Governing Science in 21st Century China

good afternoon good morning or good evening wherever you may be in the world my name is David Goodman I'm the director of the China studies Center here at the University of Sydney and we host these International research webinars every month before we start can I acknowledge the traditional owners of The Landmark which the university is based the traditions and Elders of the peoples of this land who are the gadigal people of the Ori Aurora nation in the case of the University of Sydney I recognize their traditions and Elders past present and emerging on land which has never been exceeded today we're very privileged to have two wonderful speakers the main speaker Anna Alice from Max Planck in Berlin who's going to talk about Chinese management of science right now and then from UTS Marina Jang who again is another expert in this area on the management of technology in China so I'm going to hand over to them but before I do can I remind you that in the question and answer session at the end please put your questions in the Q a function at the bottom of your Zoom screen and Marina will read out the questions and put them to Anna when the time is right so now over to Marina and let's hear what's going on thank you David thank you for the introduction um let me just introduce Dr Anna Lisa and Alice first Anna is the head of the lease matner research group China in the global system of a science at the Max Planck Institute for the history of Science in Berlin this is a highly interesting research area Anna and her team are doing so without further Ado let me just um pass on to Anna for her presentation she will give a presentation for about um 35 minutes and if you have any questions please as David suggested write your your questions in the chat box and we will address your questions after the presentation and I will join you actually to ask questions myself after Anna's presentation let's welcome Anna hi everyone um thank you David for inviting me and for hosting the seminar and for Marina for introducing me um it's all very generous I'm happy to be with you today if only virtual and to discuss um a new research field that I um yeah recently um entered I'm going to share my PowerPoint with you now I hope you can see it if not you just have to shout and let me know um so Maria has already mentioned that I'm the head of a new research group at the Max Planck Institute the name is China and the global system of science we have gathered a group of I would call them mainly social scientists who are interested in the topic the development of the Chinese science system over the past few decades and it's Global integration we have four main research areas that you can see listed on the left side in the green box so today's topic is more or less aligned with the second and the third one so structures and Norms of China science policy and the agency left for scientists and Scholars in in China to move in these in these structures um we have existed from the very beginning together with the pandemic so our research designs were heavily influenced by that most of us have not done empirical field work for the last three years which is really um sad but we hope to be picking it up again um this year so and what I want to share with you today ideas and um structures of governing science in the PRC today I have three main points or areas that I want to touch upon first of course I want to outline to you why I think this is an interesting field also for policy analysis most of you will I think immediately you grasp it and maybe are already working in this field so I don't have to spend a lot of time on that but I started off with that my main part on the main part of my talk is about my observation of a certain Divergence or even Paradox of the parallel existence of a very strong science bureaucracy and technocracy in China and and again increasing ambition by The Party The CCP to control what is going on in science and technology um and I'll do that on the basis of these three areas that I've listed here goals of science policy the main steering and incentive structures and also Global Outlook and I'll close by asking critically um myself but also all of you whether this policy field is really worth studying and is it a policy field and is it different from other policy Fields if we research contemporary China you could say well it looks exactly like the things we observe in I don't know economics or other areas so why bother um to look at it here and also some questions about good research designs for future exploration of this topic so I could bring you loads and loads and loads of data and illustrations of the so-called rise of Chinese science over the past and decades the rise of or the increase of Chinese contributions to the global system of science you've probably read that China is now the biggest producer of scientific articles especially in the Natural Sciences and Engineering um so this is all already in the world um I think an interesting development recently is that think tanks other research organizations and the media are dissecting these big numbers and looking into different fields of Science and Technology to find out how big the influence of Science and Technology coming from China is globally an Australian Think Tank aspie has a few weeks ago produced this report which showed that China is already leaving in in many of the research areas they have studied I brought you this one quote from a writer's report on this study you've probably read it and the main gist here was additionally that it's now become a real system competition or rivalry so it's science produced in Democratic contexts versus science in non-democratic context and of course China is the biggest player in the letter group so this has become yeah one