China must ‘tolerate failure’ in science and tech to close gap with US, by reforming risk-averse research environment
- Allowing academics and scientists more time to conduct high-risk but potentially groundbreaking research is critical to achieving self-reliance, experts say
- China’s technology bottlenecks in areas such as integrated circuits and artificial intelligence can be traced back to a fundamental lack of basic research
China needs to foster a research environment more tolerant of mistakes and give academics more time to push the boundaries of basic research if it wants to become a technological powerhouse, officials and experts said.
In addition to high spending on research and innovation, the country launched a 10-year action plan last year to boost basic research capabilities.
Guan Zhongcheng, a research fellow at the Institute of Science and Development under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the research cycle for basic science should be a continuous journey of discovery, with long-term financial backing.
Research in basic areas often has unclear paths, uncertain methods, and a relatively high failure rate
“Long-period research requires researchers to have a steady mindset, as only if they settle down and are given a longer time permission will they be inclined to dive in and make a further contribution,” Guan told the Post.
Every field of research has fundamental challenges that must be tackled, while the common thread is the need for time and steady financial support to achieve breakthroughs, according to Guan.
“Otherwise, they are likely to lie flat by the end of the projects,” Guan said, adding that inadequate time to conduct research can dampen motivation and enthusiasm.
This long-standing issue recently gained attention at the “two sessions”, where delegates proposed extending the period for basic research to help academics and scientists.
“Research in basic areas often has unclear paths, uncertain methods, and a relatively high failure rate,” Wang Zhigang, China’s Minister of Science and Technology, said earlier this month on the sidelines of the meetings in Beijing.
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“For such research work, we need to work on promoting a research environment that tolerates failure and encourages researchers to take more time.”
The assessment of basic research findings should differ from the appraisal of applied research, as basic research requires “a decade to grind a sword”, Wang said.
Jin Li, a delegate to the National People’s Congress (NPC), suggested that China “should set up long-term projects of eight to 10 years or more to help potential researchers take on long-term, high-risk, revolutionary investigations”.
China’s technology bottlenecks in areas such as integrated circuits and artificial intelligence can be traced back to a fundamental lack of basic research, creating challenges in practical application, according to Jin’s interview with the Journal of China Education Daily on March 10th.
Scientific research is a high-investment, high-risk, low-return project
China’s persistent lag in basic research can be attributed to its focus on short-term gains, with researchers facing the risk of having funding cut or promotions stalled unless they produce fast results, said Li Xing, a 26-year-old graduate at the University of Science and Technology Beijing.
“Scientific research is a high-investment, high-risk, low-return project with a long cycle of results, and it may train only one out of 100 researchers to produce very impressive results,” said Li, who has spent four years studying condensed matter theory and superconducting physics.
“Some department heads are only keen to see results with their tenure at the leadership position and they are reluctant to do money-losing deals where the previous person plants the tree and the next person takes the lead.”
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Students like Li, who was questioned by supervisors for the time he took to complete his master’s research project, face short research cycles and a risk-averse environment.
Wang Yanxin, an academic at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the country needs a “differentiated” assessment model for basic research that focuses more on knowledge innovation than completion of projects within a short time frame.
The rate that inventions at Chinese universities were industrialised last year was 3.9 per cent, up 0.9 percentage points year on year, according to the 2022 China Patent Survey Report released by the China National Intellectual Property Administration.
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The invention conversion rate at elite universities was 4.4 per cent, with 73.7 per cent of those having a research cycle of less than two years.
Though there is no equivalent statistical survey in the US, based on comprehensive data provided by several universities, Shen Jian, secretary general Renmin University of China For Science and Technology, estimated in 2020 that the conversion rate of scientific and technological inventions in the US was about 50 per cent.
“We need to be clear that the gap in China’s science and technology development [with the US] is mainly in the innovation in basic research,” Shen said, adding it was important to shift away from policy focused on producing results to encouraging researchers to spend more energy on basic research.
