Yeah, this "us-vs-them" tribal nonsense is seriously pointless in the realm of scientific research. I want to have stuff made of futuristic new materials due to innovation in chemistry and live to 120 due to innovation in biology and medicine. I couldn't give two shits whether the papers leading to these advancements were published by Chinese or US scientists.
Then we probably need to find a better method than trademarks and copyrights to allow companies to make money so the entire world can actually enjoy the new discoveries.
We had visiting scholars from some of China's best institutions, they didn't know what a Fourier transform was. They couldn't write MATLAB because they always had somebody else do it for them.
I would like to see these claims motivated by statistics from the Nature Publishing Group's journals.
OTOH, we have a regular internship program and we get a lot of Chinese students. There is a big variety of course, but the best are very, very good.
I find it difficult to believe that a graduate of Tsinghua or Peking wouldn't know what a Fourier transform was assuming they did a course where they learnt that?
Tsinghua and PKU undergraduates > grad students (in general, not necessarily). The problem is that most of the undergraduates go abroad for grad studies, so they get grad students mostly from 2nd tier schools. Now, China is large, and there are still a lot of good students for grad studies, but the best are already gone.
China is also EXTREMELY hierarchical. So, it is quite possible that a scholar (researcher, professor) with a very strong CV isn't doing much of the real work at all, instead it is pawned off to undergrad and grad students.
No. Professors in the US generally spend lots of time managing their grad students and guiding their research, but not saying "here is my idea, go make it work;" they might help with writing papers and that is about it (also, I know many professors that still write their own code for their own ideas, and limit their advising student counts to do that).
In China, you'll often have one professor for around 50 students with three tiers (undergrads, masters/entry PhD/high-level PhDs). So not only is the professor not programming, but neither is the upper-level PhD student! Everything is just eventually being done by undergrads who will ship off to the states/west anyways.
On top of this many professors are often basically running sweatshops for their side businesses (since their university provided salary can be around 10K RMB/month).
OTOH the best students are more likely to be accepted internationally, and you're selecting from 19% of the world's population, so I'd expect the best to be very, very good. At that point it's almost like saying "the best students in half the Eastern hemisphere are very, very good."
I have an American degree and I've heard the phrase "Fourier transform" before, but I couldn't have possibly told you anything about it until I googled it just now. I wouldn't have expected any random Chinese academic to know either, no matter how good their institution was. I write software in a variety of languages every day at my full-time job, and while I've seen MATLAB code and could certainly teach myself to write it, I wouldn't bother if I could just have somebody else do it. Why would you expect some arbitrary group of Chinese scholars to share very specific skills and knowledge? If you gathered up a gaggle of researchers from anywhere else, you'd have to get pretty lucky to land a group where everybody was familiar with both one specific area of mathematics and one specific programming language.
Maybe take the charitable view that these visiting academics were in a field where this is surprising and expected knowledge. I don't get the feeling these were English majors.
The fact he mentions this and MATLAB makes me think he's in the field of electrical engineering, where FTs are something you definitely need to understand.
My experience is that Chinese are very hard working. Their mathematics background is normally quite good, but they only know the Chinese names... Try going to the English wiki page of for example a Fourier transform, then click on the Chinese version.
We had visiting scholars from some of China's best institutions
Which Chinese institutions, studying what subject? And, for that matter, who is "we" here? Is your institution a top destination for overseas visits by Chinese scholars?
I would like to see these claims motivated by statistics from the Nature Publishing Group's journals.
Mentioning Nature (the place of publication of the thread-opening commentary) is worthwhile. It appears that Nature has had some submissions from China recently that have had to be withdrawn because the peer review process was compromised.[1]
[1] "'Compromised' peer review hits three papers from Nature Publishing Group" (18 December 2015)
I believe the Chinese culture is the antithesis of innovation, they are masters at following procedures, not at breaking the mold.
I had to train Chinese people myself in China, and I don't know if you can innovate in the sciences without first innovating in the political arena. You have to change the mind of most Chinese and this takes generations.
