Sample Speeches

China's Emerging Technological Trajectory
by Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson
President , Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Lally School of Management and Technology Conference
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy , New York

Saturday, September 6, 2003

Good afternoon.

Thank you for inviting me to this important conference on China 's emerging technological trajectory. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and its Lally School of Management and Technology are delighted to host our guests.

In considering the subject of this conference, we can expect that China's 21st century trajectory will match the rate of technological ascendance China demonstrated in the 1st century, or in the 11th century - when its mastery of science and technology moved China to unequalled economic status. At the start of each of the last two millennia, China accounted for one quarter of the world's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

It is somewhat ironic, then, that, at the start of this third millennium, the issue of whether the world scientific community should help China to attain scientific parity with the developed nations is the subject of international debate. In a very real sense, the world would be giving back to China some of what China has given to the world.

The issue should not be whether the developed world engages China to exchange and advance scientific knowledge, but how, and how well. Science in the 21st century has the power, as we all know, to achieve a higher standard of living for a world population that will double by mid-century. China 's nearly 2 billion people represent 40 percent of that population.

Against this backdrop, the pace of scientific discovery and technological change creates its own conundrum. Many areas of inquiry leading to dual use technologies for example - including nuclear technology, lasers, computers, and other technologies - have critical implications. Yet other areas, such as nanotechnology, stem cell research, and genomics, raise profound moral and ethical questions.

As China ascends, the world scientific and technological community is grappling with issues never before faced, as it assists China in its development, and works to help the science and technology sector avoid the pitfalls attendant to rapid growth. China , in turn, must show similar leadership in acknowledging and responding to the legitimate concerns of the developed nations over its adherence to global norms.

The 5,000-year-old Chinese civilization, in fact, played a considerable role in the development of what we now deem to be those global norms. Contact with China repeatedly enriched Western cultures as those cultures advanced, retreated, and advanced again. China also contributed more significantly to the advancement of science through the ages than is generally credited.

Joseph Needham, the Cambridge don and authority on the history of Chinese science, observed that "the conception of the life-elixir, originating in China and only in China , passed first to the Arabs, then to the Byzantines and lastly to the Franks or the Latins in the time of Roger Bacon, established the whole movement of chemical medicine."

Needham further noted that many of the scientific and mathematical innovators of the Western world were outdone by their Chinese counterparts. For example, Chang Heng, astronomer, mathematician, and inventor of the seismograph, knew more than his more heralded Greek counterpart Xenocrates, Needham asserts. And, in time measurement, Su Sung outdid Vitruvius. Needham cites dozens of other examples of Chinese scientific, mathematical, and engineering accomplishment which equal or exceed, and which certainly influenced, Western progress.

Prior to the 17th century, Chinese science and technology exchanges with the rest of the world included the compass, gunpowder and pyrotechnics, moveable type, and papermaking. China 's development of the technology to produce such prized commodities as porcelain and silk helped to shape world trade patterns and to enrich world culture - for centuries.

In the 17th century, Chinese rulers cut themselves off from the rest of the world, effectively bypassing the Industrial Revolution, and the rapid transition of the West into what we call modernity. In the process, China remained an agrarian economy which, despite its size and population, accounted for just five percent of the world Gross Domestic Product by 1950.

The emergence of the People's Republic of China led to the development of new scientific capability, centrally planned like the scientific and technological infrastructure of the Soviet Union . China 's scientific energies were channeled almost entirely into military applications such as nuclear weapons, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and nuclear submarines. This history certainly contributes to the wariness now being expressed about China 's scientific development.

Whatever scientific momentum the country gained early in the Communist era dissipated, however, during the break with the Soviet Union , and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.

China 's progress resumed with the market reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. Deng included science and technology as one of the "four modernizations" and the Chinese government began to implement new science and technology reform strategies based on Western models. The old State Science and Technology Commission was supplanted by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) was formed to provide oversight to more than 100 independent research institutes.

In addition, the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (NSF/C) was consciously modeled after the National Science Foundation of the United States when it was founded in the mid-1980s. NSFC funds basic and applied research, with most grants going to Chinese universities and Chinese Academy of Sciences institutes. Research focuses on natural science fields such as physics, mathematics, and chemical and life sciences.