China Tops Europe In R&D Intensity 134
ananyo writes "By pouring cash into science and technology faster than its economy has expanded, China has for the first time overtaken Europe on a key measure of innovation: the share of its economy devoted to research and development. In 2012, China invested 1.98% of its gross domestic product (GDP) into R&D — just edging out the 28 member states of the European Union, which together managed 1.96%, according to the latest estimates of research intensity, to be released this month by the OECD. The figures show that China's research intensity has tripled since 1998, whereas Europe's has barely increased (see graph). The numbers are dominated by business spending, reflecting China's push in the manufacturing and information- and communication-technology industries."
They produce more.. what? (Score:2, Insightful)
They might spend more, but considering all the false papers that come out of China, they're not getting much for their money. They'll continue to pirate our research for the considerable future.
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Suggest that you move straight to Beijing then. Their economy is so awesome because of the large salaries that they pay those slaves to work in their poisonous factories that spew out counterfeit goods to poison our children with.
Re: They produce more.. what? (Score:5, Informative)
Your point could have been made without the racist implicit assumption that "evil chinese" are trying to poison westerners. They just have lax environmental standards, and the people of China are starting to take notice of how badly it hurts their lives, and the government there is begining to cave, just like the early days before the EPA in the USA.
The rise of the East is good for the world, the more places that have an educated middle class, the less room there is for exploitation. It just happens in a way where exploitation goes way up before it goes down.
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Your point could have been made without the racist implicit assumption that "evil chinese" are trying to poison westerners. They just have lax environmental standards, and the people of China are starting to take notice of how badly it hurts their lives, and the government there is begining to cave, just like the early days before the EPA in the USA.
The rise of the East is good for the world, the more places that have an educated middle class, the less room there is for exploitation. It just happens in a way where exploitation goes way up before it goes down.
Really, you drew the racist card on this? Currently, China has some terrible policies, on their own people as well, and it's driven largely by their economy, not their ethnicity. Nowhere did parent suggest that it's because Chinese people, as a race, (not as a country, government, or culture) are somehow "inferior" to other races, nor did he imply China could never change because of who they are, ethnically. And why has no one ever been accused of racism when referring to American white devils?
Throwing
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It was implicit, not explicit. And your usage shows just how retardly abused the phrase "race card" is. It was meant to be a "get out of jail free" analog when invented by wring-wing political correctness. It has no bearing on every single discussion of race, even if misguided, and you need to drop them damn persecution complex, it makes you seem guilty when you're not.
And the "implicit assumption" came from your phrasing, not your intent: "to poison our children with" if you read that again, without goi
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It was implicit, not explicit. And your usage shows just how retardly abused the phrase "race card" is. It was meant to be a "get out of jail free" analog when invented by wring-wing political correctness. It has no bearing on every single discussion of race, even if misguided, and you need to drop them damn persecution complex, it makes you seem guilty when you're not.
And the "implicit assumption" came from your phrasing, not your intent: "to poison our children with" if you read that again, without going nuts about how someone dared called dear-little-angel-you a r-r-r-racist you'll not the infinitive construction implies intent, which is fucking racist. Saying something racist(or nationalist or otherwise prejudicial) doesn't make you a member of the KKK, it's just wrong, is all.
So please, take this not as an indictment of your character, but a call to consider the meaning of what you say in the future.
I'm not sure if you realize I'm *not* the parent AC poster that you initially responded to, so it wasn't "my" phrasing. I never said, "poisoning our children". I don't know who the AC is. Maybe you need to make fewer assumptions and pay closer attention?
But you really need to learn the definition of "racist", not redefine it as you see fit. How is "poisoning children" racist? It's just evil, but evil stems from many things. You are the one who decided to be butthurt and assume the parent AC was critic
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Yeah, I realized that after I posted. Sorry for conflating you with a dickbag.
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People seem to try to bring racist back to the root words, which is a little strange because we don't typically try to insist that awful and awesome are synonyms.
