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China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

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Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#201

Post by wbl »

Eridrus wrote: post #80
throwaway713 wrote: post #36

The quality debate about scientific merit aside, if the U.S. wants to remain "the best", then we need to incentivize the best scientists and researchers in other countries to come here and become U.S. citizens. A lot of famous physicists, mathematicians, and logicians have done this over the past 100 years. Unfortunately, the attractiveness of becoming a U.S. citizen is waning because (1) current U.S. policies on sci…

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…

Learn Mandarin. They learned English, we had to learn German and French.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#202

Post by blisterpeanuts »

Xeronate wrote: post #116
bitxbit wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a parent, I agree with you 100% and this is a big problem in the US because quality of teaching has gone down drastically over the past twenty years. I think teaching in public schools should be a mandatory public service (or highly incentivized ie loan forgiveness) for college graduates.

Having a bachelors doesn't make someone a good teacher. There is a reason teachers get teaching degrees.

Having a teaching degree doesn't make someone a good teacher. In fact, one of the most common criticisms of the U.S. public schools is the education degree which is one of the least rigorous degrees one can get, hence attracts people of low aptitude to the field.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#203

Post by dash2 »

gutnor wrote: post #188
msaharia wrote: post #114

Earlier 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…

Also 3. China does not want Mandarin to become a Lingua Franca in anything. Let's remember that China is a strongly nationalistic, protectionist, autocratic and most importantly successful country. Keeping Chinese for the Chinese give them enormous control leverage economically for their local market but also in entertainment, culture and more generally information. I can see China simply promoting English in every f…

> Let's remember that China is a strongly nationalistic, protectionist, autocratic and most importantly successful country. Keeping Chinese for the Chinese give them enormous control leverage economically for their local market but also in entertainment, culture and more generally information.

I think that bird has flown... there are already many many ethnic Chinese outside the PRC, across Asia, in Taiwan, and in America. Wikipedia says 50 million.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#204

Post by adrianN »

_jgdh wrote: post #197
adrianN wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It started with the rise of the British Empire. Pax Americana just helped solidify it. Even without an English speaking US, English would be about as popular as Mandarin: there are a billion Indians.

> there are a billion Indians That is true... but only 10% of Indians can speak English. It might appear higher because visitors are likely to remain in urban or tourist-y areas, where the percentage of English speakers is much higher.

China also has many topolects. Only two thirds of Chinese speak Mandarin as first language.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#205

Post by jerryzh »

As a Chinese I have to say simply number is totally meaningless. China's research is still closely connected with government behavior and all of the top universities are founded and managed by the government. A few top universities are actually government departments. In China the only way to get more salary and promotion in title is too give as much as papers as one can. Thus a considerable amount of them are totally rubbish which was published only for appraise and competition.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#206

Post by Myrmornis »

Is it fair to say that China underperforms in the area of software that the rest of the world uses? I (a Brit living in the US and quite possibly very ignorant about the matter) can think of important (e.g.) Russian and Indian and Brazilian projects and open source contributors but no Chinese ones are coming to mind.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#207

Post by foldr »

adrianN wrote: post #120
xvilka wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then everyone will just learn Chinese，like everyone learnt English before.

One does not "just" learn Chinese. Becoming proficient enough to read scientific papers takes many years, for any language, but for Chinese in particular.

That's certainly true, but it's worth noting that you can develop reading proficiency in a language quite independently of conversational proficiency. For example, I can read a scientific paper in Spanish without too much trouble, but I'd struggle to hold even a basic conversation.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#208

Post by iamshs »

Off topic: Has anyone noticed purge of Muslim students from Chinese labs? I follow some Chinese professors, and they onboarded 2 Pakistani students and within two months, both were removed from the website. Same story with 4 more students in a different university and different laboratories. Incidentally, Xinjiang concentration camps started being mentioned in the news soon after.

Also, noticed an uptick of Indian students doing research in China.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#209

Post by p0nce »

ISL wrote: post #89
whatshisface wrote: post #2

> They document a rapid expansion between 2000 and 2016, as the Chinese share of global publications in physical sciences, engineering and math quadrupled. I really hate to risk being the guy who says "they will never best us," until they do, but in my field and many others Chinese papers are known to be of a lower quality standard and a lot more mill-like. This may come as a surprise to many, but the simple fact is…

In my branch of physics, the best Chinese papers are beginning to make leading contributions to their subfields. As it turns out, if you make a well-funded and sustained effort at something, you can get good at it. As an example, within my specialty: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0431-5

When will we have to learn Chinese to get to state-of-the-art results? Honest question from someone that need to read paper from its field.

Re: China now the most prolific contributor to physical sciences, engineering, math

#210

Post by bitlax »

stochastic_monk wrote: post #83
jeffmcmahan wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you're right. Do you have specific policy moves in mind?

I think this [0] is a step in the right direction. I also think legislation regarding campaign finance, which would supersede Citizens United, is desperately needed. [0] https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren...

This is just a speech. There's nothing specific in here at all.
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