On the outskirts of Beijing a Chinese start-up called CapitalBio is developing tiny devices, or chips, capable of reading the activities of thousands of human genes at a time. Better diagnostics for tumours are one of many possible uses.
Not far away in the campus of Beijing’s Tsinghua University stands a multi-million dollar nanoscience centre funded by an overseas microchip manufacturer. Its scientists are working on new materials for dissipating the heat that builds up inside microchips.
At the other end of the country in Guangzhou, a new Institute of Biomedicine and Health, run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has in its sights the development of new vaccines and drugs. Many of its scientists are returnees recruited from top US institutions.
These are some of the tangible signs of China’s push to develop its science base and R&D capacity. They do not tell the whole story, yet each example offers a glimpse of some of the factors driving the push. It is a story on the one hand of high national ambition, rising government inputs for science, investments from multinational companies and returning research talents, and on the other of immense challenges. How should the established science nations respond?
In the case of the UK, we should first recognise that we have already established a good baseline pattern of science and innovation partnership with China. At the government level, for instance, the UK and China have an overarching agreement to support science and technology co-operation as well as agreements covering specific fields and joint projects.
Major government-to-government collaboration projects include a feasibility study for developing a “near-zero emissions” carbon capture and storage power plant, a climate change impacts study and collaborative research mapping China’s future needs for flooding defences. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. Large numbers of UK and Chinese scientists and engineers are already working together in ways that are not immediately visible to government officials.
Take basic and academic research. China’s total reported R&D spend has been increasing by 20 per cent a year since 1999, delivering more funding for China’s research institutes and universities. One consequence of that is China’s soaring output of research papers in internationally recognised journals. China now produces more papers than France and is on track to overtake the UK in the next few years.
On the downside, the quality of those papers is not rising as fast as the volume, many of China’s brightest and best are still choosing to leave, and officials have recently found it necessary to take steps to curb the risk of plagiarism and other frauds.
However, the essential point stands: the Chinese science base has undergone a step-change in funding, facilities and outputs in recent years which has created a vein of untapped collaboration capacity – and value – that simply wasn’t there a decade ago.
So how are the UK and China performing in basic and academic science collaboration, and is anything is missing from our approach?
My colleagues and I in the FCO’s Science and Innovation Network in China recently began working with the UK consultancy Evidence Ltd to look at the numbers of collaborative research papers scientists are producing with Chinese co-authors. Not surprisingly, the US is China’s most frequent science partner, co-authoring 10 per cent of China’s total output. Japan is second, co-authoring about 4 per cent, with the UK and Germany (about 2.5 per cent each) in third place.
The EU as a whole is progressively losing collaboration ground both to the US and to emerging science countries such as Singapore and South Korea. But within the EU, the UK is doing well. In 2005 the UK published 1,561 joint papers with China (compared with Germany/1,381 and France/827). And the UK’s EU lead in engineering and medicine collaboration outputs is especially marked.
The challenge ahead will be not just to sustain this largely bottom-up and undirected output but to unlock more value from the partnerships producing it, especially in fields of mutual strategic interest (such as energy research and sustainable development). On this front, the decision by the UK’s Research Councils to set up an office in Beijing this year marks a crucial step forward for both countries.
Commercial R&D outputs are no less important, and in this sphere, too, the UK and China are creating value through partnership. China-sceptics rightly highlight the poor innovation record of Chinese-owned companies and the Chinese economy as a whole. Despite increasingly high official figures for business R&D expenditure (which now accounts for more than 60 per cent of China’s total official R&D spend), it remains the case that most Chinese companies do little R&D other than product or process development, and obtain few international patents.
However, some Chinese companies are beginning to buck these trends and the experience of foreign companies is unequivocally that innovation value can be created through R&D in China. BP, Astrazeneca, Unilever and Vodafone are all in the process of setting up or expanding existing R&D operations there. They cannot all be wrong. A key challenge ahead will be to demonstrate the reciprocal value of investing in the UK to the larger Chinese technology companies that are now upping their R&D game.
Another important area of collaboration potential we are beginning to explore is knowledge transfer. This year will see the launch of a pilot collaboration scheme called Innovation China/UK. Backed on the UK side with £5m from the Higher Education Innovation fund over two years, the scheme will fund proof-of-concept collaborative research projects of commercial potential.
The UK end of these projects will be run by a consortium of UK universities led by Queen Mary London. The goal is not so much to facilitate new research partnerships as to extract and realise the commercial value embedded in existing partnerships.
The UK government’s position on China’s efforts to invest and upskill in R&D is clear: engage with it, it’s an opportunity. A China that does more R&D and becomes more innovative is on balance good news for the UK and good news for the world. An innovative (rather than imitative) China is more likely to develop sustainably, to use energy and raw materials efficiently and to bring carbon emissions under control. It is also more likely to tighten up on IPR, develop as a market for high-tech R&D goods and services and invest in R&D overseas. By encouraging R&D collaboration and partnership with China the UK will strengthen its position as an international R&D hub, not lose its comparative R&D advantage.
But we shall not fulfil this vision if we pursue collaboration for collaboration’s sake, or R&D partnerships merely as diplomatic window dressing. China faces significant challenges in creating an innovation system of truly global standing out of its vast numbers of institutes, universities and enterprises. But the generalisation that China is somehow unable to innovate is as misleading as the polar opposite idea that China is somehow about to sweep all before it in R&D. We need to continue to develop smart, sustainable R&D partnerships capable of unlocking and delivering real value to the institutional and business sectors of both countries.
David Concar is science and innovation counsellor, British Embassy, Beijing
