our status quo. Nevertheless at some point in the future China or some other country will eventually overtake us in most areas.
Unfortunately history has not been kind to world powers that fall behind.
Throw in moral rot, which leads to financial rot, and I’ll agree with you.
Too many leave off the moral aspect of decline. Moral decline is the leading indicator, as all else is tied to it.
John Gatto has noted the correlation between the advancement of compulsory schooling and the number of patents issued. As more and more money is spent on locking young people up so they can learn to obey any instruction, no matter how insipid, our creativity has gone away. Causation isn’t correlation, but considering that of the two heads of the human genome project, one was homeschooled and the other nearly didn’t graduate high school (he was given a mercy D just to get rid of him).
As Gatto demonstrates with rigorous thoroughness, modern compulsory schooling was built to serve the needs of a consumer society, to keep us hungry to buy more stuff. It was meant to create a vast consumer class that really can’t think for itself. It appears to have succeeded.
“Moral Rot.” Is that the relativism and tolerance of everything (excepting Christianity) that is taught by the progressives?
Yeah, pretty much.
As illustrations, at our local institution of ‘higher learning’, we ‘celebrate’ LGBT day, but cannot countenance a mere discussion of evidence against ‘global warming’ and refuse a speaker who offers to present evidence at a science seminar at no charge.
We have our students participate in ‘service to the environment’, but deny that we can be both creationists and a ‘true scientist’, and that at a ‘Christian’ college.
Yep!
Who are you? Where is Flit and what have you done with him?
Must be an imposter for me to be agreeing with him on balance.
BE-603 — Sometimes, pigs do seem to fly.
Yes “There’ll be pigs in the treetops by morning.” Eleanor of Acquitane, Lion in Winter
One of my all time, favorite movies! And a great story.
But I will have to replay it tomorrow to find that particular quote.
‘Til then, regards…..
“The trick is not to dribble when you bang the bung…
I had an alcoholic latin tutor — taught me everything I know.”
He’s obviously been kidnapped and taken to the Northwest Frontier Province. It’s probably a Taliban troll that’s using his stolen avatar. Obviously, the Talitubbies know how dangerous we are here at Lex’s place.
Flit’s right — several things are conspiring against us. The first is, that much of our advantage has come from material advantages — especially those we enjoyed against the very competitors we bombed the crap out of. That gave us a forty year advantage. Now, assets don’t matter — knowledge does, and it is fungible.
Second is that we now face adversaries and comptitors that are more agile, have better info, because they don’t have to live within the constraints we have to live within — for better or worse. Many of the constraints are well intentioned, but they still cause us problems that emerging competitors don’t have.
Some of the constraints we face are well intentioned. Others, however, are caused by the increasing moral rot. One of the founders stated, rather succinctly, “We will be ruled by God, or we will be ruled by tyrants.” As moral rot sets in the idea of “there oughta be a law” also sets in. It set in with a vengeance after the 60s here.
Agree with the Moral Rot, closely connected to the lack of civility in normal life.
I try, with limited success, to be civil to those I percieve as contributing to the deline of this country.
Unless things change, IMO there will be open, physical conflict between the “Progressives” and the “Conservatives”. Other terms could be used to describe the two camps -one exemplified by BHO and his fellow travelers, the other by persons of character, patrotisim and honor such as Reagan/Bush/Palin/Christie/……
I’ve told a number of Regressives (and I’ve called them that to their faces) that they are fomenting Civil War. That scares them, but not enough to end their foolishness.
Frankly, I think Secession is the only thing that will prevent a Civil War.
I guess I’m kinda in Blackeagle’s camp.
Forget about papers, let’s look at what they can BUILD. Where is their space shuttle? Aircraft carrier? 5th Gen fighter? That latest uber fighter of theirs, how does it stack up vs a Raptor? What are their reactors like in terms of efficiency/safety? Can their computers compete with a Cray, or whatever is our latest and greatest? On a more pedestrian level, what are their cars and airliners like?
Comparisons like that make a better measuring stick than numbers of papers.
…and I’m not implying that we are the best at everything. I’m not sure how their ‘carrier killer’ DF-21D stacks up vs our capabilities. They may be ahead of us in some category, I don’t know. I still think comparing capabilities reveal more than comparing numbers of papers.
Considering how endemic plagiarism is in China, I think it will take them considerably longer to surpass America in discovering things that are original and useful.
Let us not forget that it was the Chinese who first invented the following list of useful things, long before they became of use in the West:
Gunpowder, magnetic compass, mechanical clock, movable-type, abacus, paper money, wheelbarrow, umbrella, brandy and whiskey, chess, multi-stage rockets, spinning wheel, canals with locks, porcelain, silk, coal and iron refining, smallpox inoculation, movable sails, etc. If fact the Renaissance period of Europe owes much to early contact with the Chinese, who sailed from China and traded in Italian ports. It is also said Columbus used charts copied from the Chinese for his voyage to the New World.
Clever, these Chinese. Do not underestimate.
Again I agree. Don’t underestimate the Chinese. However, don’t make a myth of them and their culture either. They play on our thinking of them as a bunch of wise mystical characters.
Flit,
At lot has happened to (re)shape the China we live with today. There is much the same from ages past. That said, don’t underestimate the lingering, debilitating effects of much that has transpired in the intervening 500 years. Not the least of which was the cultural revolution and it’s purges.
Even the population numbers for China need to be taken with a palm full of salt. Everyting is about face. You count and the round up generously. Then the next level tallies regional and does another rounding up, and so on. The Chinese of Middle Earth see themselves as vast and will do anything to maintain and inflate that perception (in their own mind as well in view of others).
As for technology, you can do a whole lot of catching up by buying and copying off the shelf technology but that curve goes asymptotic pretty quickly and you remain in a tail chase until you change your game. e.g. You can bet quantum computing won’t be coming from China. Though it may well be co-opted, copied or copped by them rather quickly.
Yes, and now our one and only DearLeader feels that tests are “Boring” and that there should be fewer of them in our schools.
http://blogs.forbes.com/erikkain/2011/03/29/president-obama-says-standardized-tests-make-education-boring-dont-adequately-measure-performance/
Whatever happened to the idea of “A Celebration of Knowledge” as a measure of what we’ve learned?
If he was really good at them, he’d feel different, I’m thinkin’.
He hides a lot most folks don’t care if you tell the world. I guess he’s just shy and modest.
I’ve studied the graphs and the figures and the comments. I have to say there are some seriously sharp and incisive people visiting this blog. I was just wondering, having re-read all the stats and such, I feel I’ve missed something. Can anyone tell me where this explains why, after eating a chinese dinner, I feel hungry after just one hour?
Hogday:
You are not eating enough rice with the good stuff. Also, sometimes there just isn’t enough rice.
Paul
Usually the only thing wrong with Chinese food is there isn’t enough of it.
That’s because you’re not eating Chinese food. You’re eating a too sweet, too sour, too salty, too greasy Americanized slum-gullion that elicits a gag reflex in Chinese visitors/immigrants.
Sugar makes you hungry sooner.