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a geneticist at the University of California at Berkeley who col- laborates with Chinese counter- parts. “But we should get used to it. There is competition from Chi- na now, and it’s really quite dras- tic how things have changed.” China has invested billions in improving its scientific standing. Almost every Chinese ministry has some sort of program to win a technological edge in every- thing from missiles to medicine. Beijing’s minister of science and technology, Wan Gang, will visit the United States in early July and is expected to showcase some of China’s successes. In May, for example, a super- computer produced in China was ranked the world’s second-fastest machine at an international con- ference in Germany. China is now in fourth place, tied with Germany, in terms of the number of supercomputers. China has jumped to second place — up from 14th in 1995 — behind the United States in the number of research articles published in sci- entific and technical journals worldwide. Backed by the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, Chinese med- ical researchers, partnering with a firm in the United States, beat out an Indian team last year to develop a new test for cervical cancer that costs less than $5. The goal is to test 10 million Chi- nese women within three years. Chinese engineers have signifi- cantly improved on Western and Soviet coal-gasification technol- ogy as part of a multibillion- dollar effort to create green Chi- nese energy.
Action, not research “The action is here,” said S.
Ming Sung, the chief Asia-Pacific representative for the Clean Air Task Force, a U.S.-based nonprof- it entity, and a former Shell Oil executive. “In the U.S., there are too many paper researchers. Here, they are doing things.” Meanwhile, Chinese military researchers appear to be on the cusp of a significant break- through: a land-based anti-ship ballistic missile that is causing concern within the U.S. Navy. In 2007, Chinese geneticists discovered vast differences in the genetic makeup of Africans,
YUAN SHUILING/IMAGINECHINA Chinese researcher and data analyst Zhao Bowen in the lab of BGI, which has insulated itself from the government’s dictates.
Asians and Caucasians. They will soon report a breakthrough showing why some people — such as Tibetans — can live ef- fortlessly at high altitudes while others can’t. There are challenges. China is still considered weak at innova- tion, and Chinese bureaucrats routinely mandate discoveries — fantasy-world marching orders that Western scientists view as absurd. In 2008, the Ministry of Sci- ence and Technology gave re- searchers two years to come up with 30 medicines ready for clin- ical trials and only five days to apply for grants to fund the work. That’s despite the fact that since the communist revolution in 1949, China has developed only one internationally recognized drug — Artemisinin — to fight malaria. Chinese science and technol-
ogy is also awash in scams and sometimes-troubling practices.
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An emerging scientific competitor
China is determined to establish itself as a scientific superpower, steadily increasing its pool of scientific researchers and funding toward research projects to compete globally.
Estimated number of people engaged in scientific and engineering research and development* (in millions)
1.2 0.9 0.6 0.3 0
’96 ’98 ’00 ’02 ’04 1.47
1.42 1.36
United States
China
European Union
0.71 Japan 0.22 ’06 ’07
South Korea
3% 2 1 0
'96 '98 '00 '02 '04
*Reported on a full-time basis. 2007 data for the United States are estimated based on annual growth rate between 1995 and 2006. SOURCE: National Science Foundation
More than 200 institutions in China practice controversial
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shake the world!” bellowed Liu Jian, chief executive of Hualong Fertilizer Technique Co. Liu says he has developed a method to re- duce fertilizer use by half through the use of nanotech- nology, although officials at the Agriculture Ministry mock the claim. “Will you help us raise some capital?” Liu asked in an in- terview. Finally, plagiarism and doc- tored results seem to be as com- mon as chopsticks. A study by Wuhan University uncovered an entire industry of bogus report and thesis writers who raked in $145 million last year, a fivefold increase since 2007. The emergence of China as a nascent scientific superpower
Research-and-development spending as a share of economic output (as a percentage of GDP)
3.4% 3.5%
2.7%
1.5% 1.8%
Japan South
Korea
United States
European Union
China
S
KLMNO
MONDAY, JUNE 28, 2010 U.S. worried about competition from the scientists it helped train
That hunger is evident in the halls of BGI, home to Zhao Bow- en and more than 1,500 other Chinese scientists and techni- cians. Located in an industrial zone in the southern Chinese megalopolis of Shenzhen, BGI has grown into one of the world’s leading genomics institutes de- voted to deciphering the genetic blueprint of organisms. Over the past few years, scien-
tists at BGI sequenced the genes of a chicken, a silkworm, a pan- da, a strain of rice and 4,000- year-old human remains from Greenland. In January, BGI made the big-
gest purchase of genome se- quencing equipment ever, buy- ing 128 ultra-high-tech machines from California-based Illumina. With that one acquisition, BGI could very well surpass the entire gene-sequencing output of the United States.
