
China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math - petethomas
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-12/chinese-researchers-are-outperforming-americans-in-science
======
throwaway713
The quality debate about scientific merit aside, if the U.S. wants to remain
"the best", then we need to incentivize the best scientists and researchers in
other countries to come here and become U.S. citizens. A lot of famous
physicists, mathematicians, and logicians have done this over the past 100
years.

Unfortunately, the attractiveness of becoming a U.S. citizen is waning because
(1) current U.S. policies on science are extremely unfavorable to foreign
researchers and (2) other countries are making it much more desirable to
remain a citizen there than to become a U.S. citizen (this is a net win for
humanity though)

I think (1) is in part due to a culture in the U.S. that really just doesn't
care about science anymore. When I was in grad school a few years ago, most of
my peers were from other countries despite the fact that the majority of
undergrads at the same school were born in state. So in effect, the grad
students would get advanced degrees in the hard sciences and take that
knowledge back home with them, whereas the U.S. students would get a B.S. in
literature, advertising, or business (generalizing of course).

~~~
Eridrus
I think the point that most grad programs don't have US students is revealing
- for those who have alternative entry into the US economy, most people decide
that a PhD program is a poor choice.

Most of the things people work on in their PhD programs are very niche, and
most do not work in academia or on the same thing after they finish their PhD.
And most people never really make a noticeable contribution to science with
their thesis. So I'm a bit skeptical that we're losing all this valuable
knowledge overseas, rather than PhD programs being about signaling their skill
to employers and our byzantine immigration process. Not to say that people
learn nothing valuable, but the number of people I've worked with who did a
Math PhD and then never used that knowledge ever again is surprisingly high.

I think the US should be less concerned about whether it is on top wrt
publications, but about whether English remains the language of scholarship,
because if Chinese folks start publishing in Mandarin, that's going to be a
far bigger loss to English speaking countries than if we do not originate as
much research.

~~~
mc32
>if Chinese folks start publishing in Mandarin

They may, and then it will be like during the cold war where Soviets published
in Russian and we'd be lucky if someone translated that into English. If it
were to happen today, someone would make a business out of translating the
publications --maybe even crowdsource the translations.

~~~
cryptozeus
Would bd so easy to translate in this day and age

~~~
btrettel
Easier, but not easy.

During my PhD I've translated about a dozen papers into English, mostly from
Russian. Google Translate and Yandex Translate did the actual translation (I
would compare the two), but what they produce is not always intelligible or
correct. On a few more important papers I went through the paper sentence by
sentence to clarify the translation. It's not uncommon that I have to change
certain phrases because the software translates a phrase literally when the
equivalent is not a literal translation, for example. Sometimes I didn't know
what the equivalent terminology was without research and guesswork. I also
added footnotes as appropriate if I thought they would help the reader
understand something which would not be clear if they were unfamiliar with the
original language or research culture.

I would not be surprised if I spent over 100 hours on a particular series of 3
papers alone. I don't mind the time, as I enjoyed the process and learned a
lot from it.

The good news is that I think the feedback I provided Google Translate
improved the quality of the product's translation of scientific Russian, it is
slowly getting better.

~~~
reacweb
I always complain about the poor results from google translate between english
and french. It works well for litteral translations, but I do not need help
for litteral translations. I need help to translate from idioms in a language
toward idioms in the other one. I often use
[https://www.deepl.com/translator](https://www.deepl.com/translator) which is
slightly better than google translate.

~~~
JackFr
I could care less.

~~~
JackFr
Okay down voters, I guess I was being to clever by half.

My point was idiomatic translation is hard. “I could care less” means it’s
literal opposite.

~~~
beojan
It's an iffy example, since many people consider 'could care less' to be
incorrect.

~~~
JackFr
But the point is machine translation needs to work on language the way it is,
not the way it should be.

------
nicodjimenez
The impact of publications in technical fields is so long tailed that 1000
mediocre publications doesn't equal one single breakthrough paper (eg the
AlexNet paper in deep learning). Even according to the source cited in the
article
([http://www.nber.org/papers/w24829](http://www.nber.org/papers/w24829))
impact per paper is much lower in China.

Once China beats the US in both volume and quality, we'll know the balance of
intellectual capital has really shifted.

I'm skeptical this will happen. The US has a much better culture of
intellectual freedom. It's much more likely that China will surpass the US
economically than intellectually. Business culture is so strong in China and
probably even better than in the US already.