of the stories being told you can take these indexes with a grain of salt I think but there are more and more studies which can show indexes by nature or other science organizations and and publishers that can show that there are outputs in many fields where you could already say that Chinese contributions are leading for example zero Net Zero emission Technologies and things that are also very important for solving Global Grand challenges today so this is one of the main stories I think what is often and that's why I brought the second graphic what is often sidelined is the fact that when you look at the so-called rise of Chinese contributions the main focus is on Natural Sciences and technology and that is maybe a natural assumption because we would um think that under non-free or non-democratic conditions of course social sciences and Humanities are the first victims or the main victims and they cannot really Thrive but it's interesting to see that if you look at data there's also indication that contributions to social science and Humanities coming from China is also really On The Rise quantitatively and qualitatively again you could look at different ways that that is counted social science citation index is one so not only the numerical output in total but also the quality if you want of output is measured there and China's contributions are also on the rise in that regard last big macro um illustrations before I move on I think it is an odd thing to say Chinese science I mean it is also a difficult term I think uh but given the highly Global nature of science as it's done um in our times now and that is also very visible if you look at China's of the position of Chinese output Chinese or science made in China compared globally you can see that among the five big science Nations that nature has outlined China is one it's only second to the United States but what is more important is the intensity of collaboration that is measured in Publications mostly in projects and patents and you can see that in the thickness of the lines here on the left side and you can see that many of the lines going to or from China are already very thick so China is or Chinese contributions are a very important part of world science and only my own institution the max plan Society they do list their main International Partners I think annually so these numbers are from 2021. and the Chinese Academy of Science is number six and it is a second uh largest International partner in co-publications so again Also regarding what we discussed in Europe for instance at the moment should we um decouple or restrict scientific collaboration that will have very very significant effects on how science is done um also in Europe just to highlight that again so if we see these impressive numbers and if we for a moment assume that contributions from China are on the rise in the global system of science then of course the immediate questions how do they come about uh what is their origin what is the foundation and there are these rather simple narratives I think around which say that um first of all of course in a in an autocracy like China it's very easy to steer things from the top so once the party leadership the government has a vision a strategy for Science and Technology just put it in place and then make everything and everyone fall in line I think we know from a studying Chinese politics that that is usually not how it works and how it looks like on the ground and I think that is true for science policy as well then the argument is that well over the past 20 years one example is university rankings Chinese actors were just picking low-hanging fruits because I just put a mess of resources and human resources and financial resources in certain fields and then just reap the benefits of it and it's actually not so much about quality is mainly quantity also that I think by just looking at citation numbers can easily be discarded um and then there is this overarching narrative also when we talk about what kind of Global Effect do these developments have that there is this Grand Master Plan that's a bit similar to the first point of okay this is the science system we want to build and this is the influence we want to have globally and that's how we do it at the leadership level and again I think in what I'll say um you will hopefully be convinced by me that this is not so so easy also simple um so if you want to understand clearer where I'm coming from or what my Approach is you've probably already heard when I say science I am actually meaning I'm not an English native speaker so you have to apologize or I have to apologize for maybe not picking the best terms in German we can say this and shaft and then you would immediately cover any discipline in science and scholarship including the social sciences and Humanities that you can imagine so that's actually what I would or what I'm interested in if I look at the developments in China so the broadness the whole Spectrum the comprehensiveness of of Science and scholarships like Academia in this context not confined to Natural Sciences and and engineering also I think we have brilliant studies on what is called the Chinese Innovation System or the commercialization of science where that is the main interest is often economic studies where it is explained and explored how Innovations come about and how they are put into practice and then so commercialized and and becoming technology that can be sold in board and everything I think I am also at as much interested in the basic research side of things so so the you could call it the input side of the science system uh which is I would say not as much covered in research and I think it's uh yeah it's worth doing that so that's also what we try in the group and then it is also coming from my own background