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China SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE 1980S
The Supply of Skilled Manpower
Research and development is a labor-intensive endeavor, in
which the critical resource is the size and quality of the pool of
trained manpower. China suffers both from an absolute shortage of
scientists, engineers, and technicians and from maldistribution and
misuse of those it has. Chinese statistics on the number and
distribution of scientific personnel are neither complete nor
consistent. According to the State Statistical Bureau, at the end
of 1986 there were some 8.2 million personnel (out of 127.7 million
workers) in the natural sciences working in state-owned
enterprises, research institutes, and government offices. These
numbers probably excluded military personnel and scientists in
military research bodies, but they included support personnel in
research institutes. "Scientific and technical personnel" comprised
about 1.5 percent of all employed persons, but only about 350,000
of them were "research personnel." Their number had increased
markedly from the 1970s as well-trained students began graduating
from Chinese colleges and universities in substantial numbers and
as postgraduates began returning from advanced training in foreign
countries. Between 1979 and 1986, China sent over 35,000 students
abroad, 23,000 of whom went to the United States.
More significant than sheer numbers of scientific personnel
were their quality and distribution. The total numbers masked wide
variations in educational background and quality, lumping together
graduates of two-year institutions or those who had attended
secondary or post secondary schools during periods of low standards
with those who had graduated from major institutions in the early
1960s or the 1980s, that is, before or after the period of the
Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution had removed an entire
generation from access to university and professional training,
creating a gap in the age distribution of the scientific work
force. The scientific community included a small number of elderly
senior scientists, often trained abroad before 1949, a relatively
small group of middle-aged personnel, and a large number of junior
scientists who had graduated from Chinese universities after 1980
or returned from study abroad. In the mid-1980s many of the middleaged , middle-rank scientists had low educational and professional
attainments, but generally they could be neither dismissed nor
retired (because of China's practice of secure lifetime
employment); nor could they be retrained, as colleges and
universities allocated scarce places to younger people with much
better qualifications. Scientists and engineers were concentrated
in specialized research institutes, in heavy industry, and in the
state's military research and military industrial facilities, which
had the highest standards and the
best-trained people. A very small proportion of scientists and
engineers worked in light industry, consumer industry, small-scale
collective enterprises, and small towns and rural areas.
Data as of July 1987
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