Issue #150 The State of Chinese Science

The State of Chinese Science

Jacob Dreyer

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Employees work on a semiconductor-wafer production line at a factory owned by Jiangsu Azure Corporation Cuoda Group Co., Ltd. in Huai’an, Jiangsu Province, China, 2022. Photo by VCG via Getty Images.

Issue #150
December 2024










Notes
1

“(CPC Congress) Xi Underscores Role of Education, Sci-tech, Talent in Modernization Drive,” International Department, Central Committee of CPC, October 16, 2022 .

2

Gemma Conroy, Pratik Pawar, and Sian Powell, “How China Is Capturing Attention with Landmark Research,” Nature Index, August 9, 2023 . The author is an editor at Palgrave Macmillan, which is owned by Springer Nature.

3

Hepeng Jia, “Beijing, the Seat of Science Capital,” Nature Index, September 19, 2020 .

4

See (in Chinese).

5

Jiuchen Zhang and Feklova T. Yu, “Soviet Scientists in Chinese Institutes: A Historical Study of Cooperation Between the Two Academies of Sciences in 1950s,” Endeavour 42, no. 1 (March 2018) .

6

Dan Wang, “China’s Hidden Tech Revolution,” Foreign Affairs, March–April 2023.

7

From a seminar Groys gave at NYU in 2011 as he prepared the Shanghai Biennial 2012, cocurated with Qiu Zhijie, Jens Hoffman, and Johnson Chang.

8

Aaron Bastani, Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto (Verso, 2019).

9

“Is China a Leader in Quantum Technologies?,” China Power Project, Center for Strategic and International Studies .

10

Victoria Bela, “China’s New Cancer Drug Toripalimab Is Approved in the US But Will Cost 30 times More,” South China Morning Post, November 29, 2023 .

11

See .

12

Victoria Bela, “US Scientist Convicted for China Ties Considering Jobs in Hong Kong, Mainland,” South China Morning Post, August 24, 2024 .

13

Ryan Quinn, “Chinese Scientists Increasingly Leaving US,” Inside Higher Ed, July 5, 2023; Yingyi Ma, “How America Lost the Heart of China’s Top Talent,” Brookings Institute, November 16, 2023 .

14

Stella Chen, “Not Forgetting the Original Intention,” China Media Project, April 18, 2022 .

15

Michael T. Nietzel, “US Universities Fall Further Behind China in Production of STEM PhDs,” Forbes, August 7, 2021 .

16

Margaret Sutherlin, “China’s Mega-Rich Gen Zs Are Heading Home,” Bloomberg, September 22, 2023 .

17

Cheng Li, “The Rapid Rise of the ‘Cosmos Club’ in the Xi Jinping Era,” China-US Focus, July 15, 2022 .

18

See essays by Yuk Hui in e-flux journal ; and Jason Farago, “An Artist Warns of a Robot-Ruled Future. Or Is It Our Present? Let’s Discuss,” New York Times, August 23, 2018.

19

Stephen Chen, “Quantum Entanglement: How US-Led Sanctions Are Turning Russia’s Genius Scientists to China for Collaboration,” South China Morning Post, July 22, 2023 ; “China’s Belt and Road Initiative Is Boosting Science—the West Must Engage, Not Withdraw,” editorial, Nature, October 24, 2023 ; David Matthews, “Germany Moves to Create New Restrictions on Research Cooperation with China,” Science Business, July 18, 2023 .

20

Jonathan S. Landreth, “Ya-Wen Lei on China’s Gilded Cage,” The Wire China, December 3, 2023 .

21

The recent Economist supplement “The World Ahead 2025” has many concrete examples, like battery technology . As the Xi Jinping quote that begins this essay suggests, the CCP may feel that it sinks or swims based on science and technology. Marx might agree: “Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-act­ing mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material—trans­formed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified.” Karl Marx, Grundrisse, 1857. Available at marxists.org .