as a political scientist a political sociologist and I think it is worth doing policy analysis in this field when I say governing or steering here today I of course mainly take the state's perspective on um on how science is imagined and scientific governing is imagined and just just very very briefly an outlook on what we have um in the uh yeah in the existing research literature where I think these aspects that I've just highlighted are not very well covered in current literature so the one the this orange background is supposed to outline this book by Tony Sage for instance where you have a more structured systematic overview of the the policy system behind Science and Technology yes or STI in China that was done for the reform era I haven't seen and maybe you can correct me something similar for the very current stage we are in so like a systematic overview of the main actors and institutions and mechanisms covering these aspects that I've just outlined there is a lot on the Mao era there's a lot on the early reform and opening era there's anthropological studies there's Innovation studies but these things that in Chinese language you would find very easily look country overviews um are not that present and then again so there is a richness of Chinese studies sometimes they don't really cover exactly the kind of Sociology of science aspects that I would be interested in so these two bodies of literature that don't usually match and I think yeah there is room for some structured overview of of Sciences or academic policies in China currently I have for a different talk and a different projects once outlined how I see um the political leadership's grasp on science ever since the founding of the People's Republic of China and the interactions between science and politics I will not go through this I mean you see this long list for the two eras the early PRC decades and the reformant opening era here I don't have time to do this very historical overview but I've highlighted a few points I think which I can quickly name because they are related to how I see changes under the current leadership or say within the last two decades um I'm planning to prepare a book manuscript device so I've put all of these details in there but here for today I think it should suffice to highlight a few aspects um in this overall approach of the CCP or political leadership to science and scholarship in China um you I think can easily um depict how the change looks like when we move from The Mao era to the reform and opening era so in the Mao era science technology when it happened was highly politicized it followed this political cause it followed a Soviet model of of universities and reform um sorry and research organizations um there was no real uh influence of global standards of scientific evaluation that would become an important aspect later um it was a very um say practice oriented system with naturally focused on engineering which was close to the Soviet model and overall it was a party the CCP that designed how academic activities how research if at all was going to happen in Mao China that all changed I think tremendously in the reform and opening era when science was considered one of the pillars of modernization it was important for economic development you needed a highly skilled and educated Workforce and so the Ministries that were responsible for science policy also began to import a so-called western or like International standards of of performance evaluation so from science indicators to university rankings for instance to measure to first of all push the development of Chinese institutions but also to gradually measure its standing vis-a-vis other Global institutions there was also the inter the reintroduction I could say of other models of doing research and University education more an American styled model some references to European University models again that had existed in the Primo era and overall the steering of all of this was in the hands of what I called also in the beginning of the bureaucracy or like Ministries they were working very technocratically importing all these as I said all these evaluation criteria and indexes and rankings and slowly integrating Chinese universities and research organizations into these into these structures and what we see today I think is a mixture of both of that um again I would have to talk for a long time to go through all these details but I think that what I've just said for instance the import of other successful Global models of universities following aligning with a um more or less American Standard that is matched now with more calls for ging institutions that have Chinese characteristics and to also bring that to the global stage to have something to offer a Chinese model or something I'm more skeptical I don't see a real Chinese model of the University evolving as of yet but maybe that is something we can discuss but it's clear that there is a more emphasis more calls for these indigenous and local and Chinese characteristics and all of that also from this very pragmatic focus of the research and the reform and opening era where a lot of emphasis was on forming national talent this whole idea of science technology innovation has now become a global one putting China in global competition so the search for talent is also Global and the Chinese political leadership is envisioning China's rise to a global leader and all of that I don't see that so present in the reform and opening era um and finally that also means that we now have the combination of um yeah the technocracy and the party in controlling all of these developments so just because we're talking or I'm talking about 21st century um some emphasis again also in party messaging there is a mixture of I would say This Global focus on how making