China, scientific development

China is now ready to make a national political commitment to rapid scientific and technological development. As Kuo Mojo, late president of the Chinese Academy of Science, proclaimed, "Springtime for Science—the most splendid in the annals of the Chinese civilization—has come and is here to stay.the time when the reactionaries can trample on science has indeed gone forever "... 

I have presented a general socio-political overview of China. The in-depth analysis of China s political environment is both necessary and relevant. The prevailing political climate in China determines not only China s economic development path, but also its scientific and technological development path. Politics is China s "Great Helmsman". In the process, I hope I have provided sufficient background information on the Chinese psyche and society to aid in interpreting nuances when interacting with the Chinese. 

It is entirely conceivable, for example, that, over the next several decades, more and more pharmaceutical research will shift from Europe and the United States to Asia, especially to China, where there will likely be an abundance of highly trained and relatively low-cost scientific personnel to conduct the research. Even the more economically developed Asian nations, such as Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, are likely to benefit from this migration, as long as they strive to have a comparative advantage in scientific research vis-a-vis the United States and Europe. 

Acupuncture is a method of healing developed in China at least 2000 years ago. Today, acupuncture encompasses a family of procedures involving stimulation of anatomical points on the body by a variety of techniques. American practices of acupuncture incorporate medical traditions from China, Japan, Korea, and other countries. The acupuncture technique that has been most studied scientifically involves penetrating the skin with thin metallic needles that are manipulated by the hands or by electrical stimulation. 

Another approach to teaching the history of early European chemistry has been taken on the Open University s undergraduate course, The Rise of Scientific Europe 1500-1800. This deals with the rise of European science in general and poses the over-arching question why science developed in Europe rather elsewhere (e.g. China, India or the Arab world). Within this broad remit chemistry is treated inter alia with other sciences and is placed in changing political, social and economic contexts from Paracelsus to the chemical revolution.11... 

For all this we need huge amounts of funds, as scientific research has become costly. If we compare the funds available for scientific research in India compared to some other developing countries, India has a very gloomy picture. South Korea had planned to increase its R D spending to over 5 per cent of its GDP by year 2000. China had planned to increase its R D investment from 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent of GDP by the year 2000. Unfortunately India s R D expenditure has come down to 0.89 per cent of GDP from 1.1 per cent earlier. We need to realise that in order to be able to do competitive scientific research and development we have to bring our R D expenditure to at least about 1.5 per cent of GDP and focus our efforts on a few selected programmes and projects. 

---