They are still copycatting ideas and methods from the West (and Russia, marginally) in so many hard engineering fields, though. On the other hand, they are very good and original in deep learning, which is more mechanistic than holistic. I mean, if the industry 5.0 revolution is going to come from China, they need to start deploying their own vision for society and the world full scale, which to be fair they are doing already through money, infrastructures and finlandisation of neighbouring countries, Africa and Eastern Europe. It is quite different from liberal and neo-liberal models.
China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math
131–140 of 309 posts
Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the point that most grad programs don't have US students is revealing - for those who have alternative entry into the US economy, most people decide that a PhD program is a poor choice. Most of the things people work on in their PhD programs are very niche, and most do not work in academia or on the same thing after they finish their PhD. And most people never really make a noticeable contribution to science…
That simply won't happen. 1. US isn't the only country which publishes in English. The entire Western hemisphere does. Not to mention India, already the most populous English-speaking country in the world, and has barely scratched the surface when it comes to English literacy. 2. Science needs interaction to thrive. Publishing textbooks in Mandarin is a very different ballgame than cutting edge research papers. I don…
«English will remain the defacto global Lingua Franca of science.»
Just like Latin remained the defacto lingua franca of science? :-)
Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math
#133The impact of publications in technical fields is so long tailed that 1000 mediocre publications doesn't equal one single breakthrough paper (eg the AlexNet paper in deep learning). Even according to the source cited in the article ( http://www.nber.org/papers/w24829 ) impact per paper is much lower in China. Once China beats the US in both volume and quality, we'll know the balance of intellectual capital has really…
People over-obsess about how China is beating us in science and technology, and not enough about how China is becoming so entrepreneurial while US citizens are becoming extremely risk averse.
Regulation and government involvement is also contributing to lower entrepreneurialism in the US.
Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math
#134Don't worry. The Chinese love money instead of science.
Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math
#135"China competes and delivers inexpensive and high-quality products" --Jack Ma
That's just a joke for Chinese.
Emmm..., Jack Ma is another joke.
Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
People over-obsess about how China is beating us in science and technology, and not enough about how China is becoming so entrepreneurial while US citizens are becoming extremely risk averse.
Except that's no longer the case, China's private sector is moving backwards and being squeezed out. The era of an ascendant private sector is over, Xi has shifted gears out of growth desperation. The Chinese Government is pushing all resources toward state enterprises again, and depriving credit to the private sector. It makes sense that when you consolidate power into one monolith, that monolith will prefer to cons…
That's actually sad to hear. From my limited experience in China it seems like an amazing entrepreneurial place, in spite of all the barriers. You can't even access Stackoverflow there! But the culture there is really "no excuses" which I respect a lot.
Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
That simply won't happen. 1. US isn't the only country which publishes in English. The entire Western hemisphere does. Not to mention India, already the most populous English-speaking country in the world, and has barely scratched the surface when it comes to English literacy. 2. Science needs interaction to thrive. Publishing textbooks in Mandarin is a very different ballgame than cutting edge research papers. I don…
« English will remain the defacto global Lingua Franca of science. » Just like Latin remained the defacto lingua franca of science? :-)
We should all switch to Esperanto! :)
Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
>if Chinese folks start publishing in Mandarin They may, and then it will be like during the cold war where Soviets published in Russian and we'd be lucky if someone translated that into English. If it were to happen today, someone would make a business out of translating the publications --maybe even crowdsource the translations.
Would bd so easy to translate in this day and age
Easier, but not easy.
During my PhD I've translated about a dozen papers into English, mostly from Russian. Google Translate and Yandex Translate did the actual translation (I would compare the two), but what they produce is not always intelligible or correct. On a few more important papers I went through the paper sentence by sentence to clarify the translation. It's not uncommon that I have to change certain phrases because the software translates a phrase literally when the equivalent is not a literal translation, for example. Sometimes I didn't know what the equivalent terminology was without research and guesswork. I also added footnotes as appropriate if I thought they would help the reader understand something which would not be clear if they were unfamiliar with the original language or research culture.
I would not be surprised if I spent over 100 hours on a particular series of 3 papers alone. I don't mind the time, as I enjoyed the process and learned a lot from it.
The good news is that I think the feedback I provided Google Translate improved the quality of the product's translation of scientific Russian, it is slowly getting better.
Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
That simply won't happen. 1. US isn't the only country which publishes in English. The entire Western hemisphere does. Not to mention India, already the most populous English-speaking country in the world, and has barely scratched the surface when it comes to English literacy. 2. Science needs interaction to thrive. Publishing textbooks in Mandarin is a very different ballgame than cutting edge research papers. I don…
« English will remain the defacto global Lingua Franca of science. » Just like Latin remained the defacto lingua franca of science? :-)
[deleted]
Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
>if Chinese folks start publishing in Mandarin They may, and then it will be like during the cold war where Soviets published in Russian and we'd be lucky if someone translated that into English. If it were to happen today, someone would make a business out of translating the publications --maybe even crowdsource the translations.
Would bd so easy to translate in this day and age
The Chinese language does not lend itself to easy translation to English. It always gets "easier", but not quite good enough. At least not for sophisticated purposes like research.