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4 China has made great strides in a wide range of research areas, from mathematics to astronomy to genomics. Local Innovation, Global Benefits In many ways, countries face the same challenges as new companies when it comes to growth and expansion. Grow too fast and the company risks not having enough time to build up its infrastructure and fully train its workers. Grow too slowly and the demands of the market—in this metaphor, the country’s socio-economic needs—will not be adequately met. As China continues to grow at a very impressive pace, its leaders appear acutely aware of the need to expand the country’s science and technology portfolio to help fuel its growth and keep it sustainable. When it comes to making positive changes in the sciences, China is surprisingly nimble for such a large country. This agility appears to be a testament to the conviction that many Chinese scientific leaders hold in the economic and social power of science. China has made great strides in a wide range of research areas, from mathematics to astronomy to genomics. As the largest scientific organization in China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is a major driving force behind these advances. Through support and guidance from CAS, China is focused on building “big science” infrastructure—such as the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tomacak (EAST) and the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST)—as well as on developing a talent pool of top-notch scientists for the country. This talent pool is being built through programs to retain and cultivate the best Chinese scientists (while encouraging them to travel globally for training and to develop collaborations) as well as numerous incentive programs for international scientists to visit and work in China. There are also many programs to build bridges of long-term collaborations among Chinese and foreign institutions. One area of particular focus is young researchers who are generously supported in their work through CAS-run initiatives, like the Hundred Talents Program and various foreign talent programs. CAS supports cutting-edge research in many of the fields currently seen worldwide as areas of intense interest and investigation. These include stem cell research and regenerative medicine, global climate change (and its effect on world populations and economies), and the development of new green science technologies that not only reduce carbon emissions, but also provide new, cleaner, and more efficient sources of energy. The Academy also provides strong support for the transfer of new, innovative technologies from the laboratory to industry, a process through which discoveries made locally can benefit people across the globe. As China moves into a new era of economic prosperity and scientific success, the role of CAS will undoubtedly grow, both domestically and globally. By maintaining its focus on innovation, nurturing exceptional talent, and building additional S&T capacity, CAS will surely meet the challenges of the coming years from a position of stability and strength. Alan Leshner, Ph.D. CEO, AAAS Executive Publisher, Science Introduction
Research CAS/In Focus Editorial News Report: Introducing the Chinese Academy of Sciences Gigantic skeleton from dinosaur fossils (Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology) CREDIT: PHOTOS BY RICKY WONG The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) defies easy description. Among other things, the semi-governmental organization’s 110 institutes carry out basic, applied, and translational research in all fields of science; it builds and maintains “big science” facilities for use by all of the country’s researchers; it runs a graduate school and a university; it generates reports to advise policymakers; and it selects members, an elite group considered to be the best scientists in China. CAS was officially founded just one month after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, in 1949. “It was very clear to the Chinese leadership at the time that if you want to have a sustainable economy, you need to rely on science and technology,” says Lü Yonglong, director-general of CAS’s Bureau of International Cooperation. Since then, CAS has taken on a staggering array of roles. Originally tasked with coordinating all of the country’s research activities, as well as providing science-based advice to the government, CAS lost some of its authority to the new Ministry of Science and Technology in 1958. Further marginalized during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and '70s, when intellectuals were distrusted and universities shut down, CAS began to recover in the late '70s along with the rest of the country. Various steps were taken to reform the research system, but its true renaissance began in 1998 with the advent of the so-called Knowledge Innovation Program (KIP), which aimed to boost innovation in China by remaking CAS. At that time, “the institutes had to reorient themselves, and reevaluate staff,” Lü explains. The upheaval was dramatic. Some of CAS’s 120 institutes were shut down or merged with others, while most downsized their staff and faculty. The Academy of Mathematical Sciences, for example, demoted or laid off 100 of its 160 full professors. In Shanghai, eight biological institutes merged to form the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences (SIBS), modeled on the U.S. National Institutes of Health. “One of the advantages of this new organization is that we can reform and reorganize these institutes according to the progress of science,” says Chen Xiaoya, the current president of SIBS. Some of the eight institutes were merged or eliminated, while new ones have sprung up under KIP, including the Institute of Neuroscience, the Chinese Academy of Sciences-Max Planck Society Partner Institute for Computational Biology (PICB), and the Shanghai Pasteur Institute. Today’s SIBS institutes are “working on the cutting edge of research,” or serving society with a broader mandate, Chen says. Ph.D. students and technicians work on water extraction from plant and soil samples (Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research) But CAS’s three major functions— research, education, and consultation— have remained unchanged. Research China’s central government charges CAS with “playing a key role in leading China’s research, especially in the frontiers of science,” says Lü. Since KIP began, research programs have been increasingly oriented toward internationally popular frontier areas, such as neuroscience, while also continuing to cover areas of particular interest to China, such as developing new energy sources and partnering with domestic industries. As it strives to conduct world-class research, CAS has increasingly pursued international collaborations, as well as aggressively recruiting Chinese scientists who have worked or studied abroad (see page 36, “Attracting Top Talent”), and emphasizing publication in international peer-reviewed Lü Yonglong journals when evaluating staff and faculty. For example, at SIBS’s Institute of Neuroscience, Director Poo Mu-ming (who also serves as a professor of neurobiology at the University of California, Berkeley) has put in place a rigorous system Poo Mu-ming Internal view of the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility 5
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