China is catching up to the USA, while Japan is being left behind

The conclusion is actually quite contrary to the title, and far more interesting: the author uses that example to debunk the idea that more research leads to more innovation and more prosperity.<p>I have been tinkering around the same idea for a while, thinking that the state of a country&#x27;s democracy matters way more than its research output.<p>I&#x27;ll quote this article in the future!<p>In his own words: &quot;Does any of it matter? Many people believe, or assume, that great output in terms of research articles should cause economic prosperity and innovation. I have post entitled Does academic research cause economic growth? that makes the contrary point. That is, though China is catching up in terms of scientific output, this may be a consequence of their prosperity: they can now afford to have their very best minds work on producing research articles. It is much easier for rich countries to fund people so that they can publish in Nature. So being rich will allow you to catch up. But Japan shows that you can be a very rich country and choose not to produce many great research articles. In the least, this establishes that you do not need to produce many great research articles to be prosperous.&quot;

This post goes over science and research, which to me is a consequence to other, &quot;big picture&quot;, areas of the Chinese growth. Areas such as economy, geopolitcs and finances. China is no longer a contender - It&#x27;s the true looming power of the East. And depending on how internal politics play out, it will be interesting to see where exactly China stands in as little as 10-20 years in the future.<p>One thing that strikes me about China is their attitude towards foreign politics - They still want the world to consider them as a &quot;developing country&quot;. Sure, it&#x27;s a gigantic country, both in land and population - There are still many challenges to overcome, but this is now a country with enormous cash reserves, who own a significant lump of US debt, and making truly gigantic strides on all levels of society.

For most of the 20th century the UK did disproportionately well in the metrics of scientific research - Nobel prizes, key articles.. The UK has not had the kind of outstanding economic success that should have accrued to it if these things matter economically. Especially once north sea oil is removed from the calculation.

With all this talk of publication output, I&#x27;d like to see some examples of good research coming out of mainland Chinese universities.<p>In my field (programming languages), I can name one total paper that I liked that came from a mainland Chinese university. It stood out for that reason. A friend in another field (CS theory) complained similarly: massive amounts of shoddy work comes out of China, but nothing worth reading.<p>Meanwhile, China now has a spam journal called &quot;Nature and Science,&quot; so you can tell your friends &quot;I have 5 papers in Nature and Science.&quot;

Does it seem like &quot;productivity&quot; shouldn&#x27;t be measured in number of papers? Isn&#x27;t that how we got ourselves into the reproducibility mess?

This is an enormous exercise in trying to prove that, despite reality, China doesn&#x27;t matter in research and related areas. It is futile. The results of scientific production are a lagging indicator, and China nowadays produces almost as much research as the US. China is a growing society, with growing life standards, while the US life standards are stagnating. I was once a China doubter, these days are over however. While the US is constantly worried about supporting its oligarchy, China is using all its resources to invest in a better society. While this battle is not completely lost to the US, it seems more and more like the situation that lead the UK to its downfall.

Seems obvious to me that it&#x27;s because of language. China cares more about rankings so they&#x27;ll force people to push in english journals (to their own detriment) where they get cited. Most of the world doesn&#x27;t speak Japanese so japanese papers don&#x27;t get cited.

Research is an input into productivity, but you need the application of research to actually turn it into productivity.<p>This is a little self congratulatory in HN, but entrepreneurship is the application of research. So you need that to &quot;activate&quot; research.<p>China is catching up not (just) because of research but also because they&#x27;re applying it.

The premise of this headline is that the USA is indisputably in the lead and that the winner is whoever catches up the USA. After spending years in Asia, my impression is that there is another game being played entirely, and the USA is merely a player whose ability to interfere in the outcome is being carefully managed. (And the same is true about Russia, incidentally.) I won&#x27;t be at all surprised if Asia rules the world by the time I&#x27;m an old man.

it&#x27;s not a race guys

<p><pre><code> &quot;catching up&quot; and &quot;falling behind&quot; </code></pre> Within the context of this article, the thing gained or lost is capacity for <i>Scientific Research</i>, and the article suggests renaming an NSF report.<p>It is <i>not</i> a statement about &quot;<i>things in general</i>&quot; around the world.

IMHO, I think it is a good thing as now it implies a knowledge-race (akin to the arms-race). Whatever happens, eventually all humanity benefits from the development.

Thing i love about japan is they think very out of the box compared to others. i don&#x27;t how their society gets it but it&#x27;s kind of amazing.

I found that so many people are stupy which cannot think about a question with a bit of intelligence. One of the evilest thing is the argument of orient-west politics. Let&#x27;s despise them. Most people is just small potato, politics is really matter no you. Just push forward to the future of human being!

I am not impressed. China has been sending students abroad for years, and that was a significant shortcut to the state of the art.