The next science superpower?

In the new geography of science, it’s at the centre of the world. James Wilsdon reports how Chinese research is shifting from imitation to innovation - and finds out how this could help drive a sustainable future.

Ya Cai grins as he explains why he is bullish about the prospects for Chinese science. “Our researchers are as good as anywhere in the world. They are dedicated, motivated, eager to achieve. If I come in to the lab on a Sunday, I find many of them still here. I tell them to go home to their families, but they say, no, we want to work.” So much for work-life balance...

Dr Cai is director of Unilever Research in China. Born and educated in China, he spent several years in the UK doing a PhD, before taking a research job with Unilever. And when the company needed someone to head up its R&D operations in Shanghai, he leapt at the opportunity. “When you look at the economic growth, the sheer dynamism in China right now, it’s hard not to feel enthusiastic.”

Ballooning budgets
Unilever has been doing research in China since 1996, when it established a joint venture with the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry. Initially, the focus was on adapting existing products for the Chinese market. But in 2002 they opened two new labs and started doing basic research, not just for the Chinese market, but for their global businesses too.

China and India are emerging as important centres in their own right, with 70 chemists now in Shanghai alone. This partly reflects a desire to move research much closer to emerging markets. “We expect China to become our second largest market,” says Dr Cai, “and the best way to ensure this happens is to make sure we are innovating to meet the needs of Chinese consumers.” But there are also benefits to the bottom line: a researcher in Unilever’s Shanghai lab costs roughly one-third of their equivalent in Europe. The company’s far from alone in seeing China as a preferred location for ‘offshore innovation’. Microsoft, Intel, ABB, Ericsson and AstraZeneca are all making substantial investments in research.

It’s all part of a shift which is seeing China move ‘from imitation to innovation’. “Our core strengths,” says Dr Cai, “are in synthetic chemistry, nanotechnology and natural products derived from Chinese traditional medicine.” It’s this combination of tradition and cutting edge which plays to China’s strengths - and holds out the promise that the country could become one of the leaders in sustainable science.

Science funding bodies in China are seeing their budgets balloon. For example, the National Natural Science Foundation (equivalent to the UK’s Research Councils) has enjoyed a 26% budget increase this year. There has also been a sustained effort over the past five years to attract top Chinese scientists back from posts overseas. Of the 700,000 Chinese students who went to study abroad between 1978 and 2003, around 170,000 are now estimated to have returned. Four-fifths of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences are returnees, or ‘sea-turtles’, from overseas.

Knowledge is mobile
This is part of a wider shift in the geography of science. We used to know where new scientific ideas would come from: the top universities and research laboratories of large companies based in Europe and the US. While production was dispersed among global networks of suppliers, it was assumed that more knowledge-intensive tasks would stay at home. All that is changing fast. As globalisation moves up a gear, ideas are emerging in unexpected places and flowing around the world as easily as money and commodities, carried by a mobile diaspora of knowledge workers.

This is not to say that everything in the garden is rosy. There are areas of persistent weakness in China’s science and innovation system. Plagiarism is rife among students and researchers, even in some top universities. Research data may also be falsified, and there have been a number of low-level academic scandals in the past year.

But to get a sense of where things may be heading, the best place to start is the new Medium and Long-Term Plan for Science and Technology Development, which the Chinese government published in January. This is a significant document, which will act as a blueprint for the next 15 years. In a keynote speech to mark its launch, President Hu called on China to become an “innovation-oriented society”, and emphasised the role of business in commercialising new ideas.

So what might all this mean for sustainability? How far will the Chinese government direct its scientific

and technological priorities towards environmental and social goals? The new plan reads like a fairly conventional list of scientific and technological priorities, but contained within it are some encouraging signs.

Given the heightened concern in Beijing about power supplies and climate change, the plan unsurprisingly places a big emphasis on energy research. And it is intriguing to consider what contribution China might make to low-carbon energy, if it manages to combine its growing technological capabilities with its capacity for large-scale, low-cost manufacturing.

Sunrise sector
The rapid emergence of China as a key player in solar photovoltaics (PV) shows just what might be possible. In 2005, China’s solar industry grew by just under 300%, to take an 11% share of the global market. Most of this growth is being driven by one company - Suntech - but there are a clutch of smaller businesses now vying for a stake in the market, which are attracting interest from venture capitalists and multinationals like BP Solar. As China’s PV capacity expands, and its companies continue to innovate, some analysts predict global prices will fall by 30-40%, making PV a far more attractive financial option.

In energy, as in other areas of sustainable innovation, international collaboration is likely to play a crucial role. Some politicians in Europe and the US view China’s growing scientific strengths with alarm, fearing it will mean the loss of highly skilled jobs. But a more sensible approach is to acknowledge that science is not a zero sum game: more in China doesn’t mean less in Europe or the US. To pretend otherwise is to misunderstand the nature of innovation; the way in which the work of one team builds on the successes and failures of others.

In the new geography of science, it is those who are good at sharing, rather than protecting knowledge, who will flourish. When faced with the global challenges of sustainability, mobilising the best scientific brains in China to work with their counterparts in Europe and the US may be the best hope we have.

James Wilsdon is head of science and innovation at the think tank Demos, and co-ordinator of The Atlas of Ideas project, which is exploring China and India’s role in the ‘new geography of science’  www.demos.co.uk/atlasofideas

2 November 2006

James Wilsdon