In late 2009, Thomson Reuters issued a report, claiming that in terms of scientific publications China now lags behind only the United States and will replace the United States as the leader in around 2017 if the current growth momentum is sustained.

This could become a “Sputnik moment” for the American scientific enterprise – as some commentators allude to the aftershock of the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957.  The U.S. government and scientific community were then mobilized to respond to the potential loss of the leadership in space and in science and technology as a whole.

There is no doubt that China has made tremendous progress in the past three or so decades in science and technology, along with its rapid ascendency as a global economic power.  If any quantitative indicators are benchmarked on the per capita basis, however, the picture seems not so promising.

In this regard, China still has a long way to go – its per capita paper production is only about eight percent of that of the United States.  Comparatively, both Brazil and Russia fare better – the former’s per capita scientific paper production stands as fourteen percent and the latter, eighteen percent that of the United States.

Also, as I have repeatedly argued, measured by the number of citations, Chinese science also is in a shaky position with qualitative improvement not matching pace of the quantitative leap forward.

But the glamour has overshadowed a more serious dark spot, that is, the imperfectness of an intangible institutional framework that could propel China into a trajectory of excellence in science.

To me, this framework includes at least the following components.  First, there should be a competitive but fair environment.  The current Chinese system of science and technology instead has been notoriously captured by established scientists and does not advance the challenge of the new generation to the status quo.

Second, there should be a better way to evaluate the performance of scientists.  Long gone are the days when the scientific community was not accountable to taxpayers for its work.  Now, China’s scientific leadership has paid extreme attention to quantified measures such as the number of publications so as to literally create a fictitious paper bubble.  Excellence is only achieved by conforming to the internal logic of the research enterprise and could and should not be determined and promoted mechanically.

Third, risk-taking should be tolerated and even encouraged.  Individual initiatives, especially in chaotic areas where there is no consensus, are at least as critical as big science programs in leading to breakthroughs.  Unfortunately, in China, science seems to be flooded with activities that are derivative of what has achieved elsewhere, which mean safer but at the same time far less innovative, and that aim at personal gain in the name of risk-taking.

Fourth, ethical standards should be restored in the scientific community so as to safeguard its integrity and health.  There is no doubt that the deterioration of ethics is so severe as to have pushed scientific activities in China to the brink of moral decay.  The consequences are more than the waste of research money.  Once the damage is done, which is very much likely, Chinese scientists will have to make extreme efforts to win back their reputation and trust in the global scientific community.

Finally, the scientific community should be autonomous.  In the process of contributing to a stronger and more prosperous nation, Chinese scientists have become increasingly dependent upon the state for patronage.  It is enormously sad to see that the enlightenment spirit of the May Fourth movement – the 1919 student movement to embrace not only science but also democracy – has given way to the willingness and vested interest of the scientific elite to be co-opted into the existing political system.

When China was engaged in internal conflicts during the Cultural Revolution, the world witnessed the coming of age of the new technological revolution.  It has taken the extreme efforts of China’s scientific community to gradually set the course of science back onto the right track.  Now, the pursuit of science seems to have reached another critical juncture where any misstep in the institutional framework could trap China in a bigger and deeper gap, which could jeopardize its potential to become a scientific power in the world.