Shunning dictates
Inside the 11-story facility, the vibe is pure Silicon Valley start- up: shorts, flip-flops, ankle bracelets, designer eyewear and a random tattoo. Zhao came to BGI on a summer internship last year to work on cucumbers. Now a full-time employee while con- tinuing his studies, Zhao is turn- ing his attention to a topic West- ern researchers have shied away from because of ethical worries: Zhao plans to study the genes of 1,000 of his best-performing classmates at a top high school in Beijing and compare them, he said, “with 1,000 normal kids.” BGI’s secret — and the secret to a lot of China’s best scientific institutes — seems to be insulat- ing itself from China’s govern- ment bureaucracy. BGI started as the Beijing Genomics Institute in the early 2000s but left Beijing in 2007 after the Ministry of Sci- ence and Technology tried to dic- tate what it could and could not study. The Shenzhen city government
'06 '07 THE WASHINGTON POST
raises questions about the U.S. relationship with Beijing. Ever since the United States opened the door to Chinese students in the 1970s, hundreds of thou- sands have flocked to America. Most have studied science or en- gineering and have been wel- comed in research institutions across the land. But with China becoming a competitor, U.S. ex- perts have begun to question that practice. FBI officials allege that there is
a large-scale operation in the United States to pilfer American industrial, scientific, technologi- cal and military secrets. In the past few years, dozens of Chinese have been convicted of stealing American technology and ship- ping it to China. “The science and technology
relationship with China has al- ways stood up against all kinds of political pressures,” said Richard P. Suttmeier, who has researched China’s rise for the National Sci- ence Foundation. “Now that you have competition going on, find- ing the basis for cooperation in the absence of trust is an issue. It goes to questions of espionage and a hunger for technology.”
offered it millions of dollars in grants and operating expenses to move south. Last year, BGI re- ceived a $1.5 billion line of credit from the China Development Bank. “We came here because it was the best place for us to pursue science,” said Yang Huanming, the institute’s founder. “We’re not interested in politics.” By far, China’s most successful research institution is the Na- tional Institute for Biological Sci- ences, known as NIBS, which is responsible for half of the peer- reviewed publications in China. The institute’s 23 principal inves- tigators, its director and deputy director are all returnees from the United States. It’s also the only major research institute in China that does not have a Com- munist Party secretary. Luo Minmin, 37, a neurobiolo-
gist, returned to China six years ago after getting his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and completing a postdoctoral research stint at Duke. Luo said he has a big budget at NIBS and greater research freedom than he would have in the United States. He’s studying a gene involved in attention-deficit disorder. “If I had stayed in America, the chances of making a discovery would have been lower,” he said. “Here, people are willing to take risks. They give you money, and essentially you can do whatever you want.”
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A costumed female diver feeds hungry fish during the traditional Japanese star festival of Tanabata at the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise aquarium and amusement park in Yokohama, south of Tokyo. Tanabata, inspired by an ancient story, commemorates the meeting of the stars Altair and Vega in the night sky. The festival is celebrated by writing wishes on colorful paper and hanging the wishes in bamboo trees.
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