~~~
nicodjimenez
People over-obsess about how China is beating us in science and technology,
and not enough about how China is becoming so entrepreneurial while US
citizens are becoming extremely risk averse.

~~~
Eridrus
Are people becoming more risk averse, or do we have more people in precarious
positions where they face more serious down sides if their gamble doesn't pay
off?

~~~
adventured
The US social safety net is drastically better today than it was in the recent
past (eg 1980 or 1990). It's now comparable to the OECD median. I know this is
an unpopular statement, because for decades it has been a common attack point
to go after the US on this front. However the US is spending a lot more per
capita on its welfare policies, inflation adjusted, than it was a few decades
ago. Particularly since the mid to late 1990s there has been a very large jump
and it has had equally large, tangible results. It's important to point out
the positive results, so that progress isn't rolled back.

Poverty and homelessness are both near all-time lows (homelessness is at all-
time lows). Homelessness is an area where the US has made very big strides in
the last two decades, and it's not talked about enough. The poverty rate is
down to 12.3% and has been declining since the great recession ended,
accelerating the last few years. There are only two short periods of time in
modern US history where the poverty rate was much lower (the peak of the late
1990s boom, and for about three years in the 1970s).

In the last ~25 years the US has also reduced by about 50% the number of
people that aren't covered by healthcare (currently 8.8% of people), mostly
thanks to the ACA and Medicaid expansion. We're spending over $600 billion per
year on free healthcare for the bottom quarter of people. In 2005, 42 million
people (14% of the population) were covered by Medicaid, today that's 66.8
million (20.5% of the population). Cynics will claim that's a negative, it's
not, it's an improvement in the US social safety net courtesy of expanding who
is covered by Medicaid. CHIP and SS disability have further broadened free
healthcare coverage in that time frame as well.

~~~
bambataa
Do you know how that increased welfare spending breaks down? How much of the
increase is going to pensioners vs poor working age people?

~~~
sangnoir
and how much of the increase is going to juicing the bottom line of
corporations like Walmart and farm conglomerates? Both parties _love_ food
stamps. Total government expenditure, by itself is not a good measure of the
actual outcome

------
whatshisface
> _They document a rapid expansion between 2000 and 2016, as the Chinese share
> of global publications in physical sciences, engineering and math
> quadrupled._

I really hate to risk being the guy who says "they will never best us," until
they do, but in my field and many others Chinese papers are known to be of a
lower quality standard and a lot more mill-like. This may come as a surprise
to many, but the simple fact is that integrity issues are common in Chinese
academia - a pattern not specific to China, but repeated almost everywhere.
Globally, a high-quality academia with a strong sense of integrity is the
exception rather than the rule.

~~~
noobermin
The article points not just to number of publications but citations too, which
hint that they aren't just paper mill papers. In my field, China is actually
committing to investing in my kind of research in terms of facilities and such
while the US is cutting of course.

~~~
lellotope
I'm skeptical of citation rate as well, although I'm not sure I have anything
better to offer in terms of metrics. Hype, after all, is related to citation
rate. I think what we need is something that is more like "sustained rate" or
something like that.

It's pretty clear China is progressing in the sciences substantially, so I
don't want to discount that--no one should--but this progression is occurring
in what I consider to be a crisis of academic integrity globally. The result
is that metrics like publication rate and citation rate are much fuzzier to
interpret, and something I distrust a lot because they are somewhat
meaningless relative to replicability or something of that sort.

I generally feel like academics and industry at large is suffering from a kind
of hype crisis or bubble. I think it's strongly related to income inequality
(inflated attributed value of higher-income individuals relative to lower-
income individuals) and all sorts of other societal problems at the moment.
How this relates to China I'm not sure but overall it makes me skeptical of
any attempt to measure or rank countries relative to one another (I'd say the
same thing about the US or any other country for that matter).

~~~
chalst
I have been thinking about kinds of citation rates that distinguish between
"trendy" journals, ones what attract lots of citations relatively quickly, and
"deep impact journals", where papers published tend to be cited a long time
later.

Given this classification, you can weight an individuals impact factor by a
factor representing how trendy vs deep the venues citations appear in.

------
jerryzh
As a Chinese I have to say simply number is totally meaningless. China's
research is still closely connected with government behavior and all of the
top universities are founded and managed by the government. A few top
universities are actually government departments. In China the only way to get
more salary and promotion in title is too give as much as papers as one can.
Thus a considerable amount of them are totally rubbish which was published
only for appraise and competition.