China globally competitive and coupling that with calls for indigenous science and Innovation and Chinese characteristics so in the social science dimension for instance you want or there is calls for theories with Chinese characteristics I have some ideas about what that is but you can see that there is this combination now again moving away from the more matter of fact technocracy of Reform and opening era to something um that is uh yeah characterizing current science policy it's hard to say and that's maybe one of the main messages also for all the rest of what I'm going to say where this is going I think also in Western media whenever Xi Jinping says something very harshly about you know scientists have their motherland and they have to defend Chinese characteristics this is picked up but the fact that these other things Global orientations evaluation criteria coexist um is not that much covered but I think it's there and it's important to to take that into account I won't go through it all it is reflected in Xi Jinping speeches if you go through them there's all these factors mixed together so yeah science has to be steered by the party in China it has however to uh to be aligned with uh Global Science governance uh China has to work with other nations be yeah in the global Ambitions to solve Global tolerance but then again you want Chinese characteristics in a very Chinese style STI system and so on and so forth so it diffuses messaging I would say uh next to it um again as I said this very bureaucratic steering approach uh coexists um you know that from the tradition of making big plans for example there is a science and technology plan that is due to be renewed anytime soon maybe now um which highlights specific fields in science and technology that have to be pushed and where most of the resources are going um it all seems to be very yeah technocrately planned how China is going to be and that is one of the Visions the leading Global Science Power by 2050 um and again the the way to measure this is China standing in international rankings and indexes so focus on Global Leadership same time Xi Jinping visits Chinese universities and outlines that they have to be universities with Chinese characteristics um that the party of course gets this renewed uh strong role in universities and research organizations and there's even even references to these historical slogans of both red and expert in his speeches to mostly University managers and administrators but I think it's a message that is of course also going to the scientists and students all together the technical steering I I think so I first prepared an overview of all the institutions and the funding schemes but I think that's very technical so I'll just um focus on a few mechanisms or new developments that I think highlight a few of the Dynamics that are most mostly interested in um again if we talk about the steering of plants and funding schemes for STI there is a bureaucratic a ministerial side of things for instance the renewed effort to bolster basic research because also Chinese leadership understands that if you want to become a global leading Nation you cannot only do that in the applied field you also have to come up you know with Innovative theories and Innovative findings and groundbreaking uh Frontier research in the basic area and that's where a lot of funding is going now through the Ministries but then there's also this idea that you can Foster basic science applied right science or basic research applied research and then commercialization in what is called State key Laboratories and some other uh models you bring all these things together plus education to yeah top down steer how Innovation is coming about I think Marina Jang knows much more about that um but that I to me to my understanding is still mainly driven by the Ministries Ministry of Science and Technology mainly uh while the party has its own ideas of how science should function so there's also um emphasis on basic research but as Xi Jinping says himself basic research always has has to have this application in mind and these are party slogans I mean if that ever comes about it would be a new model of doing science I don't see that materializing at the very moment but who knows and then of course there were recent changes introduced uh at the two sessions meetings this March where the ministry of Science and Technologies responsibilities are restructured again it's too early to say I think what that means uh what is important I think is that the party has said that it will take a stronger role again in steering Science and Technology uh yeah governance and that is happening under this new Central Commission of for Science and Technology again we'll have to see I think there is this clear signals in the also while China is facing the the technology struggles with the United States especially and also with recent restrictions in Europe most observers say that these structural changes are related to that but yeah it's I think we can discuss it I think it's it's too early to say where this is leading a few aspects regarding the incentives that those structures create for the Personnel the scientists and Scholars again we have a bureaucratic approach to this there is a lot of Reform regarding um the evaluation system in China so while uh International Publications were pushed so much over the past decades and even got bony payments for that that's an account on the left side how much you could earn for papers in certain journals the Ministries have moved to change that because they were also unintended consequences a little fraud and Corruption and all of that and came up with new guidelines for evaluations and for luring Talent back to China and things like that again very much a bureaucratic approach in my view at the same