Richard P. Suttmeier

China’s 15-year science and technology plan

As China implements its plan to improve scientific innovation, it will need to solve such political and economic problems as finding the proper balance between indigenous efforts and engagement with the global community.

China's New Scientific Elite: Distinguished Young Scientists, the Research Environment and Hopes for Chinese Science

The health of the scientific research enterprise in any country is critically dependent upon young scientists. In most fields, the period of greatest creativity and productivity comes early in a career. Young scientists hold together the generational structure of a countrys scientific community by linking the established scientific elite with a rising generation of graduate students. They also play a critical role in maintaining the communitys normative structure.

A new technonationalism?: China and the development of technical standards

Chinese technology executives, government officials, and members of its research community are debating how far to push the countrys strategy for promoting technology standards at home and abroad.

China’s innovation challenge

Abstract China has made tremendous progress in building its science and technology capabilities. But to achieve its ambitions to become an innovation-oriented nation, the country has to challenge itself by establishing an enterprise-centered national innovation system, better spending the increasing sums of money on innovation, improving its intellectual property rights regime, overcoming talent shortage, and nurturing a culture of creativity.

The "Sixth Modernization"?: China, Safety, and the Management of Risks

This article examines the reasons behind Chinas failure to develop mechanisms to manage environmental and technological risks resulting from rapid industrial development.

From Cold War science diplomacy to partnering in a networked world

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the history, current activities, and prospects of Sino‐US cooperation in science and technology (S&T). It seeks to understand the role of S&T in Sino‐US relations, how the relationship has affected Chinese scientific development and, more generally, to better understand the ways S&T affect – and are affected by – the foreign policies of nation states.Design/methodology/approach – Employing an institutional perspective, the paper is based on interviews in China and the USA and reviews of government documents and press reports.Findings – Owing to the impacts of the Cultural Revolution on Chinese S&T, the relationship is highly asymmetrical when it began in the late 1970s. As Chinese capabilities have improved, aided measurably by the relationship with the USA, the two sides are now in a position to cooperate more fully across a wide range of areas of interest to both sides. Channels for cooperation have been developed through the two governments, through Chin...

China’s Techno-Warriors, Another View

Review of Chinese Techno-Warriors: National Security and Strategic Competition from the Nuclear Age to the Information Age. By E van F eigenbaum . [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. 339 pp. US

Challenges of S&T system reform in China

55.00. ISBN 0-8047-4601-X.] Chinas growing technological capability has become the topic of the day among Western officials concerned with the national security and economic competitiveness implications of Chinas growing prominence. The publication of a study which attempts to explain how security and competitiveness have been linked in the evolution of Chinese technology policies is therefore quite timely. The effort to locate this linkage in the development of an ideology of techno-nationalism resonates nicely with perceptions – held by many in Western capitals – of a China with a special passion for the acquisition of dual use technology and a determination to use political means to secure economic advantage. The appearance of Evan Feigenbaums book, which rightly locates Chinas technological trajectory at the centre of many of the more important questions about the Chinese future, is thus to be welcomed.

Conflict and Cooperation in the Development of US–China Relations in Science and Technology: Empirical Observations and Theoretical Implications

Despite promising reforms, autonomy is unclear By many measures, Chinese scientific and technological (S&T) development is surging forward at a remarkable rate. Yet, Chinese political leaders have shown increasing impatience, concerned that the research and innovation systems that emerged after reforms from the mid-1980s through the 1990s focused on “technological catch-up” rather than genuine innovation. Concerns arose that the research culture was one of derivation, dependent on basic discoveries made elsewhere, rather than creativity (1). Policies since 2013 have thus intended to radically reform the nations research institutions and broader innovation system. A comprehensive national innovation strategy in 2016, backed by full political commitment to reform, aimed at turning China into an S&T powerhouse by 2050. Yet many in the technical community might argue that the trajectory of Chinese S&T is already an upward one and that, with patience, the maturing system will produce many of the desired political objectives. There are questions about whether the new policies promise new problems, and whether they ignore deeper underlying obstacles (2).

Book Review: Susan GREENHALGH, Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng's China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. xxii + 403 pp., with notes and index. ISBN: 978-0-520-25339-1 (pbk). Price: £12.95

Science and technology have played important roles in the development of US-China relations since the late 1970s. The mechanism of scientific and technological cooperation between the two countries has been a useful tool of diplomacy and remains so today. However, the use of that tool has become more complicated over the past three decades in the face of changing political, economic and security environments, the impact of China’s growing capabilities in science and technology, a deepening of economic globalization and the growing role of global production networks, and the rise of global environmental and health issues. Ethnic identity as a basis for collaboration and the changing roles played by US-based ethnic Chinese scientists and engineers have played important roles. While the imperatives for building a long-term, sustainable cooperative science and technology relationship between the two countries are stronger than ever, the potential for conflict also has increased, pointing to the need for new approaches to governance in the bilateral relationship.