~~~
neuromantik8086
So basically what we're seeing is publish or perish on steroids by your
assessment?

------
Leary
A better index that measures QUALITY scientific research is the Nature index.
By that measure, China is #2 in the world, tho far behind the US still.

[https://www.natureindex.com/country-
outputs/generate/All/glo...](https://www.natureindex.com/country-
outputs/generate/All/global/All/score)

~~~
3pt14159
I'm surprised at how high up Canada / Switzerland is in the rankings. Both
pretty small for that much impact.

~~~
aroberge
?? Canada's population is roughly 1/10 of that of the US and the article count
shown for Canada is also roughly 1/10 of that of the US. Exactly how is it
surprising?

~~~
3pt14159
Well, as a Canadian, I guess I'm surprised we're so similarly outmatching the
rest of the world. I figured there was more going on in Italy or Brazil than
there seems to be.

------
zoom6628
Lets not forget that China has over 3x the popn of USA so to surpass
scientific output is to be expected at some stage. They havent got there yet
because there is a history, culture and political environment to overcome and
that will take a few more decades.

In the fields that i pay attention to (Im not a scientist, just a curious
part-time pythonista) such as materials science, practical uses of AI and
vision, it seems (just an opinion, dont ask me for stats) most of the work are
coming from China scientists. In some other fields like programming languages,
computer networking they seem significantly fewer. Of course this may be
biased by my sources.

On a social level when one has a government where the top level politicians
are mostly scientists and engineers this is a result to be expected. When govt
is dominated by lawyers one can expect things go in other direction. China
realised a long time ago that they had to educate and work to improve their
position - productivity and improving standard of living comes from real
productive stuff not from legislation.

My 2c.

~~~
partiallypro
There's also the fact that some studies have show papers pushed from China are
outright stolen research or fictional. I don't mean to downplay the actual
science that many in China do...but there is a lot that is actually nonsense
and contributes nothing.

------
dalbasal
One of the reasons the 18th century scientific revolution was so fruitful in
europe was the culture of sharing, publishing & debating across a large,
catchment area. Instead of esoteric knowledge of mysterious origin, 18th
century science produced de-mystified knowledge.

This culture crossed language barriers, borders and such. Common cultural
"hero's" of a scientific community (Newton, Copernicus..) helped a lot in
developing this culture.

One of the (related) reasons for US science/technology success in the 20th
century was making that "empire of the mind" physical, in places like MIT. The
wide catchment was achieved through migration. This was very obvious in the
post war period, when scientists and technologists from everywhere came to
these places.

The Soviets also made use of their expanded talent catchment areas, and had
some pretty impressive innovations at that time.

China is now learning the power of inward migration. They are starting to open
up and subsidize international students. I think political goals (eg Taiwanese
students in China smoothing the path to unification) where the catalyst, but
internationalizing the institutions themselves will be an inevitable side
effect.

------
DenisM
Why, this is a great news! Facing the prospect of losing the primacy, and the
face, on the world stage the US Congress is a lot more likely to pony up some
cash.

------
jillesvangurp
China is well on its way reversing the roles with the US where the in the past
the US was supplying knowledge and technology their way, it is increasingly
the other way around. They have less and less need for US produced research
and technology since they are able to do much of it under their own power now.
Some time soon, they will out pace the US GDP as well.

US universities have been running for decades on foreign grad students (many
of which are Chinese). At the same time the US education system is not
producing a lot of domestic talent at this point. Not surprising given years
of under funding, budget cuts, the excessive cost of getting educated, etc.

The fix is simple: invest, spend, nurture instead of divest, cut, and kill.
Modern economies are primarily knowledge driven. Not investing in that is bad
for business.

------
iamshs
Off topic: Has anyone noticed purge of Muslim students from Chinese labs? I
follow some Chinese professors, and they onboarded 2 Pakistani students and
within two months, both were removed from the website. Same story with 4 more
students in a different university and different laboratories. Incidentally,
Xinjiang concentration camps started being mentioned in the news soon after.

Also, noticed an uptick of Indian students doing research in China.

~~~
selimthegrim
This is disturbing given the paeans to the working relationship between the
two countries, if not just down to poor Pakistani education quality

~~~
iamshs
I don't even know if it is a widespread problem, or even if there was any
malice involved in those cases. I found it a bit curious that the names were
purged from the websites, not even put in the Alumni column. There can be
myriad of reasons...