Racism has a meaning, and when you're implying that "the Chinese" as a gestalt are taking action to poison "our children" (not just children, but our, non-Chinese children) it's a racist implication. Even if the speaker is ethnically Chinese.
It's basically an irrational grouping of people. "The Chinese" aren't poisoning "our" children.
That said, it's possible he was being racist
I'd step aw
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But, there are different ways to categorize the same group of people. The government and economic climate of Chinese companies here are what I felt he meant by China, not the people themselves as a race, due to their DNA, their looks, culture, etc.. I think it boils down to this: I don't base race on a pe
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Re: They produce more.. what? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think China is better at treating its workers, I have land on the Moon to sell you.
And we're talking research here, not employment. And in that regard, GP is correct - spending does not equal results. China needs some time to develop the proper R&D culture, as it's simply not there yet. It has the spending power, but it lacks efficiency.
Re: They produce more.. what? (Score:5, Informative)
You forget that these spending numbers are percentages of GDP, not absolute numbers. In this regard, China does not have the spending capacity. In terms of nominal GDP (World Bank, 2012), the EU spent $3.27e11 (327 short billions) in R&D, while China spent $1.65e11 - only just over half. The US, with a slightly smaller GDP than Europe but a higher R&D expenditure is still winning the spending race with $4.35e11. You'll notice TFA also spends most of its time criticising the quality of Chinese research, consistent with the western notion that academic freedom and a competitive market are integral to scientific and technological progress.
The countries with the highest GERD in the OECD are:
source [oecd-ilibrary.org]
Finland! (Score:5, Insightful)
OK how the fsck is Finland seemingly the best at everything? Seems like whenever there is a top list of something positive about countries Finland is top 5 every time (and Sweden also).
Going to have to move there or something.
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Healthy mix of socialism and capitalism that works much better than pure capitalism, plus small country needs to get more out of the small population than big one. It can't afford to waste human potential in the way a big country like US or China can.
As a result, efficiency counters tend to be up all over the board for Nordic countries.
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It (seemingly) isn't...Israel is above it. Amongst the best, perhaps.
I'm wondering about 'Korea' - are they *really* grouping north and south together?
> Going to have to move there
Yeah, that'll fix it ;)
Having said that, I've just moved *away* from there - a bit too depressing :/
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Israel is above everyone by a large margin because of the military R&D, which is actually sponsored by US. As a result, the relation to GDP of Israel is massively skewed, as it's basically bankrolled by US.
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Ah, so you're discounting Israel. Fair enough, though you could have mentioned it ;)
I suppose I should have just asked why you were discounting Israel...
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I'm not discounting it, I'm merely pointing out that Israel is a fairly clear outlier, and there's a reason for it - the financier is US, and you're comparing spending to Israel's GDP.
When you compare it to Nordics, that do not have such a large country actually doing the bankrolling, the comparison becomes a bit silly.
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OK how the fsck is Finland seemingly the best at everything? Seems like whenever there is a top list of something positive about countries Finland is top 5 every time (and Sweden also).
Going to have to move there or something.
We tax the rich!*
No, really, we do. We have free universal healthcare, practically no homeless (everybody is taken care of, regardless of the colour of your skin or of your passport), and free higher education.
Socialism rocks!
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If you think China is better at treating its workers, I have land on the Moon to sell you.
And we're talking research here, not employment. And in that regard, GP is correct - spending does not equal results. China needs some time to develop the proper R&D culture, as it's simply not there yet. It has the spending power, but it lacks efficiency.
Depends on your definition of R&D. Certainly China already has a reverse-engineering culture which passes for R&D.
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If you think that any Western nation doesn't have reverse engineering technology, I have even more land on the Moon to sell you. We still have far more know-how in reverse engineering that China simply due to Cold War experience where West was stealing from USSR and vice versa.
