China pushing the envelope on science, and sometimes ethics

Washington Post ^ | 6/27/2010 | John Pomfret

[Saije]

Last year, Zhao Bowen was part of a team that cracked the genetic code of the cucumber. These days, he's probing the genetic basis for human IQ.

Zhao is 17.

Centuries after it led the world in technological prowess -- think gunpowder, irrigation and the printed word -- China has barged back into the ranks of the great powers in science. With the brashness of a teenager, in some cases literally, China's scientists and inventors are driving a resurgence in potentially world-changing research.

Unburdened by social and legal constraints common in the West, China's trailblazing scientists are also pushing the limits of ethics and principle as they create a new -- and to many, worrisome -- Wild West in the Far East.

A decade ago, no one considered China a scientific competitor. Its best and brightest agreed and fled China in a massive brain drain to university research labs at Harvard, Stanford and MIT.

But over the past five years, Western-educated scientists and gutsy entrepreneurs have conducted a rearguard action, battling China's hidebound bureaucracy to establish research institutes and companies. Those have lured home scores of Western-trained Chinese researchers dedicated to transforming the People's Republic of China into a scientific superpower.

"They have grown so fast and so suddenly that people are still skeptical," said Rasmus Nielsen, a geneticist at the University of California at Berkeley who collaborates with Chinese counterparts. "But we should get used to it. There is competition from China now, and it's really quite drastic how things have changed."

[Saije]

"FBI officials allege that there is a large-scale operation in the United States to pilfer American industrial, scientific, technological and military secrets. In the past few years, dozens of Chinese have been convicted of stealing American technology and shipping it to China." (from the article)

Maybe we should start offsetting some of that debt of ours they're carrying.

[James C. Bennett]

China, like the NAZI Germans / Europeans before them, are Fascists.

Dictators with industries.

[EagleUSA]

Ethics? China? Satire, right?

[mad puppy]

For now, the corruption, cheating and mandated discoveries will keep the Chinese from being too successful. Should they get that figured out, as a nation, which will take a generation, THEN the US is in trouble.

[max americana]

Hilarious...shouldn’t the question be “where did the Chinese steal the technology from?”.

[EagleUSA]

Hilarious...shouldn’t the question be “where did the Chinese steal the technology from?”.

:::::::::::

Maybe the Johnny Chung and the Clintons can answer that one!!!

[Cringing Negativism Network]

You’re on the right track, but still thinking yesterday.

China isn’t really like Germany at all.

China is far more unified, far larger, far more industrially capable.

And significantly, a major nuclear and space power.

So you were saying?... We should send (more) of our jobs and factories there, perhaps?

[James C. Bennett]

We were late in dealing with China when the Communists took over and forced the national government there to flee and form Taiwan.

That slip is probably going to be the gravest mistake of the 20th century, in a way that will make Soviet Russia seem like a petty tyrant in comparison.

China has the money, the means, the territory, the brainwashed population and the technology to pose a very, very potent threat.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Yup.

Now how please, can we wake up the single most logical place to actually get that.

FR?...

[wku man]

"China pushing the envelope on science, and sometimes ethics"

Oh come on, now. You can't be talking about the same people who brought us Tienanmen Square, organ harvesting, slave labor manufacturing, forced abortions, and let's not forget the one child policy which has led to the deaths of countless baby girls. Certainly not those Chicoms!

Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!

[I still care]

I watched a video on a cutting edge fan a while ago. They showed people walking up to the fan and examining it.

The white women walked up and bent over and looked at it.

The white men stuck their hands in a time or two, trying to figure it out.

The chinese? or oriental women immediately started putting their hands into and around it, trying to figure it out. If I were to create a study on such things, I doubt it would be considered “PC” and it probably wouldn’t be published.

[Tainan]

These "ethics" that keep getting referred to in articles like this about China/PRC/CCP are a Western construct.
It is naive to expect this culture. Chinese, to "play by our rules." It is also paternalistic, stupidly so IMO, to not expect them to look at us - Western culture - as incredibly dumb to think they will obey our rules when it is to their advantage to not do so.
China/PRC/CCP is out to advance at any cost. If 'Western Rules' are an impediment to their advancement...these rules will be treated like nothing more than speed-bumps in a parking lot. Ignore and run over until gradually worn down.

You do not know what arrogance is until you've seen Chinese arrogance.

[Cacique]

Chia has several important weaknesses. One is learning by rote. China is a conformist society that does not tolerate independence or even creative thinking. It stifles it because it considers it dangerous to the paradigm of social equilibrium. The other weakness it possesses is it's pictographic language. Though China has tried since the days of Mao to shift to an alphabetic language it has been unsuccessful in that regard because the pictographic language is too deeply ingrained in it's culture. All of this hampers it's ability to create new science, just as it did the Japanese. They are good at packaging what other invent, but there is little significant innovation coming out of there. There is a reason that like the Soviets they need to pilfer everyone elses' technology via espionage.

We also need to dispel the myth of the Germans as these great inventors. They were great engineers, but inventors? Not after WW I. Every major innovation the Germans developed in WW II was based on someone else's technology (rocketry: US Goddard), (jet engine: British 30's) etc.. Examples abound, image does not match the reality. Perception is not the same as the actuality of ability. The US is still king of the hill in technology and it's not going to change any time soon.

[SunkenCiv]

Well put.

[artaxerces]

Cultures change over time, for better or worse. Over the course of 1500 years, western Europe transformed from a highly inquisitive civilization with an 18th century level of technology(2nd century ad) into tribal barbarism, then from barbarism back to feudalism, and then from feudalism back to the cusp of the industrial revolution in the late 1700s.

China had it’s own transformations. It was a leader in technological innovation 1000 years ago. A couple of centuries later, under mongol leadership, it became militaristic and expansionist, and then there was a another brief burst of innovation and exploration in the 1500s, and then the entire civilization became stagnant/decadent and drifted around for a couple of centuries.