------
ArtWomb
More hard data from NSF global R&D spend. China seems laser focused on its
momentum. But percentage-wise US allocation for pure science or basic research
is roughly 17%. While China is at 5%. With a decided tilt toward product and
materials based development.

2018 Overview of the State of the US Science & Engineering Enterprise in the
Global Context

[https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2018/nsb20181/assets/1387/ove...](https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2018/nsb20181/assets/1387/overview.pdf)

My feeling is US could stand to double its R&D spend from 4% of GDP as a goal
by 2040.

------
maehwasu
Because nothing beats "volume of papers produced" for measuring scientific
contributions. Time to call this what it is: utter shit journalism.

~~~
yesenadam
Yeah. Well...it's the same measure universities use with their academics isn't
it?

------
paulsutter
Please everyone don't underestimate China. Sure we can find 100 criticisms,
but you can't deny their massive efforts in education, research, technology
and manufacturing.

Steady progress builds results over time. I really encourage doubters to go
visit China and see for yourself.

------
coldtea
Automatic defensive response: yeah, but they are subpar.

Yeah, like those Japanese cars and devices were "subpar" compared to the US
ones in the 60s and 70s...

------
KaoruAoiShiho
Incredible fear from America:
[https://i.imgur.com/bOqjzCs.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/bOqjzCs.jpg)

~~~
maimeowmeow
wechat is the modern day chinese "forwards from grandma" in the mobile age.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
Got this from reddit. I don't think this is fake if that's what you're
implying.

------
oh-kumudo
Good, competition and more spending is always welcome.

~~~
mjfl
It would really suck to have the global language of science change to Chinese
though. And Beijing strikes me as the sort of place to suddenly require all
their scientists to publish in Chinese one day, once they felt they had
sufficient leverage.

~~~
DoctorOetker
Back when I was studying physics, in the university library of the exact
science campus I found a couple of shelves full of identical thick volumes in
the physics section. Curious what they were I took one out and I forgot the
exact name but I think it was Chinese Physics B / Acta Physica Sinica
(overseas edition), which is basically the english translation of a selection
of the local Acta Physica Sinica. Browsing the articles and actually reading
the ones that seemed interesting, I can confirm these were of high quality.
Apparently they cover all branches of physics, including fundamental particles
but notably excluding nuclear physics. Before that moment I had a very
Western-centric view of exact sciences, but quickly realized that this is
merely an illusion: whenever we search and find articles we search in our own
language, and since then I have encountered countless references of theorems
and discoveries and observations which were also discovered abroad, but due to
different communication language the concepts have typically different
scientist/mathematician names attached to them. What you describe is partially
true but partially it was always the case or at least for quite a long time
now. Not just science in chinese, but also of course in russian, probably the
dominant language in india too etc...

~~~
DoctorOetker
I forgot to mention this also has a strong parallel with a different
phenomenon in within society: a lot of the people who think education is
useless, even though they actually use many of the skills, think so because it
is easy to pretend one learnt something on their own (which is kind of true)
once others (teachers, authors of books etc.) have invested the time and
effort to explain the subject. It's easy to pretend or believe you have no one
to thank for such a simple thing as being able to read and write!

------
ElBarto
This is a natural and unavoidable development.

At some point the USA will have to wake up to the fact that they cannot stay
ahead of a country that had as much natural resources as they have but 4 times
the population forever.

------
DrNuke
They are still copycatting ideas and methods from the West (and Russia,
marginally) in so many hard engineering fields, though. On the other hand,
they are very good and original in deep learning, which is more mechanistic
than holistic. I mean, if the industry 5.0 revolution is going to come from
China, they need to start deploying their own vision for society and the world
full scale, which to be fair they are doing already through money,
infrastructures and finlandisation of neighbouring countries, Africa and
Eastern Europe. It is quite different from liberal and neo-liberal models.

------
mondaynightjams
I think the root cause of the problem can be tracked down to high tuition fees
in undergrad and low remuneration in postgrad research. A large number of
undergrads come out of school with high student loans at which point it gives
little financial incentive to go back to school. Especially if you land to a
job fairly quickly.

I also think portraying someone pursuing science and tech as 'typical nerd' in
media has something to do with it too. And not to say going through GREs for
grad school admissions are kind of redundant as well.

------
a-dub
One brilliant way to stimulate and support cutting edge research in the United
States would be to impose tariffs on high end equipment and research supplies
that are made elsewhere in the world. By making it comparatively more
expensive to buy equipment and supplies than other places in the world, the
world's top research talent will be clawing at the door (assuming they can get
visas) to take up residence in our universities!

