China's challenges

doi:10.1038/454367a

Editorial
Published: 01 July 2008

China's challenges

Nature volume 454, pages 367–368 (2008)Cite this article

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By almost every measure, China's growth is extraordinary. But behind the astonishing statistics is a more complex reality.

Discussions of China's emergence as a superpower often focus on matters of scale. This is understandable. China's borders encompass more than 1.3 billion people — one in every five humans on the planet — and stunningly diverse terrain, from the Yellow River plain in the east to the Himalayan plateau in the west. In science and technology, China now generates more publications than any other country bar the United States, and ranks third in the number of doctoral degrees it awards. One can take almost any measure and find an extreme in China. Where else would authorities even consider a plan to redistribute water resources by diverting major rivers for more than a thousand kilometres?

But these gargantuan figures may not mean quite what they seem to. China accounts for a smaller proportion of the world's population than it did in the seventeenth century. Many analysts concur that the nation's current economic growth is in a boom phase that cannot last. Most importantly, as the articles in this special issue illustrate, the image of China as a monolithic juggernaut hides a more complex and interesting reality. On page 412, Rogers Hollingsworth and his colleagues argue that the burgeoning of Chinese science does not necessarily mean it will replace the United States as the new hegemon, but rather that it will find a prominent role among a more diverse global research community in which no nation dominates.

Moreover, it is not clear whether China's growing strength in science — which increasingly belies the lazy notion that research in Asian countries lacks originality — will automatically make Chinese institutions major players at all the established frontiers, from drug development to nanotechnology or space science. Nations have different priorities, and this is especially true for those whose economic and technological development is relatively recent. On page 398, Lan Xue outlines the hazards of simply competing on the basis of an agenda determined by previous scientific superpowers, with its unspoken rules about which are the most important areas of research and where results should be published. If China were to decide that its interests lie in, say, massive investment in clean energy production — a matter of national urgency, for which it might be unwise to rely on the leadership of under-funded work in the West — it could both address its own needs and command immense respect on a global stage.

China's current success story continues to be characterized by a canny pragmatism.

Indeed, the global problems that would be tackled by a Chinese focus on domestic priorities make for an almost perfect wish-list. These priorities include water conservation and water pollution treatment, earthquake forecasting and earthquake-resistant building technologies, flood management and drought-resistant crops — all of which would find widespread application elsewhere. Likewise with health: China's domestic challenges are also the world's challenges. Already, for example, the antimalarial drug artemisinin is one of the most celebrated bounties of Chinese herbal medicine. Avian flu threatens to be China's home-grown epidemic. And the spread of AIDS is now acknowledged as a national issue, especially after the scandal of HIV infections of peasant blood donors in Henan province in the 1990s undermined official denial. When Premier Wen Jiabao was photographed in 2003 shaking hands with an AIDS patient, it seemed clear that the government was at last facing up to the problem.

One of the biggest questions for outside observers is to what extent the social, cultural and political milieu is shaping, and will continue to shape, the very practice of doing science in China. That legislation was proposed last year to make it acceptable for researchers to admit their failures (see Nature 449, 12; 2007) suggests that there are deeply ingrained misconceptions at an institutional level about how science works — misconceptions that stifle risk-taking and promote narrow conformity. But some suspect that such cosmetic efforts do little to address the problems created by a strongly hierarchical research culture, where an immense pressure to succeed might be seen as a precondition for the sorts of abuses evident in the case of disgraced cloning researcher Woo Suk Hwang in South Korea.

An even deeper question is whether a truly vibrant scientific culture is possible without a more widespread societal commitment to free expression. The right to challenge authority, and to doubt everything, is central to scientific enquiry. And no country can be a major scientific player in the modern world unless its scientists can collaborate with researchers from elsewhere. A poor record on human rights will not make this impossible — but it will make it more difficult. Scientists do, largely, have a commitment to human rights, and will be happier working with colleagues who share that commitment.

Perhaps it is good news that China's current success story continues to be characterized by a canny pragmatism. Granted, this attitude can sometimes make it seem as though everything is motivated by the economic bottom line. For example, although it would be too cynical to suggest that global warming and environmental degradation are now being taken seriously only because they eat into China's gross domestic product, that is surely one big reason for the concern. Yet, motivated by that same pragmatism, the Chinese authorities are increasingly recognizing that getting the best value from its scientists means providing them with adequate funds and minimal interference, even if this sees them straying 'off-message'. Many outside scientists have been surprised to find that Chinese graduate students and postdocs are now quite willing to challenge their professors. Exaggerated deference to authority is clearly on the wane in China's younger generation of scientists — and who knows how far that pragmatic liberalization will go?

In the meantime, the rest of the world can surely benefit from the self-confidence that will make China a source not just of skilled, hard-working postdocs, but of a new agenda, informed by a tradition of innovation of almost unparalleled antiquity and sophistication.

Editorial