
China Expands Research Funding, Luring U.S. Scientists and Students - pseudolus
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/11/27/669645323/china-expands-research-funding-luring-u-s-scientists-and-students
======
DevX101
The bigger impact isn't luring U.S. scientists to China. It's keeping top
Chinese scientists/students in China. Chinese grad students/postdocs are
highly represented at elite U.S. universities. With recent political changes
in the U.S. making more difficult for international students to come to the
U.S. or at least giving the impression that the U.S. is not as friendly to
immigration, enrollment from international students have started to drop in
the past 2 years.

[https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/11/13/new-
internati...](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/11/13/new-
international-student-enrollments-continue-decline-us-universities)
[https://cgsnet.org/first-time-over-decade-international-
grad...](https://cgsnet.org/first-time-over-decade-international-graduate-
applications-and-enrollments-decline-us-institutions)

~~~
r0m4n0
I am employed by one of the big tech companies in the bay and was recently
chosen to interview candidates for our new grad program. I was astonished by
how many top of class graduate students we brought into the program that had
identical backgrounds. Around 90% had studied in and were from China, usually
undergrad there and Ivy League grad school with close to perfect GPAs. If they
are keeping their students, I haven’t seen it yet. Will see how it plays out
in the near future

~~~
jjcc
I can explain where your astonishing comes form(maybe off topic): there are
something to do with how China built the nation yet not quite visible to
westerners.

There are many factors. One important factor which amplifies other factors is
related to big number theory: quantity is translated into quality. Average
Chinese are not quite different from other nationals.(Let's put down
controversial conclusion for now) . However China has 1.3 billion people. With
such a big number , a small shift of the average on the IQ bell curve doesn't
matter. What you have met are a vary small portion of top talent from China.
As analogy, you can image a typical top NBA athlete would be black. But with
1.3 billion people there exists a Yao Ming who is not a typical Chinese.

Then why it happened recently? That's related to last 30 years rapid
development.But that's invisible part. China not only build road , bridge,
bullet train, etc. more importantly which also matches Chinese traditional
value: China invest heavily in Education. In 80's (i.e. my generation ) only
5-10% of high school graduate can be accepted by limited universities at the
time. But money poured into Education increased year by year incrementally
like crazy. Today there are enough universities to provide any qualified
students an opportunity for education. The consequence is there's a big change
on human capital. This is not limited to what you observed but also in other
areas. For example, China is exporting the infrastructure building expertise
all over the world. Quite often the builders have to bring whole teams from
China because qualified teams are only available there. Those are experienced
skill construction workers but not academically competitive students.

The significant increase in human capital is less visible than infrastructure
improvement, yet it has a bigger impact

~~~
Foobar8568
And also the competition to get into good school etc. Basically a student life
doesn't start at 18, 16, or 12, but 2years old, if not one and half
(interviews for kindergarten). Constant ranking, placement exams, number of
school hours etc makes western education pathetic. At the end of P1, Chinese
kids are supposed to read something like 800 Chinese words, write 60% of them
(if my memory serves me well), in France/Switzerland, most kids can barely
read at that age. And poor them if you even think to enforce that. We are
destroying generations if the parents don't realize how fucked up is our
system: education is a building process, with layers and layers of foundation.

~~~
rqs
Meanwhile in China, people are bashing the education system hard as well,
saying it "Teaching to the test" (a Wikipedia term [0]), "Serving political
purpose" and "Like a factory".

In my opinion, a successful education system is the one which can produce
people who are capable of learn new knowledge my themselves, resolve problems
by themselves and create new things by themselves.

So maybe, reading 800 Chinese words in a very young age is impressive, but
there is more important things to do.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaching_to_the_test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaching_to_the_test)

~~~
Foobar8568
And in France people are saying the same bullshit over bac and classes
préparatoires. Same in Switzerland. It's lieing to students, reality is a
harsh one. If you don't perform during your studies, your life will be tough
unless you are an outlier.

------
Someone1234
This is fantastic news. Science will eventually benefit all of mankind even if
the benefits are initially felt closer to where they're conducted.

I welcome increased science funding regardless of who is doing it,
particularly when we're talking about non-military scientific research.

If this makes the US feel competitive and they increase funding state-side
then so much the better. We'd all benefit from that too.

~~~
Old_Thrashbarg
I agree. It's also good to have more diversification of science and technology
progress. That way if one country gets an anti-science leader, it makes less
of a difference to overall human progress.