~~~
DoctorOetker
Can you explain that process in more detail please?

~~~
linkregister
The OP was being sarcastic.

------
jeffmcmahan
The average Chinese is just as clever, if not more clever, than the average
Westerner. They'll absolutely produce good results given good funding. But the
tradition of the University is not Chinese; the Areopagitica is alien to
mainstream Chinese civic and intellectual values; the inviolability of the
right to interrogate the universe as a free, searching, essentially individual
being is not part of the mentality driving all this investment. It is
essentially like 20th century Soviet enthusiasm for science and mathematics.
The government expects the benefits of a world class intelligentsia with the
downsides held in check at the point of a rifle.

I think the US and Europe should slam the (academic) doors shut; no more
collaboration until the Chinese government learns some basic humanity. The
strategy of influencing the Chinese by educating their elite has not worked.
Clearly.

~~~
paxy
Accepting Chinese and other international students is for the USA's own
benefit, and not some form of foreign charity. We get some of the smartest
people in the world who do great work here and finance a huge chunk of
operating expenses of universities through high tuition fees. Plus loads of
them stay back and work for or start companies right here rather than in their
home countries.

~~~
jeffmcmahan
Yes, I do recognize that. However, it also benefits the Chinese regime
enormously, and I think a future in which that regime has the scientific and
technological capacity that we currently have is unlikely to be good for
humankind (not that Western governments have been perfect ... or even
basically good).

------
api
A lot of people are missing the obvious: China has roughly 4X the population
of the USA. As they develop they are going to exceed the USA _numerically_ in
almost every category by sheer force of population size.

------
justicezyx
There isn't much secret source here, more investment == more output.

------
bitxbit
This narrative that China is some academic powerhouse has to stop. Just look
at the absolute expenditure in education despite all that growth. Their
priority is sadly elsewhere.

------
ianai
US academia lost me because of standardized tests. Just no time or resources
to devote to making sure I could ace them. Plus, tests make me panic. I’m sure
I’m not alone.

------
franzwong
Many good students move to U.S. I think this is the problems China needs to
think about.

------
known
"China competes and delivers inexpensive and high-quality products" \--Jack Ma

------
Myrmornis
Is it fair to say that China underperforms in the area of software that the
rest of the world uses? I (a Brit living in the US and quite possibly very
ignorant about the matter) can think of important (e.g.) Russian and Indian
and Brazilian projects and open source contributors but no Chinese ones are
coming to mind.

------
abraham_lincoln
Should be 'again'.

------
Paraesthetic
Anyone want to be controlled by a country that systematically represses and
controls their citizens?

------
throwaway2048
Cheating and fraud are endemic to Chinese culture, getting one over on a
sucker is just an expected part of daily life there.

I would not downplay this.

~~~
kneel
Not all Chinese people that I've worked are like this.

But the most cheating, backstabbing, manipulative coworkers I've had were all
Chinese.

From what I understand, in Chinese culture 'any means necessary' tactics are
considered smart and fair game as long as they work.

~~~
oceanman888
As a Chinese I don't get offended by this, depending on the people they he
interacted with this may largely be true.

~~~
analyst74
Personally the only times when I got back-stabbed at work were by Canadians,
but I don't go around making conclusion about Canadian culture being
backstabby.

If 1 in 10 Chinese you met are manipulators, that means 9 out of 10 are NOT
honest/manipulative, how can you then go conclude "in Chinese culture 'any
means necessary' tactics are considered smart and fair game as long as they
work."?

~~~
oceanman888
I move out of china for college in japan and I feel I can view things without
getting too emotional. In practice when you are dealing with people from
mainland they are ruthless about business and do not share/acknowledge the
rules people follow in westerner and other Asian countries(most of they are
not aware of it of course). We hear ton of story about Chinese company
stealing IP. China have this absence of culture in the last several decades
that leave its people no core moral to follow. Whenever a business leader are
portrayed in mass media, it is always about how well they are dominating the
market, how fast they killed the competitors. While I talk to my Chinese
relatives about business, all they care is profit.

~~~
analyst74
Same as you, I moved to Canada for college, and for a while detached myself
from "those lowly Chinese" still stuck in China. But eventually it occurred to
me, people also judge me with those stereotypes. Looking at myself and other
Chinese people I crossed path with, I feel most of us live with integrity and
a high morale compass, and having those stereotypes applied to us are
incredibly unfair and dangerous.

Holocaust did not stop after all the bad Jews were persecuted.

