China is beating the world at science, says think tank • The Register

https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/30/aspi_technology_tracker/

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/41003385

21 points · 33 comments · view on lemmy.world

33 Comments

Deceptichum@quokk.au · 15 pts · 2y (2 replies)

[ removed ]

Hah, I thought this was the usual r/sino post, but it's funny that it is right-wing propaganda. "The soviets are beating us to space" was what got the US to invest so heavily in STEM research in the 60s that it lasted until the 2000s. If this were all the propaganda they did, it would actually be healthy.

Buffalox@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 2y

is funded by the defence department and foreign companies,

OK, I'd suspect they'd want accurate data, so what is your argument that the report is bad?
Your claim is akin to: We can't trust the report, because they are either left or right wing...

That's not a good argument.

Buffalox@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 2y (14 replies)

Why is this downvoted? the article is based on a REAL report by ASPI:
https://www.aspi.org.au/

The report:
https://www.aspi.org.au/report/aspis-two-decade-critical-technology-tracker

If you like graphs here's a good one:
https://ad-aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/2024-08/ASPI%E2%80%99s%20two-decade%20Critical%20Technology%20Tracker_Figure1.png?VersionId=I5XtNvKHQGJPYNWJieBDAhC_ct8mM57r

But notice they do not claim China is necessarily leading the fields, only that they are doing more research.
For instance an area like advanced aircraft engines, where China is doing what looks like 5 times more research than USA, USA has worked on that for 80 years, and China is probably still catching up.

But have no doubt, China is a major force in research and technology today.

FlyingSquid@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 2y (13 replies)

And let's see who the ASPI is since you didn't really go into that:

In February 2020, Australian Labor Party Senator Kim Carr described the ASPI as "hawks intent on fighting a new cold war."[29][30] Former Foreign Minister Bob Carr (no relation) said the ASPI provides a "one-sided, pro-American view of the world" and criticised the group for taking what he claimed was almost $450,000 from the U.S. State Department, to track Australian universities with Chinese research collaborations, and "vilifying and denigrating Australian researchers and their work." Bob Carr's criticism of ASPI came after ASPI president Peter Jennings had raised questions about the donation of $1.8 million by a Chinese billionaire to a group related to Carr.[31][32] ASPI replied that it "doesn't have an editorial line on China, but we have a very clear method for how we go about our research," and claimed that the true amount of State Department funding was less than half that amount stated by Carr.[33][34] ASPI was criticized by former diplomats John Menadue, Geoff Raby, and Bruce Haigh, with Haigh referring to ASPI as serving the foreign policy interests of the Liberal Party of Australia.[35][36] In July 2022 an article in The Economist described ASPI as "hawkish".[37]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Strategic_Policy_Institute

Maybe that's why it's downvoted.

Buffalox@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 2y (12 replies)

Well to be fair, it turned out that we should probably have been more hawkish towards China sooner.
So it seems to me you are arguing against what you say you are arguing for.

Nothing in what you describe shows anything wrong with the report or the article.
There is little doubt that China is spending way more on research than most countries, and being a close #2 in the world on economy, that makes it very plausible that China is in fact #1 in research today, and if we do nothing, China is destined to surpass us.

Silencing that warning is doing work for China.

FlyingSquid@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 2y (11 replies)

Nothing in what you describe shows anything wrong with the report or the article.

This is how people defend articles from Fox News.

When the source has been shown to be severely biased, it is enough to not trust the report on its face. You do not have to vet everything they do once you've already seen they can't be trusted.

Buffalox@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2y (2 replies)

That's whataboutism, and it's very easy to point to FOX news spewing lies if you want to.
Just saying FOX news is right wing is not a very good argument against Fox news either.

Do you in fact disagree with the main sentiment of the report? And if you do, then why?
I happen to agree with the report on the main issue, that China is surpassing us on science and technology research.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I can see that China has made major strides in just about every field. For instance China can make their own quality ball bearings, which Russia can't.

Just as an example of a seemingly minor thing, that has had a major impact on Russia when the west embargoed them because of Ukraine.

It's OK to warn the report may be biased, but downvoting because you disagree is bad practice.
Downvoting it because it has false info however, is perfectly allright IMO, but nobody has shown that.

FlyingSquid@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y (1 reply)

I disagree with the concept that you can accurately measure who is leading the way in science overall based on specific individual technologies that you may be the industry leader in at the moment.