Hell, take a look at F-35. Reverse engineered MiG-29 HMS, coupled with reverse engineered Yak-141 STOVL system, then improved upon through modern technology. Chinese have a long way to go before they're even on par with us when it com
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I didn't say that western nations don't have reverse engineering - just that China does and considers that to be a form of R&D, relevant to the discussion at hand.
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So do Western countries. Do you have a point, or are you just enjoying pretending that China is somehow worse than Western countries in this regard?
Because we're not. The only difference between us and China right now is that we are so far ahead that China has a whole lot more of our stuff that it can reverse engineer than we have of theirs.
Once this situation becomes a bit more balanced, you can expect the standard industrial espionage and reverse engineering to balance out on all sides and business will c
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Re: They produce more.. what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Spain, Ireland and a few others were considered models of economic growth and probity before the Lesser Depression. Now of course they're considered "irresponsible" by the same people that lauded them before. Greece is a different story, but put that one aside because it's so different than the others and their economy is so small that it's not of great importance to the EU. Comparing Greece and Spain is absurd.
Germany, despite its other virtues, is a mercantilist country. No wonder they embraced the Euro. Otherwise when the economies of other European countries went south (more than Germany's) the exchange rates of those countries' currencies would have dropped and Germany would have lost much of their current advantage.
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'Growth' by spending borrowed money on imported products is not growth.
It can be. The US was a major debtor country in the latter 19th century when our industrial growth rate was at its highest. Much of the development of the US, including the "Old West", was financed by the British.
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People living from wellfare bein treated like dirt etc.
Yeah, they are really not getting enough free money from the people who are working. Beggars can't be choosers.
The problem is that there is a large and growing number of people working full time and needing welfare assistance because they get paid less than the cost of living. This is really corporations gaming the welfare system and exploiting the employment condititions but it the poor bastards breaking their backs for little that also have to deal with being treeted as leeches by society.
Re: They produce more.. what? (Score:5, Informative)
1. China does not top Europe in any way, the absolute numbers are fully and totally the opposite. The TFA refers to percent of GDP, which is meaningless.
2. Being on welfare in Germany compares to working off you ass on low to medium job in the US. You just need to do the minimum of research on the different programs.
3. There is something called elevator effect, in which the median standard of living is raised. The low end of German income will get you a middle class standard of living compared to 30 years ago. The only shitty practice are the total lack of minimum wage in Germany, where people have a job and get welfare to prop them up.
Yes complaining, that is what we Germans are really good at...
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The TFA refers to percent of GDP, which is meaningless.
No, it's not. A high proportion of R&D costs is labor. Because of the difference in salaries between different countries, %/GDP matters more than absolute numbers.
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The TFA refers to percent of GDP, which is meaningless.
No, it's not. A high proportion of R&D costs is labor. Because of the difference in salaries between different countries, %/GDP matters more than absolute numbers.
Wrong. Since the most research in Europe is carried out in the countries with the highest labor costs, your statement is misleading, as it skews the costs relative to the GDP of the region.
Also, Switzerland is always ignored in these calculations. I know they are not part of the EU but a quick peek at the graph in the original article shows Europe, not EU (I know they state EU in the fine print). Switzerland has a very vibrant research community (think physics, biotech, pharma) and it seems silly to exc
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Switzerland is very much part of the European Research Council, and even though it is not part of the EU, usually it is included in these types of statistics.
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The thing they seem to export the most of is grad students.
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They might spend more, but considering all the false papers that come out of China, they're not getting much for their money. They'll continue to pirate our research for the considerable future.
Why do we assume that China will have to come up the exact path we have been through?
The whole models of quantity of research papers as the measure of research output is old an dated.
Plus, most Chinese would probably publish in Chinese journals.There is no point submitting to US based journals for free and then paying hefty fees to be accessible to others.
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Plus, most Chinese would probably publish in Chinese journals.
