Setting Fish Free Bridge

This is the Fangsheng Bridge in Zhujiajiao, a Venetian-style Water Village near Shanghai that our host Dongqing Wei kindly took us to visit a week ago. Fangsheng is a 16th century "setting fish free" bridge, at the foot of which vendors sell bags of fish and turtles. Buyers then set them free in the water, thus smugly gaining merit according to Buddhism. (Did anyone ask the fish and turtles if they would rather have not been caught in the first place?).

In some ways the fish are an analogy to what China is trying to do with basic science - set it free. Funding for basic science is now doubling in the space of two years. Sounds impressive (although the actual dollar numbers will in the near term only approach those of NSF or BES, not surpass them). But judging by what we saw at Shanghai Jiao Tong University the building infrastructure is also in place. What seemed to me to be missing was a critical mass of top quality faculty. SJTU has started this recruitment, and we talked to some recent recruitees - all originally Chinese who had been in top positions in North America. Indeed, one of the natural consequences for the USA is that this funding increase, when coupled to the equivalent defunding proposed by the US Congress, should lead to a potentially large proportion of the brilliant young Chinese, of the type that have been dominating the contests for leading science positions in the USA over the last 20 years, preferring the exciting challenges beckoning in their country of origin.

Scientists are fish in bags - we can swim only wherever we happen to be set free.

Welcome, China, to the Club of Scientific Superpowers

Data, released today by NSF, illustrate quantitatively what many have been feeling over the last 10 years - that China is surging in the world of scientific research. Looking at the rate of change of many indicators, China will very soon overtake the U.S.

This has been interpreted in gloomy terms as a "worrisome trend showing erosion of U.S. competitiveness" and as indicating that the "U.S. dominance in science is at risk".

I would look at things a different way. I would welcome China to the club of scientific superpowers, applaud their progress over the last decade (which does not seem to have been mirrored by India, which arguably could have done as well), and try to see what we can learn from it.

Well, the U.S., to its credit, has lead the world in welcoming qualified foreigners to populate its research universities and fuel the creative technological drive the future always requires. But since time immemorial (meaning, at least since I was first in the States in '85-'89!) we have bemoaned the number of homegrown graduate students in the sciences. Local kids just don't seem to get motivated and curious about finding things out.

Compare this with the sentiment embodied in the following quote in Time Magazine from Energy Secretary Chu on a trip to Beijing: "In the U.S., rock stars and sports stars are the glamour people. In China, it's scholars. Here, Nobel laureates are the equivalent of Britney Spears." If this is truly the case, look forward to a fair fraction of the best and brightest of the youth of the presently 1.3 billion Chinese keenly dedicating their creative abilities to science.
And if, as is likely, the U.S. cohort remains mired in banker/rock-star/NFL fantasyland then China will quickly swamp the science stats.

How, then, will the U.S. remain at the table? Maybe the only way will be to rapidly further step up immigration of qualified talent from China? Rapid immigration isn't impossible - just look at Vancouver which, in the blink of an eyelid, has quickly become 30% Chinese, albeit not uniquely of the highly-qualified variety. But whether such an influx happens in the U.S. may well depend on whether we will continue have the means to attract the brightest over here. If not......