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China Chapter 9. Science and Technology
IN A SPEECH to the National Science Conference in March 1978,
then-Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping declared: "The crux of the Four
Modernizations is the mastery of modern science and technology.
Without the high-speed development of science and technology, it is
impossible to develop the national economy at a high speed." For
more than a century China's leaders have called for rapid
development of science and technology, and science policy has
played a greater role in national politics in China than in many
other countries. China's scientific and technical achievements are
impressive in many fields. Although the World Bank classified it in
the 1980s as a low-income, developing country, China has by its own
efforts developed nuclear weapons, the ability to launch and
recover satellites, a supercomputer, and high-yield hybrid rice.
But the development of science and technology has been uneven, and
significant achievements in some fields are matched by low levels
in others.
The evolving structure of science and technology and frequent
reversals of policy under the People's Republic have combined to
give Chinese science a distinctive character. The variation in
quality and achievements stems in part from a large and poorly
educated rural populace and limited opportunities for secondary and
college education--conditions common to all developing countries.
The character of Chinese science also reflects concentration of
resources in a few key fields and institutions, often with military
applications. In more politically radical periods--such as the
Great Leap Forward (1958-60) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76)-
-efforts were made to expand the ranks of scientists and
technicians by sharply reducing education and certification
standards.
China's leaders have involved themselves in the formulation of
science policy to a greater extent than have the leaders of most
countries. Science policy also has played a significant part in the
struggles between contending leaders, who have often acted as
patrons to different sectors of the scientific establishment. Party
leaders, not themselves scientifically trained, have taken science
and scientists quite seriously, seeing them as keys to economic
development and national strength. Party efforts to control science
to "serve production" and generate economic and military payoffs,
however, have met with repeated frustrations. The frustration in
turn has contributed to frequent reversals of policy and has
exacerbated the inherent tension between the scientific and
political elites over the goals and control of the nation's science
and technology. In any economic system there are likely to be
tensions and divergences of interest between managers and
scientists, but in China such tensions have been extreme and have
led to repeated episodes of persecution of scientists and
intellectuals. Science in China has been marked by uneven
development, wide variation in quality of work, high level of
involvement with politics, and high degree of policy discontinuity.
In the post-Mao era, the anti-intellectual policies of the
Cultural Revolution have been reversed, and such top leaders as
Deng Xiaoping have encouraged the development of science. But
China's leaders in the 1980s remained, like their predecessors over
the past 100 years, interested in science primarily as a means to
national strength and economic growth. The policy makers' goal was
the creation of a vigorous scientific and technical establishment
that operates at the level of developed countries while
contributing in a fairly direct way to agriculture, industry, and
defense. The mid-1980s saw a major effort to reform the scientific
and technical system through a range of institutional changes
intended to promote the application of scientific knowledge to
production. As in the past 100 years, policy makers and scientists
grappled with such issues as the proportion of basic to applied
research, the priorities of various fields of research, the limits
of professional and academic freedom, and the best mechanisms for
promoting industrial innovation and widespread assimilation of
up-to-date technology.
Data as of July 1987
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