Since its economic reform began in 1978, China has gone from being a poor developing country to the second-largest economy in the world. China has also emerged from isolation to become a political superpower.
* China has become the world’s second-largest producer of scientific knowledge, surpassed only by the US, a status it has achieved at an awe-inspiring rate.
* If it continues on its current trajectory China will overtake the US before 2020 and the world will look very different as a result.
* Data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that between 1995 and 2006, China’s gross expenditure on R&D (GERD) grew at an annual rate of 18 per cent. China now ranks third on GERD, just behind the US and Japan and ahead of any individual European Union state.
* China’s student population has reportedly reached 25 million, up from just 5 million nine years ago. China now has 1700 higher education institutions, around 100 of which make up the “Project 211″ group.
* These elite institutions train four-fifths of PhD students, two-thirds of graduate students and one-third of undergraduates. They are home to 96 per cent of the country’s key laboratories and consume 70 per cent of scientific research funding.
* A report analysing China’s research strengths and its patterns of international collaboration was done with the data drawn from Thomson Reuters, which indexes scientific papers from around 10,500 journals worldwide.
* In 1998, China’s research output was around 20,000 articles per year. In 2006 it reached 83,000, overtaking the traditional science powerhouses of Japan, Germany and the UK. Last year it exceeded 120,000 articles, second only to the US’s 350,000.
* China is also diversifying its research base. A traditional industrial economy would focus its research on physical sciences and engineering, and findings confirm that this is where China has been concentrating. But it is also rapidly shifting out of the old economy into new areas.
* China produces 10 per cent of the world’s publications in engineering, computer sciences and earth sciences, including minerals.
* It now also produces 20 per cent of global output in materials sciences, with a leading position in composites, ceramics and polymer science and a strong presence in crystallography and metallurgical engineering.
* The implications for future industrial development are enormous, as China makes the transition from a manufacturing economy to a knowledge economy based on research coming out of its own institutions.
* Agricultural research is also expanding as China takes a scientific approach to its vast food demand and supply. Its relatively small share of molecular biology and related areas – around 5 per cent – has suddenly become an investment focus too. If growth in biomedical sciences is as rapid and substantial as it has been elsewhere then China’s impact on gene and protein research will be profound.
China’s emergence as a scientific superpower can no longer be denied, and it is a question of when rather than if it will become the world’s most prolific producer of scientific knowledge. Perhaps more importantly, China’s expanding regional collaborations show that Asia-Pacific nations no longer rely on links to the European and American institutions that have traditionally led the science world.