I mean, if someone is intelligent enough to solve very hard problems, it is intelligent enough to know they first have to remove the chumps in power who makes bad decisions. There are lots of chumps in power in China.
Chinese educated in Canada, Europe or USA could improve the research done in China, but this people is equally dangerous to people in power.
When I was there, it was the beginning of the Chinese bubble, everybody was happy because everything, while bad, was improving. When times get tough, we will see.
There are always some free thinkers that make it through any repressive system, if just by accident. China has a lot of talent, so we just need a bit of chance that someone creative can get through.
You will find pockets of creativity everywhere in China.
Chinese culture does emphasize group innovation more than individual innovation/invention. This leads to very different results, taking the edge/risk off many ideas (as any consensus driving process would). But it isn't really limited by that, you can always get away with more as long as no one is watching closely.
> you can always get away with more as long as no one is watching closely
In China everyone's being watched and listened to. Foreigners like me are being watched closely, and locals are watching each other far more than occurs in Western countries (like Australia). Even just the general awareness that people are likely to be watching tends to modify behavior.
And of course it's easy for people to watch and listen nowadays. Modern phone/internet technology is being actively used. Bugs don't even need to be inside someone's apartment nowadays for others to listen in. Cameras can be so small it's virtually impossible to find them.
But some people in the West are just as involved in surveillance as occurs in China, particular people in business who protect their cash flows and power structures.
Chinese culture in its prime was very individual and diversified. That's the part produced most, if not all, of what we as Chinese could be proud of. We does have big raw talent pool, but our system also is very good at ruin it. We have an extremely low go-through rate.
Taking into account the rate of growth China has experienced in the last few decades, in a lot of ways (including standard of living), are you sure Chinese citizens are not behaving intelligently by not making much effort to change a political system that is basically working for most of them?
In most of the West we have the luck of being born in democratic countries, we mostly don't have to lift a finger or risk anything to defend that. And yet, we increasingly elect dangerous morons like Trump, Le Pen, etc. to positions of power, which doesn't say much about our collective political intelligence. In China, defending political changes entails both personal risk and risk to the country itself (placing a country that is working very well economically and increasing its power into a political turmoil with uncertain results). I honestly don't think we are in a position to lecture them about this kind of things.
This is changing. The problem was so much low-hanging fruit still to be done there. That's what got solved first. In terms of mobile, VR, drones, to name a few - the Chinese are in front now.
I don't think you need political rights to be innovative. Look for example at the second half of the 19th century. One of the most innovative periods in human history and most of the innovation happened not in democracies. People only need the right to be innovative.
I think, it's rather the other way around. When people have been innovative and new social classes with economical power have emerged, they start to seek political power as well to maintain their economical power.
Of course, being innovative in a society where being innovative is not seen as a positive trait, you'll have problems regardless of what political system you are in.
So I would rather try to change the cultural arena than the political. I know, that's hard and almost impossible on a short timescale but I think especially the Chinese government doesn't have a problem with working in larger timescales.
Which western nation are you aware of that's both innovative and doesn't have what everyone here would likely consider "chumps" in positions of political power?
how are you defining innovation? Japan, for example, became the 2nd biggest economy (with 10% of China's population) by improving cars, electronics and shipping (among other things). is that innovation? rather than inventing new products, they perfected ideas created in the West (statistical process control invented by Deming, et al).
It's not about intelligence. It's about reaching system balance at a higher level. When resources at disposal shrink to a very low level, existing one will collapse, but there is also no guarantee new one will be better. That's the sad part.
The Chinese paper mills take a shotgun approach. Publish as many papers as possible, with little care for quality.
I saw one Chinese professor who published more papers in a year than the number of days. When you spend that much time submitting papers, nothing is getting a second look.
27 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 51.6 ms ] threadI would like to see these claims motivated by statistics from the Nature Publishing Group's journals.
I find it difficult to believe that a graduate of Tsinghua or Peking wouldn't know what a Fourier transform was assuming they did a course where they learnt that?