Nope. Segregating your country's scientific literature from the rest of the world is a good way to ensure that your scientific community remains isolated and disconnected. Besides, publishing in big-name Western journals like Science/Nature/Cell is a prestige thing, and above all the Chinese want to be taken seriously as a Major Power. (Otherwise they wouldn't be wasting time and effort trying to grab a handful of uninhabited rocks from Japan.
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Plus, most Chinese would probably publish in Chinese journals.
Nope. Segregating your country's scientific literature from the rest of the world is a good way to ensure that your scientific community remains isolated and disconnected. Besides, publishing in big-name Western journals like Science/Nature/Cell is a prestige thing, and above all the Chinese want to be taken seriously as a Major Power. (Otherwise they wouldn't be wasting time and effort trying to grab a handful of uninhabited rocks from Japan.)
Absolute bullshit.
There are plenty of such Russian and French journals, and if you want to explore what the state of the art in some of those specific fields of physics, math or statistics are, then you better learn to translate from those languages.
And seems like you have never seen research communities in theoretical fields. They are isolated and publish for one another because their work is probably going to be understood by at most a dozen of people and their students.
Science/Nature has been known
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And seems like you have never seen research communities in theoretical fields.
No, as a biologist I ignore these completely.
There is some politics involved in getting your work published into those journals. If you are a foreigner, then there is absolute no chance that you will be published there because nobody will know who you are.
Perhaps this is still true for obscure theoretical fields, but it has not been true in the biological sciences for some time now. I see papers in my field from groups I've never
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They might spend more, but considering all the false papers that come out of China, they're not getting much for their money. They'll continue to pirate our research for the considerable future.
It would be an interesting to do research on just how influential the research coming out of China is. One pretty simple method would be to find out the ratio of Chinese research papers that are cited by European research, and vise versa. That would be a pretty good metric of how much research is just fluff, and how much is useful enough to be used by others.
This [gbtimes.com] article seems to back up the assertion that the quality of research coming out of China is rising, but still isn't as good as research coming out
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lol, did you even read the article?
"An even more encouraging statistic is China’s position in the top four of countries whose scientists’ research was the most cited between 2003 and 2013. This suggests that the research produced in China is as good as any in the world."
why do you hate chinese so much? you're a joke.
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lol, did you even read the article?
"An even more encouraging statistic is China’s position in the top four of countries whose scientists’ research was the most cited between 2003 and 2013. This suggests that the research produced in China is as good as any in the world."
why do you hate chinese so much? you're a joke.
The paper goes on to give the numbers I mentioned in my post, that their citation rate is 65% of the world average. And note that this is a comparison with the world average, not the top countries.
I wasn't hating on the Chinese, as I even linked to a post that gave praise to Chinese research. But I did want to point out that the country still has a long way to go. The top researchers in China are apparently doing very well, but there must be a huge amount of very questionable research for their average to b
Its worse than that (Score:2)
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Its worse than that. They actually make things rather than patenting concepts. its a good thing that we can get them to pay up for "implementing" the vague concepts we come up with,
Quite correct, they don't come up with anything new on their own. They just create cheap, poorly made, knock-off copies of things created elsewhere.
Re:Its worse than that (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Its worse than that (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? Why?
Because Japan's economic growth after WWII did depend heavily on inexpensive knock-off copies. That only changed several decades after WWII, when their economy had reached a higher level.
There are also important difference between Japan and China though. Japan heavily emphasized quality. The Deming prize for improved quality is awarded in Japan, and it's quite prestigious. Ironically it's named for W. Edwards Deming - an American. He had some excellent ideas for quality improvement that the Japanese took very seriously. Unfortunately many American manufacturers didn't (especially car companies).
Another difference is that Japan always discouraged foreign direct investment.
Re:Its worse than that (Score:4, Informative)
For example they can not bow to American pressure to make their currency unatractive like Japan did and end up with lost decades.
In other words, it's ok for China to be mercantilist and keep their currency artificially low, but wrong for the US to object to it.
