South China Morning Post
Interesting article in today's South China Morning Post. Seems our motherland is kicking butt in the scientific arena. Note the areas that they're publishing most in, all of them industries of the future: "...atomic energy, space science, high-energy physics, biology, computer science and information technology"... where they "... have reached or are close to a recognisable international level of achievement.” Chinese researchers have more than doubled their output of scientific papers and are now second only to the United States in terms of volume, according to a report from information company Thomson Reuters.
The research is heavily focused on materials and technology and shows China is poised to dominate several areas of industry, the report finds." China's comparative growth is striking, far outstripping that of the rest of the world," the report states. "And the curve seems to be showing only marginal signs of slowing, still heading to overtake the US itself within the next decade.”
Chinese researchers published 20,000 research papers in 1998. This rose to nearly 112,000 last year, the report found, with China passing Japan, Britain and Germany on annual output. During the same time, US researchers increased output by between 265,000 and 340,000 papers a year, a gain of about 30 per cent. Chinese research is concentrated in the physical sciences and technology, especially materials science, chemistry and physics.
"China's grip on innovative materials is likely to have far-reaching effects. It is difficult to see developments in industrial sectors that draw on these technologies that will not directly or indirectly depend on the knowledge coming out of China's research," the report states.
"If China's research growth remains this rapid and substantial, European and North American institutions will want to be part of it," Jonathan Adams, director of research evaluation at Thomson Reuters. "China no longer depends on links to traditional G8 partners to help its knowledge development. When Europe and the US visit China they can only do so as equal partners."
The report, based on 10,500 journals monitored by Thomson Reuters, notes that China has more than 1,700 standard institutions of higher education.
"Already, more than half of the nation's technologies, including atomic energy, space science, high-energy physics, biology, computer science and information technology, have reached or are close to a recognisable international level of achievement.”
Other high-growth areas for China, the report states, include agricultural sciences, immunology, microbiology, and molecular biology and genetics.
The US is the biggest international collaborator with China, with 39,000 Chinese papers suggesting collaboration with US researchers, or 8.9 per cent of China's total. Japanese collaborations came next with 3 per cent. Regional collaboration expansion is notable, especially with Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Australia.
In the area of quality engineering, mainland researchers published more papers in journals than their American counterparts for the first time in 2007, and the gap would only grow, according to a study by the Institute of Scientific and Technological Information of China late last year.
The mainland made the biggest contribution to the growth of engineering knowledge, by publishing 78,200 papers in academic journals, mostly in English, indexed by Engineering Information, a leading engineering database, in 2007.