------
citilife
I don't really think China is luring too many U.S. scientists... Most of the
scientists I know pretty much ignore research out of China, because a large
portion of it is just not replicable (and / or lies).

~~~
tanilama
Chinese AI/CS papers are definitely not going to be ignored. They are really
strong on that front, for they have a huge domestic industry to sustain such
level of researches and there is economical benefit to going after.

~~~
azinman2
I was just at Ubicomp, and I'd say the level of quality coming out of China
was lacking (and a lot of universities outside of China to be fair). But only
the papers from China raised red flags if their results were real or not...

------
seanmcdirmid
Well, you know, it’s not like the USA isn’t luring a lot of Chinese
researchers and students already.

Speaking as an American who worked as a researcher in China for almost 9
years, China is way late to the “leveraging global talent” game. They should
catch up, it’s only natural.

~~~
sgillen
Seems like it's much easier to leverage global talent when you are leading the
research at a global level. This has arguably not been this case for (modern)
china until recently.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Well, there is also a bit of xenophobia against foreigners that they have to
sort out. It manifests in weird ways, like not being able to give foreigner
employees options in local companies.

Keep in mind that the number of foreigners in China is about the same as the
number of foreigners in Tokyo.

~~~
gowld
Why do they have to sort it out?

I presume that financial equivalents to options are allowed, but that China
forbids foreigners controlling non-cash capital in China, since that
complicates the Communist's Party's exercise of authoritarian power over the
operation of the nation.

~~~
jayalpha
[https://www.chinalawblog.com/2016/09/the-china-stock-
option-...](https://www.chinalawblog.com/2016/09/the-china-stock-option-
scam.html)

------
asabjorn
As a former researcher I am not surprised to see another nation capitalizing
on the counter-productive politicization of US science.

I used to be a researcher and writing proposals suddenly started taking up
much more time around 2010 to 2013 because each grant became much smaller.
Each grant also became more specific in what science you were expected to
produce, which essentially made us all contractors for NSF plus DOE and
winning a grant was sometimes more about politics than producing excellent
scholarship. This pushed a lot of great scientists out of the field.

After I left research radical leftists started a more expansive politicized
attack on science that is further politisizing who gets tenure or grants
essential to making scientific progress.

\- Biology as a subject is the most affected right now [1], because biology
shows that there are biological differences that contribute to individuals
choices in a way that invalidates the univariant equity doctrine political
explanations. Women on average does are as capable as men in the sciences, but
they differences in choices increase the more equal the societies are.

\- Science as a competence hierarchy is under attack by the equity initiatives
[2], making it so that the most important factors for getting grants and
tenure is often not competence.

The fact is unfortunately that these programs have been shown to not increase
the production of great science [3]. Moreover, these efforts further
demoralize and alienate scientists.

We should at this point not be under any doubt that unless we defeat the
politicization of science the US will not remain competitive. We should ask
ourselves if we want to be equal on a sinking ship or make life better by
allowing everyone to compete as individuals regardless of which identity you
think they belong to.

[1] [https://quillette.com/2018/10/18/trans-activists-campaign-
ag...](https://quillette.com/2018/10/18/trans-activists-campaign-against-
terfs-has-become-an-attack-on-science/) [2]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/when-
wil...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/when-will-the-
gender-gap-in-science-disappear/558413/) [3]
[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/when-
wil...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/when-will-the-
gender-gap-in-science-disappear/558413/)