time again the party has of course influence on how science and scholarship is produced and where it sets incentives not very surprisingly the main incentives that are pushed by the party are for the stem Fields social sciences and Humanities are more or less discriminated against because you can easily Define taboo topics or sense of things more easily than in science and yeah Science and Technology and Engineering I think it's not that black and white but still uh there's no question about the fact that social sciences and Humanities are in a much weaker position in China it's not a Unity of science idea uh that we have there also there's guidelines for not vilifying the country uh for getting academic credits if you write policy reports instead of only academic papers and things like that so the political party steering of incentives is also there and I think I mean those of you work in institutions in China at the moment can can tell much more about that I think the effects can vary a lot so from anecdotal evidence when I talk to Chinese colleagues um yeah my my impressions are what diverse I have to say um then finally what are the ideas when it comes to situating um science made in China in the global domain uh recently there have been a lot of signals uh shown saying that the Chinese policy leadership is actually trying to withdraw China Chinese science Chinese scientists from a lot of the global structures um very significantly of course there is restrictions on data Exchange than your agencies for screening data that is used then in international collaboration and in Publications that's not something that is so particular to China I think other countries do it too but we know that in China it also has a political a very very political side to it anything could be called state secret or something that goes against National Security and can be then withdrawn and also as you've maybe seen in recent days there's announcements actually steps to remove foreign access to Chinese databases including C and Ki and others which is quite significant for Global exchanges and there was this big story um last year end of last year that Chinese universities are withdrawing from University rankings so after they have been so successful the last 15 years and risen constantly suddenly they might withdraw and only were three of them and there's I think very compelling explanation why especially these three because they haven't been really successful in these International rankings anyway but it was seen as a as a signal to say that okay we can also just you know leave again after we've played along uh for so long and we were quite successful it comes with calls to be more independent of so-called Western standards of evaluation and I think it's in a way it's true that you can see that these were often imported categories for science evaluation and now there should be more emphasis on as I said indigenous Innovation but also universities with Chinese characteristics and value that are more important to China maybe even to other countries and they should be reflected in the evaluation of scientific and scholarly performance as well so that tenancy is there again I don't think it is that there is a dramatic shift already I think it's it's um it's a formulated um ambition and it will be important to follow how that will develop and over the next few years I don't see a complete turn away from for instance uh International rankings yet which I think is still important to underline and the other side of the story again and now with more focus on on scientists and Scholars based in China who are affected by all these Dynamics I think what we can see however is still that there is a certain say autonomy I mean in Europe we very much like to talk about academic freedom I think this term is much too big to capture um realities also in in science systems over here so if we talk about um autonomous structures maybe um then there is some of that left also when it comes to Chinese STI and some rooms for agency of the ones working in these structures um I think a very important part and that's what I try to highlight by showing the embedded the global embeddedness of of um science produced in China is the individual integration into the global science system so scientists and Scholars with a global educational background International background maybe returning to China but still very much engaged in these with these ties and relations that doesn't easily go away and it also often has to do with how people work and what they see as Their audience and their yeah also evaluation criteria I think there is so much scientific intrinsic motivation present and that is very hard to be removed and I think when I talk to colleagues I'm always pretty impressed by how because people are used to restrictions how you find ways to to still function under that and to even produce excellent um outcomes and then I think that should not be forgotten um while we hear about all these uh shrinking spaces which is of course the main story but um there is Association and Excellence um and at yeah a global or a Cosmopolitan nature of science and and scholarship and that should also be highlighted and on the right side you just see two examples of how that plays out I think I mean those were the days in uh early 2020 there was all these stories that Chinese Laboratories were sharing the genomic sequences of the new virus that is found in in China and so they were doing what they were always doing sharing data until then they came the political gag orders and things so in the first instance um Global Science still worked until it was controlled from the top and an example for agency may be followed what is now happening around these Infamous um crispr babies in China's hojian kui the main scientist behind