Undoubtedly, the prosperity of any state is closely linked to the progress made in science and technology. Today, the accomplishments of China in sci-tech have been attracting great attention of the global community. Over the past few years, China has become the biggest market for scientific and technological products thanks to the right plans and programs done by the policy makers.
Like any other nation, China has undergone various periods in history when the progress in sci-tech was vivid as well as the times of sharp developmental regression in this sphere. Technology in China has been advanced before the Tang and Song dynasties, but since the Ming and the Qing dynasties, it gradually fell behind other nations. Talking about past accomplishments in sci-tech, every individual knows that China is home to the four greatest inventions including the compass, printing, gunpowder and paper. The history of industrial science and the academies of agriculture and medical sciences dates back to the period when PRC was formed.
In 1949 soon after the birth of the PRC, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) was instituted which is a historical event by its nature. Since its founding, CAS has fulfilled multiple roles – as a national team and a locomotive driving national technological innovation, a pioneer in supporting nationwide S&T development, a think tank delivering S&T advice and a community for training young S&T talent. In the late 1970s following the opening-up program of China, CAS played a key role in encouraging academic openness of the country, intensive cultivation of its talent and scientific collaboration with the most technologically developed nations. Today CAS is home to over 80 percent of China`s large-scale science facilities. So, till now CAS has managed key projects and made many breakthroughs including the rise of the Qinghai – Tibetan Plateau, the development of the function theory of several complex variables in classical domains, the study of the Goldbach conjecture, and engineering control theory.
The contribution of universities to China`s contemporary progress in sci-tech is indeed immense. If to look at the past it all started with the founding of such universities as Tianjin (1895), Beijing (1898), Nanjing (1902), Fudan (1905), and Tsinghua (1912). Universities are the wellspring of technological and scientific progress for an entire nation. Progress in industry, commerce or the military, is inextricably entwined with research in universities and institutes, especially long-term investments in research. As regards CAS, according to its official data, it nurtures talents in sci-tech through three affiliated universities, the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) and ShanghaiTech University. So far, CAS has graduated 85,884 masters and 64,977 PhDs.
Undeniably, the role of the country`s expenditure on research and development (R&D) directly affects the condition of S&T talent. According to World Bank, in 2018 China`s expenditure on R&D accounted for 2.14 % of GDP, compared to 0.8 % in 2000, showing an upward trend. Based on the data from Web of Science, many previous studies have found that China has been the second-largest producer of scientific publications for over ten years. According to the Global Innovation Index released by the World Intellectual Property Organization, China moved up from 29th place in 2015 to 12th in 2021 in the world ranking. I should also mention that while doing research I ran into interesting data, which says that sci-tech progress now contributes to over 60 percent of China`s GPD growth.
In a single year period (2021) China has achieved to demonstrate many scientific and technological innovations. The year was also full of scientific conferences and exhibitions showing the latest products in this sphere. CGTN states that China launched the crewed spacecraft Shenzhou-12 on June 17. It was China's seventh crewed mission to space, the first during the construction of China's space station and also the first in nearly five years since the country's last manned mission. Moreover, Chinese scientists set a new world record by achieving a plasma temperature of 120 million degrees Celsius for 101 seconds in an experiment in May, a key step toward the test running of a fusion reactor. A Chinese research team successfully designed a 66-qubit programmable superconducting quantum computing system named “Zuchongzhi 2.1”, significantly enhancing the quantum computational advantage and making China the first country to achieve a quantum computational advantage in two mainstream technical routes. In February, China's first 3.35-meter-diameter rocket long-tube storage tank was launched. It has passed various inspections and strength tests and is qualified for engineering applications. China completed its first principled sample machine of a 3.35-meter-in-diameter rocket tank made of composite material on January 22.
Gulrukh Abdullaeva, UzA