~~~
legionof7
I don't think biology explains away the gender gap.

~~~
candiodari
I think the main reason there is so much opposition is what happens when it
does. Then there is no reason to change the laws/policies (because they don't
override how humans are built). That means there is no reason for the careers
of politicians and activists and no money for the initiatives to fix it. So it
becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In practice, of course, biology explains a large portion of differences
between humans, both where it pertains to gender, and where it pertains to
race.

There are a few "forbidden truths" for them:

1) That there are in fact biological reasons for some aspects of a gender gap.

2) More general there are reasons for discrimination in certain limited cases
(it used to be the case that the law had specific exceptions for diversity
regulations. The big example given was "no cripples in the emergency response
team in the fire department" (I think you can imagine why). That was a valid
discriminatory demand that could be put in job applications)

3) There can be no differences in the source population (because ... well if
you calculate it out specifically, then the Bay Area is not racist in hiring
at all. But wait ! Why are there soooo few blacks working for the Bay Area
tech companies ? Why so many Asians ? Well ... those values are _very_ close
to what you'd expect them to be if well-established (but heavily denied)
racial differences in intelligence are taking into account and one assumes
that when silicon valley invites 10 people to compete for a job, they hire the
smartest)

So in order to have "equality", defined as "distribution in the winners of
competitions is the same as the distribution of participants" you can't have
even tiny differences at all in the population beyond their proportion of the
population, otherwise that'll never happen. Unfortunately there's another
problem here (see next point)

Of course the whole reason different races exist is to have them be different.
I mean from the perspective of evolution, which while it isn't a conscious
entity, does have both the means to change humans and a reason to do so (a
goal to achieve). This means races/genders don't just differ in skin color,
they differ in anything. Obviously the skin is one important difference, but
it is just one component of profound differences in energy regulation of the
body, which affects nearly everything relating to energy use in the body,
which ... even affects brain size. Specifically one big difference between
races is how much energy gets dedicated to body temperature maintenance
(cooling and warming are different systems, so that's 2 separate things),
digestion, muscles/movement, and ... yes ... how much energy gets dedicated to
thinking, and even the balance between cortex and neocortex. And if it favors
the cortex, that is just not going to help out your chess game. It even
affects how big you are on average (of course bigger = everything requires
more energy, because the human body is not that different from a robot.
Fortunately bigger requires exponentially more energy, so the differences
there can't be _that_ big)

4) The effect of average differences on competitions. Specifically, say you
have group 1 and group 2, and they compete. Let's assume N(100, 10)
distribution. Let's say group 1 has a x% higher average, how often would a
one-on-one competition between a member of group 1 and group 2 end in favor of
the member of group 1 ? Let's call that value y.

for x = 1%, odds of group 1 winning = 53.01% for x = 2%, odds of group 1
winning = 55.57% for x = 5%, odds of group 1 winning = 64.04% for x = 10%,
odds of group 1 winning = 76.08% for x = 20%, odds of group 1 winning = 92.19%

And if you have repeated competitions (you only advance to the next round if
you win round 1, and there's N rounds) ... it gets pretty bad pretty rapidly.

So unfortunately competition amplifies small differences in averages. Although
this is to be expected, this is why natural selection works.

~~~
asabjorn
You make some good points, but I would like to add caveats on the usefulness
to think in terms of groups when judging an individual and make the point that
group inferences has severe limitations when making decisions about an
individual.

There are bigger differences within groups than between them, although there
are also large differences between groups. For instance, people of jewish
descent have an average IQ that is much higher than any other group. However,
if you are trying to find the best person for a cognitively demanding job or
to build a relationship with them then it doesn't matter what the average for
any group you might perceive them as part of is as you might need an
individual that belong to a small subset of any group.

That is why we in the west made the essential discovery that we are different
amongst so many dimensions that we in the end are a group of one, the
individual, and that we should aspire to judge a person as an individual on
their merit in any situation.

Judging people as individuals goes against some of our basic tendencies as
humans. Our natural tendency is to be tribal and to judge individuals for
group "guilt". Our judicial and political system is intentionally adversarial
to counter this tendency, and that is why we need to fight hard against anyone
trying to destroy this process in the name of equity or because they think
they deserve special treatment due to their group belongings.

~~~
candiodari
I am explicitly talking about the generally used definition of diversity,
which I believe boils down to what I put in the comment:

> "distribution in the winners of competitions is the same as the distribution
> of participants"

(and sometimes even extended to the distribution of the population)

Like you say, an individual's performance, like any other individual data
point in statistics, can be anything, or anyone in this case. I should
probably have mentioned that.

~~~
asabjorn
Makes sense.

Yes, only a small subset of people in general have a good understanding of
statistics.

\- People on the radical left without a good understanding of statistics are
often outraged by how they misunderstand how statistical should be interpreted

\- People on the identarian right make outrageous statements the statistics
can't support.

I try to avoid both misunderstandings by explicitly stating the caveat.

------
JesseAldridge
I've been looking into topic modeling lately. It looks like this is the best
library for doing that:
[https://github.com/baidu/Familia](https://github.com/baidu/Familia)

Time to learn Mandarin I guess.

~~~
eindiran
It looks like there are English docs too:
[https://github.com/baidu/Familia/blob/master/README.EN.md](https://github.com/baidu/Familia/blob/master/README.EN.md)

~~~
JesseAldridge
Yeah, but they are apparently out of date:
[https://github.com/baidu/Familia/issues/70](https://github.com/baidu/Familia/issues/70)

And the pretrained models it ships with are trained against a Mandarin corpus.