it he's very much an out uh Outsider in China now and there's a lot of push by the Chinese scientific Community to change ethical rules and actually the new rules that were launched uh very recently they are product of heavily or heavy lobbying by a scientists in China themselves so I think you can see there is even you know ways to to do some uh to have political influence among Chinese scientists so coming to an end um as I said to maybe open up our discussion so the main observation that I hope I was able to share with you today is that there are very Paradox signals regarding the orientation of um Chinese science policy at the moment there is this Divergence and from a domestic perspective between it all has to solve Chinese problems uh the pragmatic orientation at applicability versus still a strong orientation at Global indicators of scientific excellence and then also from a Global Perspective there are strong signals that we see an increasing closure of China as an actor in in the global system of science but it's also and even by Party leaders um the emphasis on International collaboration and even governing of science um I think from all that what we can see and how it plays out underground um yes there is more party steering and a party mandate or a party part of the party instrumentalizing STI now more strongly than ever or then yeah after the Mao era maybe but it's too early to say that these as I said the matter of fact technocracy is dead um I think at the moment when we see that the so-called Chinese indigenous values are integrated in evaluation then I think it's time to maybe say that but for the time being it's important to look at the coexistence of these two um powers and Chinese science policy and all together as I said um maybe that's something we can discuss together so is science policy in China then different from other policy Fields um I mean the Dynamics I have outlined party visions technocracies or bureaucracies that's present in any science in any policy field I'm sorry yes and no I think by these just to highlight the the global embeddedness again of Chinese scientific contributions you can see that it's something that goes beyond a domestic Dimension and perspective that's maybe one factor while being a policy field where we have no global uh governance system for it and but I'll I'll stop uh that here and we can discuss it further and then just the last point I think um it's so you can come to I think very different conclusions if you look at these macro data and illustrations and quantitative Impressions um but what is important to me also is to look qualitatively at things that are going on on the ground and if I as I just said so far I have just from being involved in in cooperation myself or hearing from colleagues I have some Impressions but it's different to corroborate them I think for a fundamental research uh yeah presentations and output and I'm excited to see how the rooms for that are existent or not when I myself can return to China for field research and maybe you have some experiences to share on that point so I'm thanking you already and now I'm looking forward to our discussion thank you Anna thank you for very informative and very uh insightful presentation um before we open the floor to the uh to the audience um I think you and I will discuss a few issues and then we can address the the quest questions raised by the uh by the audience so please help me understand what do you define science policy because that is the first puzzle that I um when I'm listening to your to your to your presentation because as you know my uh myself I'm and I call myself a scholar in Innovation studies so we do I do a lot of research in industrial policies Innovation policies and sometimes the Personnel Talent policies and university university policies but I just don't come across this term science policy so just help me to Define this term thank you that's a great question um it might have to do with as I said me also not being native and struggling to find something that is equivalent to the German term of wisnshaft which would cover it or you would say it and everyone would know and I think I I'm missing that term um in English and I think it would be better as you've suggested to maybe add a few terms so I would need to say it's Science and Technology higher education anything that happens in the academic sector so I I try to find a catch-all category by saying saying that by saying science policy but maybe that's not very precise so I'll think about a better term um for me it it covers as I have said in the beginning many more feels than just Natural Sciences um it is the idea in my view how the state leadership envisions what should happen in the fields of research and education uh basically um so I agree that it's not the best of terms and I think uh the better one yeah thank you so the second question so from your study what do you attribute uh China's success I use the term research output rather than research other than research breakthroughs over the past 10 15 20 years from the policy perspective mm-hmm yeah I think I mean um what is measurable in these quantitative indicators is output in certain Fields so you can measure publication output in general I think it's more important to measure citations because they show how much yeah how much others attribute quality to these outputs patents um and so I think indicators show that in specific Fields these uh China's contributions are on top coming out on top of all these accountings so I think that that is in a way a cooperation for that and and it happens in many of the fields that are outlined in these plans by the Chinese leadership to be Focus areas um from Quantum Computing to Aerospace and space Tech uh agricultural studies um as I said emission Technologies they