The 10th Chinese–American Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium (CAKFoS) in October 2007 celebrated another decade of growth in the interaction of Chinese science with the international scientific community. Launched in 1997 by the presidents of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), CAKFoS has brought together 670 outstanding young scholars from approximately 300 institutions in the two countries and focused on 77 different topics of modern science. CAKFoS is a unique forum for exchange of knowledge and ideas around recent advances and research opportunities across the breadth of contemporary scientific endeavour. The level of engagement of Chinese scientists in this dynamic forum reflects the decade of advancement in Chinese science, science policy, and science communication.
Participants bring expertise and ideas from diverse scientific backgrounds to the CAKFoS symposia, which are designed to promote cross-disciplinary discussion and generate new ideas. Each symposium is organized around eight topics, jointly selected by a committee of CAS and NAS delegates, and based largely on feedback from the previous year's meeting. Session chairs and speakers highlight the major challenges, methodologies, and limitations in their fields without using technical jargon to ensure that nonspecialists are able to understand and contribute to the meeting. Speakers and participants pose and field challenging questions that probe into and across traditional boundaries of research disciplines.
CAKFoS mirrors the advances made over the past decade on the larger stage of Chinese science and technology. This decade has seen science in China enjoy rapid progress attributable to changes at three levels of government operations, (i) more than 20 years of fundamental changes in national policies aimed at promoting economic reform and openness to the outside world; (ii) science infrastructure reforms arising from a more than doubling in the proportion of public investment into the science and technology sector over the past decade; and (iii) greatly increased emphasis on the facilitation of collaboration and communication amongst Chinese scientists and between Chinese scientists and the global scientific community. Here, we reflect on the last two of these changes and their influence in promoting the quality and quantity of scientific advance in China.
In the past 10 years, the Chinese government has committed greater effort than ever to supporting domestic research and development. This is evidenced by the steady increase in the proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) invested into research and development, from 0.64% in 1997 to 1.42% in 2006, not to mention the approximately 10% average annual increase in national GDP over the same period. This increased funding has been allocated to capacity-building and institutional reform of the existing science and technology infrastructure and construction of new research infrastructure focused on vanguard fields of research. The number of people engaged in science and technology research in China has increased by approximately 50% over the last decade and has been accompanied by substantial increases in the rigor and expectations of academic assessment.
This substantial increase in research and development investment in infrastructure and personnel has been outpaced by the rate of increase of scientific output in terms of international publication. There has been an overall 7-fold increase during the decade from 25,007 in 1997 to 172,000 papers published by Chinese authors in international journals in 2007, of which CAS has contributed 15% of that total. The increased number of publications is matched by the rising quality of science published. The quality of research is demonstrated by the number of papers published in high-ranking scientific journals, which is particularly true in the case of CAS. Increased demand for quality research has also driven Chinese research institutions to adopt staff performance measures to promote higher output of higher quality research reports. As a measure of China's progress in science and technology, the increase in publication rate and quality of published science demonstrates China's growing contribution to the global bank of knowledge and reflects the integration of its scientists into the international scientific community.
Research fields where China's progress and innovation in science and technology in the recent decade have been particularly obvious include nanoscience, material science, neuroscience, genomics, and proteomics. Chinese speakers have presented some of this progress at CAKFoS, including reports of progress in the fields of cognitive neuroscience, spintronics, single-molecule chemistry, human genomics, and dark matter/dark energy. Although achievements such as those in dark matter/dark energy were made in foreign facilities, some newly developed and under-construction mega-science facilities in China will hopefully contribute to the progress of world science. Many of these advances can be directly linked to the creation of new research infrastructure and the promotion of high achieving and promising researchers.
The investment in bricks-and-mortar research and development facilities and the human capital necessary to undertake innovative research has been further supported by international collaboration and communication. Cooperation and exchange have contributed to the improvement of science and technology standards, training of new talent, upgrading of experimental facilities, and the exchange of expertise. The past decade has witnessed a rapid growth for CAS institutes as evidenced by an increase in the number of Chinese scholars appointed to international academic organizations. This growth is associated with a rapid increase in the number of overseas visitors to CAS institutes and the international meetings that CAS hosts. The high volume of communication and cooperation across international borders is demonstrated by the fact that scientists from CAS coauthored 3,724 papers in the international literature in 2006 compared with 790 in 1998 and that there has been a 5-fold increase in the number of coauthored papers by scientists from China and the United States in the past decade. These outcomes are fueled by the promotion of interaction and collaboration, which are fast becoming the norm for quality research involving Chinese scientists.
CAKFoS stands out as an important example of the promotion of interactions and cooperation among scientists on both the international and the domestic level. For example, an ongoing and productive collaboration on stem cell research between researchers at Stanford University, University of Wisconsin, and Beijing Xuanwu Hospital was facilitated by the symposium. Although the format of the symposium is around bilateral exchange between the partner countries, additional benefits have arisen through breaking down barriers between Chinese research institutions such as those in CAS and those in the university sector. The by-product has been the forging of effective domestic academic links and collaborations.
The diversity of the symposium programs reflects the complexity of leading-edge science and illustrates that major scientific discoveries require crossing traditional disciplinary boundaries. If this approach was foreign to many Chinese scientists a decade ago, it is not anymore. Chinese scientists attending recent symposia are more actively engaged in the question-and-answer sessions than before, demonstrate higher level presentation skills, and are more confident about having equal footing in exchanges with U.S. scientists. This development mirrors the progression of science in China and the emergence of a new generation of internationally oriented Chinese scientists.
Dialogue in forums such as CAKFoS is an important driver of scientific innovation and development and, like all productive dialogues, depends on the partnership of distinguished speakers and willing listeners. The academic linkages, mutual understanding, and mutual respect developed among scientists of the two countries should have a wide impact on scientific exchange and collaboration between the two scientific communities and should advance their shared interests in discovery at the frontiers of science.
Footnotes
The authors declare no conflict of interest.