------
tinyhouse
The research quality and funding is just one factor. The more important factor
is quality of life. Things like air quality and being able to get along
without knowing Chinese.

~~~
xvilka
Air quality improves every year, and cities try to plant as much as trees as
possible. What I like - they even plant ivy or similar things to climb highway
pylons. It looks very beautiful during the summer.

------
coliveira
Great news. It is very important that we have as much competition as possible
in science. And China, being a rising power, can force western countries to
invest more in technology.

------
jorblumesea
China's policy towards political/ideological freedoms and "luring US
academics" seems distinctly at odds. Many in academia are ideologically
motivated.

~~~
cat199
but yet, many are ideological marxists with massively capitalist lifestyles..
so perhaps these things aren't so at odds.. :b

------
mrobot
It's good to see a positive article about China. Everything i was seeing in
the news seemed so negative and hostile.

------
thatcat
Is there a good English translation service for Chinese research?

~~~
echevil
Unlikely, but most Chinese scientists would still publish their best research
in English journals/conferences.

~~~
killjoywashere
That's true of most scientists from non-English-speaking countries. By the by,
there's a market for proofreading those translations (e.g. ThinkScience for
the Japanese-to-English market). You won't learn Chinese, but if you're
learning Chinese, it might be a good way to see how the Chinese make mistakes
going back to English.

~~~
jtmcmc
as one of the few native english speakers in my grad lab this was definitely a
job of mine.

~~~
killjoywashere
Were you learning Chinese?

------
curt15
How limiting do scientists in China find the Great Firewall?

~~~
jayalpha
Zero. Because they use VPNs. In fact, most companies in China provide VPNs for
their employees. No kidding.

------
askaboutit
Two easy ways to encourage foreign talent. Put huge investments into English
training within the country. Or as they could. Put huge investments into a far
simpler language such as Esperanto to create an easier to learn (world)
language. Secondly, drop the firewall so that foreign talent and local talent
don’t feel so divided.

~~~
Karrot_Kream
China already has a history with Esperanto and has hosted 2 Esperanto World
Congresses
([http://www.china.org.cn/china/2016-07/26/content_38959660.ht...](http://www.china.org.cn/china/2016-07/26/content_38959660.htm))

------
dqpb
This may not be accurate, but I feel like the US benefited a lot from many
foreigners knowing English. This does not seem to be the case for Chinese,
though I imagine that will change.

~~~
my_first_acct
Because of the difficult writing system (thousands of characters to memorize,
rather than a mere 26), Mandarin is unlikely to replace English as a world
language.

~~~
currymj
i don't know about this. how much worse, really, are hanzi (which do have a
loose structure to them, it's not just brute memorization) than the deranged
English spelling system?

if there's anyone who learned both as additional languages I would be
interested in hearing.

~~~
my_first_acct
Here is an article on the subject:
[http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html](http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html)
("Why Chinese is So Damn Hard")

And evin bad spelers can riit undrstandabbel englush.

~~~
bllguo
this is fantastic, thanks. I can definitely attest that Chinese people are
very proud of the difficulty of their language. One possible factor that isn't
mentioned: I believe that culturally, the Chinese value learning and education
more.

~~~
sidlls
Your belief needs evidence. Or a more precise definition of "learning" and
"education." My experience, both East and West, is that the typical person is
just too busy trying to survive to care much about learning or education (in
almost any sense).

------
sytelus
TLDR;

China has started the The Thousand Talent program to recruit professors from
all over the world:
[http://www.1000plan.org/en/](http://www.1000plan.org/en/). Also, Chinese govt
now offering international students scholarships to cover the cost if they
enroll: [https://www.scholarshipsads.com/china-
scholarships/](https://www.scholarshipsads.com/china-scholarships/).

~~~
DenisM
Oh my, the name could hardly be more unfortunate as it evokes the "Let a 1000
flowers blossom" campaign.