China is also EXTREMELY hierarchical. So, it is quite possible that a scholar (researcher, professor) with a very strong CV isn't doing much of the real work at all, instead it is pawned off to undergrad and grad students.
In China, you'll often have one professor for around 50 students with three tiers (undergrads, masters/entry PhD/high-level PhDs). So not only is the professor not programming, but neither is the upper-level PhD student! Everything is just eventually being done by undergrads who will ship off to the states/west anyways.
On top of this many professors are often basically running sweatshops for their side businesses (since their university provided salary can be around 10K RMB/month).
I have an American degree and I've heard the phrase "Fourier transform" before, but I couldn't have possibly told you anything about it until I googled it just now. I wouldn't have expected any random Chinese academic to know either, no matter how good their institution was. I write software in a variety of languages every day at my full-time job, and while I've seen MATLAB code and could certainly teach myself to write it, I wouldn't bother if I could just have somebody else do it. Why would you expect some arbitrary group of Chinese scholars to share very specific skills and knowledge? If you gathered up a gaggle of researchers from anywhere else, you'd have to get pretty lucky to land a group where everybody was familiar with both one specific area of mathematics and one specific programming language.
Which Chinese institutions, studying what subject? And, for that matter, who is "we" here? Is your institution a top destination for overseas visits by Chinese scholars?
I would like to see these claims motivated by statistics from the Nature Publishing Group's journals.
Mentioning Nature (the place of publication of the thread-opening commentary) is worthwhile. It appears that Nature has had some submissions from China recently that have had to be withdrawn because the peer review process was compromised.[1]
[1] "'Compromised' peer review hits three papers from Nature Publishing Group" (18 December 2015)
http://retractionwatch.com/2015/12/18/compromised-peer-revie...
I had to train Chinese people myself in China, and I don't know if you can innovate in the sciences without first innovating in the political arena. You have to change the mind of most Chinese and this takes generations.
I mean, if someone is intelligent enough to solve very hard problems, it is intelligent enough to know they first have to remove the chumps in power who makes bad decisions. There are lots of chumps in power in China.
Chinese educated in Canada, Europe or USA could improve the research done in China, but this people is equally dangerous to people in power.
When I was there, it was the beginning of the Chinese bubble, everybody was happy because everything, while bad, was improving. When times get tough, we will see.
You will find pockets of creativity everywhere in China.
Chinese culture does emphasize group innovation more than individual innovation/invention. This leads to very different results, taking the edge/risk off many ideas (as any consensus driving process would). But it isn't really limited by that, you can always get away with more as long as no one is watching closely.
In China everyone's being watched and listened to. Foreigners like me are being watched closely, and locals are watching each other far more than occurs in Western countries (like Australia). Even just the general awareness that people are likely to be watching tends to modify behavior.
And of course it's easy for people to watch and listen nowadays. Modern phone/internet technology is being actively used. Bugs don't even need to be inside someone's apartment nowadays for others to listen in. Cameras can be so small it's virtually impossible to find them.
But some people in the West are just as involved in surveillance as occurs in China, particular people in business who protect their cash flows and power structures.
In most of the West we have the luck of being born in democratic countries, we mostly don't have to lift a finger or risk anything to defend that. And yet, we increasingly elect dangerous morons like Trump, Le Pen, etc. to positions of power, which doesn't say much about our collective political intelligence. In China, defending political changes entails both personal risk and risk to the country itself (placing a country that is working very well economically and increasing its power into a political turmoil with uncertain results). I honestly don't think we are in a position to lecture them about this kind of things.
I think, it's rather the other way around. When people have been innovative and new social classes with economical power have emerged, they start to seek political power as well to maintain their economical power.
Of course, being innovative in a society where being innovative is not seen as a positive trait, you'll have problems regardless of what political system you are in.
So I would rather try to change the cultural arena than the political. I know, that's hard and almost impossible on a short timescale but I think especially the Chinese government doesn't have a problem with working in larger timescales.
I saw one Chinese professor who published more papers in a year than the number of days. When you spend that much time submitting papers, nothing is getting a second look.