Engineering superiority is not scientific superiority. Your ball bearings example is not suggestive of scientific superiority. China isn't making massive technological strides in ball bearing studies which are furthering science as a whole.

Frankly, I disagree with the idea that it is possible to, as The Register puts it, beat the world at science because science is a global endeavor and the scientific method requires it to be in order to make sure things are verifiable.

Buffalox@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2y

Yes I mostly agree with that, but it's also proprietary technologies, and those technologies are based on local scientists working on them.
I admit I didn't read the whole report, but as I understand it, the report doesn't claim China is leading in for instance "advanced aircraft engines" but it claims China is investing 5 times more than USA in research on it.

I mention this as an example in a previous post, that it doesn't mean they are leading the field now, because for instance USA has worked on that for 80 years already, and China is probably still catching up.
But unless we up our own game, China will surpass the west.

I have read other reports stating that China spend about twice the percentage of GDP on research compared to USA, and most western countries spend less than USA. I've been arguing for more education and research for my own country every chance I get for more than a decade now, but everybody is too busy making money, and that's going so well they think we don't need it. (Denmark)

Maybe the report is alarmist, maybe I am alarmist, but I'm not sure I want China to take the role USA has had since WW2. Xi and China are becoming hostile and arrogant in international politics, if this is the way of China going forward, it does not bode well IMO.

boyi@lemmy.sdf.org · 4 pts · 2y (7 replies)

Whats the need to involve Fox News into this? We are dealing with science and technology matters. At least I expect something more academic in nature.

Anyway, is this not good enough source for. you? SJR - International Science Ranking

FlyingSquid@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 2y (6 replies)

That would certainly be a better source, yes. There is absolutely no reason to ever trust a source that you already know isn't trustworthy. On anything.

However, that source does not really give a full picture.

For example, who is citing who? Are the Chinese papers all just citing each other? If so, that would be a pretty poor measurement.

boyi@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 2y (5 replies)

Man... that's based on Scopus index. Do you even know what you're talking about.

FlyingSquid@lemmy.world · -5 pts · 2y

If you won't answer my questions, please at least refuse to do so without violating our civility rule as listed in the sidebar.

paddirn@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 2y (4 replies)

Real science or faked science?

boyi@lemmy.sdf.org · 2 pts · 2y (3 replies)

Can you share some examples of fake science developed by China?

catloaf@lemm.ee · 15 pts · 2y (2 replies)

"China has the highest retraction rate globally" https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/china-conducts-nationwide-audit-of-research-misconduct-after-thousands-of-papers-retracted/4018981.article

boyi@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 2y

that's a lot. good one.

naturalgasbad@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 2y

Tbh this is a better signal for academic integrity checks than it is for anything else

It's widely known that a number of individuals at top US universities have been directly implicated in falsification scandals... They just get away with it.

febra@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y

Well, they're also investing a lot into research.

ms_lane@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 2y

China: Our BioChem corpus is far in advance of theirs as is our electronic sentience and their Ethical Inflexibility has allowed us to make progress in areas they refuse to consider

wurzelgummidge@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 2y (6 replies)

Maybe if other countries invested as much in their homegrown talent as they do in funding wars, regime change efforts, and genocidal maniacs bombing the snot out of little children, things could be different. Just a thought.

Neon@lemmy.world · -4 pts · 2y (5 replies)

You know, I don't really think I want a scientifically advanced Russia, just saying.

Buffalox@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2y (1 reply)

Whether we want it or not, China is already advanced in most fields, and are now way way more dangerous than Russia, literally 10 times more powerful.
Russia without the nukes are nothing near super powers like USA and China.

Neon@lemmy.world · -5 pts · 2y

I'm really not sure if they're that advanced or if they just put on a show.

I mean, almost everything we ever looked at going "oh no, they're so advanced" turned out to be not so great.

you know, fool me once, fool me twice?

So unless there is actual proof, I will just treat this as yet another chinese "prestige-project"

febra@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 2y (2 replies)

You have Israel in your username. Opinion discarded.

Neon@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 2y (1 reply)

You won't talk to me because of the flag?

Good. That means it's working as intended.

febra@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 2y

Yeah. I can't take apartheid supporters seriously

MediaBiasFactChecker@lemmy.world · -10 pts · 2y (1 reply)

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RubicTopaz@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y

Why is this shit bot still around lmao