As for "bow[ing] to American pressure", would that include the US threatening to impose tariffs and quotas on Chinese imports? As a sovereign country the US can do that. Don't bother giving me any nonsense about "violation of international agreements", because China has been in such blatant violation of so many agreements for so long that it's laughable.
You're also completely wrong about what caused Japan's lost decade(s). It was caused by a collapse of stock and real estate bubbles. It's similar to what happened here more recently, except that fortunately for us, they didn't happen at the same time. And as absurd as our real estate bubble was, it was nothing compared to Japan's. It got so ridiculous that the valuation of the grounds of the Imperial Palace was higher than for the entire state of California.
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Really? Why?
Because Japan's economic growth after WWII did depend heavily on inexpensive knock-off copies. That only changed several decades after WWII, when their economy had reached a higher level.
There are also important difference between Japan and China though. Japan heavily emphasized quality. The Deming prize for improved quality is awarded in Japan, and it's quite prestigious. Ironically it's named for W. Edwards Deming - an American. He had some excellent ideas for quality improvement that the Japanese took very seriously. Unfortunately many American manufacturers didn't (especially car companies).
Another difference is that Japan always discouraged foreign direct investment.
This is so true - I remember the panic by the British motorcycle industry when they realised that whet had started as cheap knock-off copies of Nortons and Triumphs had changed to models that were more reliable, refined and better quality than the originals.
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Really? Why?
Because Japan's economic growth after WWII did depend heavily on inexpensive knock-off copies. That only changed several decades after WWII, when their economy had reached a higher level.
There are also important difference between Japan and China though. Japan heavily emphasized quality. The Deming prize for improved quality is awarded in Japan, and it's quite prestigious. Ironically it's named for W. Edwards Deming - an American. He had some excellent ideas for quality improvement that the Japanese took very seriously. Unfortunately many American manufacturers didn't (especially car companies).
Another difference is that Japan always discouraged foreign direct investment.
Quality control is a well studied field now. China could easily improve quality control if they decide to raise prices. It's not a mysterious field anymore, not anything more than Henry Ford's manufacturing.
The future is possibly automation. If production gets more and more automated, then China will be increasingly marginalized because robot manufacturing will be undercut cheap labor. If Apple could make iPhones with robots in the US for a similar price to China, they would do it in a heartbeat.
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Fortunately for them, Capitalism doesn't care. If it can be sold, it doesn't matter where it was created, how poorly made it is or how much was the idea stolen.
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Mostly. For now. They have advanced rapidly.
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The ironic thing is that a lot of "cheap Chinese" goods is specced like that from the company importing things.
If I wanted something done right, with proper tolerances, materials, and labor, a Chinese factory can do the job. It will cost more than just doing the absolute cheapest possible work, but the end product will be better.
However, that is where China loses its edge. If I want a good product, I can have it made in the US, Germany, UK, Austria, Switzerland, Canada, Israel, Russia, Japan, or almost an
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Finally, someone who gets it.
A lot of people spout that the Chinese can only produce low quality good, and seem to forget that their beloved Apple gear, supposedly the pinacle of quality, is also made there. It's all about what level of QC is requested.
I suppose your 'stuff' is only available to your domestic market. Is there no demand for it in China? It's a huge market for the right product - hrm, a bit obvious that, I suppose.
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by percentage perhaps (Score:1)
2% of 9 trillion isn't more than 2% of 13 trillion. Even then, as a US citizen I'm impressed with how Europe is taking care of her citizens, I may not be willing to eat the tax rate that comes with that but it's still impressive. How's China doing with those 1 billion peasants that have a third world standard of living? Maybe they could use some of that 180 billion to up their poorest citizen's lifestyles? Well, then they wouldn't be quite as available as migrant worker organ farms, nevermind.
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Well, 2 things.
