China increasingly challenges American dominance of science
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...90efaf1f1ee_story.html?utm_term=.c9880a44e95e
Below is an excerpt from the Washington Post article. If you are interested, click on the link to read the entire article.
After decades of American dominance, Chinese science is ascendant, and it is luring scientists like Pastor-Pareja away from the United States. Even more China-born scientists are returning from abroad to a land of new scientific opportunity.
The United States spends half a trillion dollars a year on scientific research — more than any other nation on Earth — but China has pulled into second place, with the European Union third and Japan a distant fourth.
China is on track to surpass the United States by the end of this year, according to the National Science Board. In 2016, annual scientific publications from China
outnumbered those from the United States for the first time.
“There seems to be a sea change in how people are talking about Chinese science,” said Alanna Krolikowski, a Chinese science expert at Missouri University of Science and Technology. Foreign observers, many of whom were once condescending, now “are rather in awe at what the Chinese policies have accomplished.”
The scientific advances are a small piece of China’s larger ambitions. President Xi Jinping aims to supplant the United States as the world’s economic superpower within three decades. In October, Xi vowed to produce “a world-class army by 2050.”
Meanwhile, China is spending more on infrastructure than the United States or Europe, and the middle class has ballooned — making relocation more attractive.
“More and more people keep coming, that’s for sure,” Pastor-Pareja said. “Right now, China is the best place in the world to start your own laboratory.”