While China has used science to fuel its economic growth, India has done the reverse: invest in science during periods of economic prosperity. The results and the impact on their economies are starkly different, writes Hari Pulakkat
Like any young scientist, Prasad Hegde had to look hard for research positions around the world after a PhD. But unlike many Indian students in the US, Hegde looked eastward to do postdoctoral research. India was not an option as there were few positions available. He chose Taiwan over the US and EU, but it did not work out. Then he moved to China, which like India did not have a tradition of post-doctoral research, but was creating such jobs in large numbers. Hegde spent two years in Wuhan, studying exotic states of matter created by collisions of atomic nuclei, before returning to India and a job at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru.
Hegde’s stint in China gave him insights into Chinese science and state of mind, the Chinese work culture and attitudes towards research. At least in his field of heavy ion physics, India had more scientists than China. “This kind of science was new to them,” he says. But China was creating new fields of science and large research teams. The labs had plenty of money and were more flexible in hiring. “They like to do things in large scale and they do things fast,” says Hedge, who is now an assistant professor at the Centre for High Energy Physics at IISc.
Over the last four decades, China has been developing the country at a frenetic pace. As it built its bridges and dams, its coal plants and rockets, the country also invested heavily in science and engineering research. Senior Chinese political leaders, most of whom had their basic education in science or engineering, trusted the power of science to transform the country’s economy and society. At least in quantity, China is about to overtake the US as the leading scientific nation in the world. It is also creating hitech industries of the future, and set to become an important player, if not the leader, in the twenty-first century knowledge economy.
Chinese scientific institutions have had funding increases of 10% or more every year in the last two and a half decades. While China’s GDP itself rose rapidly, its investments on R&D relative to its GDP also increased quickly. In 1991, China’s GDP was $413 billion. It rose to $11 trillion last year. In 1991, China’s investment in R&D was 0.7% of its GDP. It now spends 2.09% of its GDP on R&D. India has been increasing spending on science since the year 2001, but not relative to its GDP: it spends slightly less than 0.9% of its GDP on R&D.
The Chinese scientific establishment is now so big that it can be compared only with the US.In 1991, China spent 5% of what the US spent on R&D.By 2010, it was spending 44% of what the US invested in R&D. By last year this figure has hit 75%, according to data from the Industrial Research Institute and R&D magazine. In scale, China is rapidly closing the gap in research with the US.China contributes 2 0% of the world’s spending on R&D, compared with 3.6% for India. (more…)