were all in the catalogs and they are also coming out on top so I think I'm I'm not a fan of of drawing yeah immediate conclusions or causal relations from that but um I think there is ways to to trace successes of certain policies I would say a great thank you for your explanation because I'm doing a a research recently on the um is basically an article I'm trying to provide a counterbalanced view um to what SP findings and recommendations because I don't totally don't agree with their findings certainly don't agree with their recommendations in my view uh their methodology is flawed and the conclusions can be really misleading because the consequences could be their flaming unnecessary geopolitical tension between the west and China and the consequences could be China's Chinese research Community to be cut out from those very sick links between China and the US and with Europe so um I agree with you um I mean research about outputs um wise China is making a lot of progress but I think it's very important for us to pay attention to research quantity and quality as you said and different incentive mechanisms and the research quality could be different I mean as you said German scientists they do research out of their academic freedom and their scientific Curiosities but and the China's incentive strategy well I mean Publications past following is easy shortcut so I think that is something we need to uh I mean you you perhaps need to pay attention to and that's once the first thing and second thing is is sometimes it's not fair to just compare research outputs the reason is if you look at Chinese Academy of Science I mean you said 300 key uh National key Laboratories over a hundred and the name of cscs so that gives that organization enormous advantages just purely because of its share size so so I think um I I think we need to um to to pay attention to how you differentiate basic research and applying research so that's that probably will make your findings more interesting yeah thanks a very important um Inspirations and I share your I completely share your skepticism uh vis-a-vis these uh big indexes aspie and others I think I mean I think there are numbers that are hard to have to ignore but I would tend to align more with those yeah looking outside things yeah or I mean from within the scientific Community then think tank uh analysis but I mean we have think tanks here in Germany as well that do that and I I also share your worries about the consequences that might have because this just this this one study alone the report about it in German media has created such an outcry in German I mean it's it's not that these numbers are new or like the development is new it just shows that there are so so little understanding of things that are going on um in China from a European perspective but as you say that there are more creating I think fear-mongering and and this vision of an overreaching China then had the help and exactly exactly so that that that's that that's my fear I mean that could lead to um intensified uh China threat uh yeah and that's that's that's just from the Western's perspective but from China's perspective that might push the Garment to increase their concentration um in terms of governing signs that's the term I think used in this webinar I think that's really good term so um as as we can see um during the two sessions China has already made um several very um aggressive uh institutional reform proposals largely only science and technology so um I mean if because I don't really know science policy but I do know uh technology even there is a long distance between science and techno and Innovation and I think uh if I just attribute the most important policy factor in China's catch up or Rising science and technology is is a very pragmatic oriented policy in the past 20 years and it seems now that wind is changing direction and this can be a reaction to both domestic challenges Chinese are facing and also very hostile environment Chinese is is dealing geopolitically so this kind of non-necessary uh I mean even non-verified image of Chinese leading dominating in critical technologies will exactly push China to further control from the top and that will be a nightmare for the Science and Technology not just for China and for the humankind yeah I agree I agree um just one example is the discussion on completely excluding China scholarship Council holders exactly the debate again is so I mean in principle I I can uh I don't know I can I can even understand the Contra arguments and if you take but what I find very disturbing is that in all these debates about what could be a top reactions to things like that there is no long-term no long-term perspective there are no scenarios being shown on what that would mean um even though you could maybe understand the reasons for taking such a decision but what would it mean what effects would it have and that is in Europe at least that's completely lacking and that makes the discussion so difficult and also yeah produce some worries on my side on where this is going if I may I ask I can offer a bit of my experience being a Chinese native Chinese um well I'm not legally but um I'm a native speaker so I can make sense of the a sort of a subtle subtleties commonly embedded in policy documents and especially from the central policy perspective and you would never see very clear-cut definitions and policies tend to use very ambiguous language the reason is policy makers tend to leave a lot of leeway and nearly a lot of room for maneuver sorry my apology so uh for for a maneuver in the future um I think it's time for us to to address a few questions and

Channel: China Studies Centre

Views: 251

Keywords:

Id: 6hdVxP8zF20

Length: 50min 21sec (3021 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 29 2023