[https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/226950.html](https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/226950.html)

~~~
gowld
"1000" is an idiom for "many" in Chinese. it only evokes that to you because
"1000" isn't an idiom for "many" in your language.

In English, we'd have a "Million Dollar Talent" program and a Chinese would
say it unfortunately evokes "Millon Dollar Baby"

------
eiaoa
> This is fantastic news. Science will eventually benefit all of mankind even
> if the benefits are initially felt closer to where they're conducted.

> I welcome increased science funding regardless of who is doing it

Would you say the same about Nazi science? The world depicted in the Man in
the High Castle has some _very impressive_ scientific achievements.

The idea that science and knowledge are an unalloyed good to humanity _no
matter who develops the expertise_ is a fairy tale. Scientific knowledge and
the technical skill that flows from it are _weapons_. Weapons are tools that
can be used for good _or_ ill, so we want them to be in the hands of those who
can be (more) trusted to use them for good and out of the hands of those who
can be less trusted.

[http://www.spiegel.de/international/prison-camps-in-china-
th...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/prison-camps-in-china-three-
eyewitnesses-discuss-torture-and-forced-labor-a-1231301.html)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/china-is-creating-
co...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/china-is-creating-
concentration-camps-in-xinjiang-heres-how-we-hold-it-
accountable/2018/11/23/93dd8c34-e9d6-11e8-bbdb-72fdbf9d4fed_story.html?noredirect=on)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/magazine/the-lonely-
crusa...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/magazine/the-lonely-crusade-of-
chinas-human-rights-lawyers.html)

~~~
jackconnor
Do you equate the Chinese to nazis? Because that's insane and totally fear-
mongering, especially if you think China is evil but other countries would use
scientific research for only rainbows and puppies.

~~~
cscurmudgeon
Everything is not black and white. There is a spectrum and let us not pretend
that China is close to most democratic countries on this scale.

~~~
markdown
> let us not pretend that China is close to most democratic countries on this
> scale.

Why not?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States)

~~~
cscurmudgeon
Read your own link and see how it disappears as time progresses. You can't say
the same for China.

[https://qz.com/906142/a-chinese-medical-study-is-being-
retra...](https://qz.com/906142/a-chinese-medical-study-is-being-retracted-
for-relying-on-organs-harvested-from-executed-prisoners/)

They are conducting ethical cleansing right now.

------
choot
I wonder when will Russia do the same.

~~~
xvilka
It doesn't have that much money.

------
oh-kumudo
Meanwhile Trump is doing everything to convince talents around the globe that
US will not let them pass by easily /s

------
rm2040
LOL free smog... come one; come all!

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here.

------
quotemstr
Frankly, it's embarrassing how an absolutist regime can create a sense of more
on-the-ground intellectual freedom than can a supposedly free country.
Socially enforced censorship of painfully obvious facts in the west has gotten
out of control, and unless we place limits on our newfound authoritarian
impulses, we're going to be out-competed. While it's true that we've been very
successful for a long time, success breeds complacency. Objections to things
like genetic editing of humans on vague ethical grounds will just leave the
advantage with others.

~~~
alabato
Are you saying the west should allow human experiments on innocent (to-be-
born) humans like in China just to keep the pace ? The right to decide what we
do to your body, the right to not serve as guinea pig to experiments that aim
to achieve a Nazi-like goal of creating a superior race... These are "vague"
ethics? If you were currently dieing because of secondary effects due to an
experiment we did on you as an embryo (and that you never needed) maybe you
wouldn't find those "vague" ethics so useless.

~~~
quotemstr
The west performs human experimentation all the time for the sake of
validating new drugs and surgical devices. While current standards are, IMHO,
too strict, the system more or less works, and few people have serious ethical
problems with clinical trials, despite clinical trials being literally human
experimentation.

~~~
alabato
wow that's messed up :(. We experimented on a baby that :

1) never had the need of this experiment, it was not to cure him but to test
the effect of messing with a certain gene.

2) we never had its consent (obviously)

I don't know about US, but in EU we don't experiment with people, without
their concent and in order not to cure them, but to find how to build a
stronger race.

That's a whole higher level of screwed up that just happened in China.

This is non-consenting human experiment in order not to cure but to find how
to build a stronger race. This is not (as far as I know) in any way comparable
to what is happening in the West

~~~
pvaldes
> in EU we don't experiment with people, without their concent and in order
> not to cure them, but to find how to build a stronger race.

"Involuntary Sterilization and Castration in Sweden and the Nordic Countries"

"In 1934, the first sterilisation act was enacted in Sweden followed by the
first castration act in 1944. In 1972, Sweden became the first country in the
world to enact legislation for the amendment of legally registered sex,
however _preconditioned on sterilisation_. In the implementation of all these
laws, voluntary and involuntary interventions have been made with legislative
support... The involuntarily castrated [in the period 1972-2013] have still
not received any reparations from the Swedish State [2018]"

[https://www.soclaw.lu.se/en/node/394](https://www.soclaw.lu.se/en/node/394)

It seems that authists and trans people were actively targetted for a long
period of time.

~~~
pvaldes
authists -> autistics

