China’s unique path to scientific and technological power

[Beijingwalker]

China’s unique path to scientific and technological power​

Caroline S Wagner
18 September 2024

China’s stunning rise to world-class levels in science and technology defied most predictions. In 1980, China was barely a blip on the scientific radar. In a magnanimous gesture by Western diplomats, agreements were signed to encourage cooperation in science and technology. The signatures were inked in the spirit of goodwill, and with the implicit belief that, with prosperity, China would in turn adopt liberal and democratic governance.

China certainly mastered these lessons in science and technology. In 1990, Chinese authors produced less than 2% of articles in Web of Science. In 2023, they dominate with 25% of all articles – the largest contributing nation to the Web of Science (the United States has held the top spot since 1948 when it grabbed the lead from the United Kingdom).

Disillusionment has replaced hope among those who believed that science and technology would bring China into a liberal, global rules-based order. Conversely, science and technology appear to be strengthening China’s tools of state control, like facial recognition, media controls and global infusions of misinformation and cyber-attacks designed to counter Western values.

A national policy commitment

To put the rise of China in historical perspective, it is well known that China historically has been a global innovator, developing gun powder, rockets and paper. This golden age faded as Europe underwent a period of scientific, technological and industrial renaissance. A period that also saw strong and persistent economic growth and the West becoming enviably wealthy.

In his monumental “Science and Civilisation in China” series, British scientist and sinologist Joseph Needham saw in China the potential to reclaim its position as a scientific powerhouse, but he famously asked why China had not developed a science system similar to that of the West: institutionalised, productive and tied to innovation. Many pieces of the system were in place, after all.

Many have argued that science and democracy are natural partners (perhaps even co-dependent), but China’s success puts that into question. Why has China succeeded without the accompanying liberalisation that so many expected?

I argue that China lacked the state functions provided in the West that would create the conditions for science and technology to flourish. Since 1980, China has since put these policy mechanisms in place, to spectacular effect.

Four strategic decisions

Since reopening to the West, and with carefully crafted imitation, China made four strategic decisions to propel it forward in science and technology: investment in research and development, growth of educational investments (including student mobility), changes to intellectual property laws, and active, targeted procurement of industrial and military products. Let’s take these apart.

• Research and development: Since 1990, China’s national spending on research and development increased at a rapid clip. From less than 0.6% of GDP in 1990, in 2023 China spent over 2.2% on R&D, just shy of the OECD average of 2.7%. This spending was complemented by policy changes to patent law to align it more closely with international norms.

In 1992 and thereafter (1993 and 2008), China changed patent law to encourage domestic innovation, attract foreign direct investment and create marketable products for global trade. In 2001, China gained accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) based upon these and other alignments with WTO norms and policies.

• Educational investments: China has tripled its number of universities since 1990, and the government has set up at least 500 State Key Laboratories. As is well known, Chinese students and scholars have travelled to the West in huge numbers to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. These scholars and students contribute mightily to Western strength, while enriching China as well.

Initially, by Western standards, China’s scholarship was poor. Western policy-makers soothed concerns by assuming China was simply imitating the West and could not innovate. However, this assumption cannot be supported by the numbers: China has improved its showing in numbers of citations at a rapid pace.

By 2022, using Web of Science data, China had overtaken the United States in the relative participation in the top 1% most highly cited works after outcompeting the European Union on this indicator in 2015. China’s work shows increasing novelty and innovation.

• Intellectual property: Although slower off the mark, China’s patent performance is similarly impressive: Yuen Yuen Ang notes: “In 2006, the Chinese central government launched a campaign to promote ‘indigenous innovation’, with the goal of progressively replacing foreign technologies with homegrown ones and the resulting [patent] filings have risen exponentially.”

By 2011, China surpassed the United States in numbers of patent filings when counting both domestic and international patents. Of the top five companies filing patents in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), four are Chinese-based organisations: Tencent, Baidu, Ping and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The US’s IBM is in fifth place.

• Targeted procurement: Active, targeted procurement of industrial and military products marks rapidly growing economies. China has systematically tied these functions together in state-owned enterprises, defence-oriented universities and a series of plans and targets enacted throughout the past 40 years. Targeting and goals diffuse to regional and local levels through the Central Communist Party cadres who put policies into practice.

From imitation to innovation

China’s rise may not be completely unexpected. In his classic 1963 work, Little Science, Big Science, Derek de Solla Price noted that underdeveloped countries can develop science capacity quickly if an effort is made, noting the example presented by the USSR. He stated: “The later a country starts its determined effort to make modern science, the faster it can grow…”

Certainly, South Korea, Japan and Finland are examples of recent success gained from marrying science policy to capacity and industrial innovation. These countries liberalised politically and economically as they developed, and adapted to global norms, but China has not.

State direction may work well for some functions, especially in the ‘catch-up’ phase. Ang suggests a “directed improvisation” can best describe China’s rise and its escape from the poverty trap.

Anna Lisa Ahlers has also noted the advantages of top-down direction for China’s growth.

It is feasible to expect a rapid rise in capability using top-down methods, but China’s move into the front ranks of innovation, its huge population and its stated goal of being the dominant power in Asia has alarmed Western nations to the point where many are erecting research security measures and reviving talk about “technological sovereignty”.

Perhaps a bubble is bursting, one formed by the release of talent from the former Soviet and East German states as post-Cold War barriers dropped and a global network of scientific cooperation arose. China benefitted mightily from this network, but has only assumed some of the features expected of adherents.

As it has risen to the top of the heap, China’s rise in power is changing the network itself, causing retrenchment and perhaps disintegration of a 40-year period of active engagement. If China sets the rules for global science, expect more retrenchment to national fortresses.