The willingness to spend on R&D gives some idea on where the country will be in 10 years. Yes, some of it is spent reverse engineering things that have been built, but some of it is being spent on the industries of tomorrow. Take almost any small northern European country (Finland, Norway, Denmark) as a counter example. They are small countries1 so the absolute dollar amount spent on R&D is small, yet the high percentage spent on R&D has bought a respectable level of income.
As for
Meaningless values are meaningless. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it just me or are the given values borderline meaningless. The given values are percent relative to GDP, so they basically indicate the willingness to spend a higher portion of their cash flow for R&D. On an absolute scale this meaningless, a small country could spend 50% of their GDP on R&D and still have less output than a huge nation spending 1%. Then again, raw money value also does not translate to actual scientific progress.
Re:Meaningless values are meaningless. (Score:5, Interesting)
agreed. The method in which this is calculated really isn't described either. Even though I'm in a development role, we're pressured to demonstrate "research" when we're really just assembling code.
US/Europe need to actually produce real stuff. Anything else is just proprietary fodder for others to take.
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Proportion of GDP spent on research is not a 'meaningless' number. The EU spent a great deal of time trying to (unsuccessfully) urging its member states to push their total spending up to 3%. They've since realized that no single metric can adequately measure a nation's capacity to innovate in science - but this measure is still part of a basket of metrics that it's perfectly reasonable to use to examine a country's commitment to science.
To be clear - there's little evidence that spending a lot of money sci
Re:Meaningless values are meaningless. (Score:4, Informative)
When the third largest economy in the world (or second depending on how you put Europe together) is outspending you on metrics that lead to future growth it absolutely is a meaningful metric. As to scientific progress, this isn't just about science, it's about economics as TFA mentions this is all R&D and much of it in China is companies spending on developing existing knowledge into better, cheaper products.
As an example take solar cells, we've had them for decades and while new research might be upping the maximum possible efficiency by 1-2% per decade at this point the Chinese have been reducing the cost per watt by 90% per decade, which is more important overall?
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When is the last time Europe put a rover on another world?
Face it, there are 3 major world players. US, China, Europe.
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It'll be a few years. [wikipedia.org] You mean to list the EU as the third power there? We can go by numbers:
GDP
Population
Aircraft carriers
Nobel Prizes (ignoring Literature and Peace)
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My list was by R&D spending as % of GDP. The topic of this article.
US: 2.7
China: 1.98
EU: 1.96
We can also talk about unemployment:
China: 4.1
US: 7
EU: 12
Or maybe growth rate of economy:
China 6.8
US 3.5
EU 1.1
Or people who have walked on the moon
US 12
China 0
EU 0
The EU Nobel Prize total is mostly before 1950. Since then the US has been winning the vast majority of Nobel Prizes. Recently US domination has been overwhelming.
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/jonbruner/files/2011/10/nobel_graphic_small.png [forbes.com]
Nobel Prize
Re:Meaningless values are meaningless. (Score:4, Informative)
Percentages relative to GDP are available too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending [wikipedia.org]
The list goes as follows:
1. Israel 4.2% ...
2. South Korea 3.74%
3. Japan 3.67%
4. Sweden 3.3%
5. Finland 3.1%
6. United States 2.7%
14. China 1.97%
China's figure is still pretty impressive since it is the only developing country over 1% (you would expect developing countries to have low values, since providing for basic necessities is a more pressing need than in rich countries).
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Is it just me or are the given values borderline meaningless. The given values are percent relative to GDP, so they basically indicate the willingness to spend a higher portion of their cash flow for R&D. On an absolute scale this meaningless, a small country could spend 50% of their GDP on R&D and still have less output than a huge nation spending 1%. Then again, raw money value also does not translate to actual scientific progress.
Not to mention that costs are much higher in Europe and the west than in China making actual money value comparison equally irrelevant.
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National pride hasn't disappeared. From what I hear, it's increasing in China at least. If national pride isn't harvested for something useful to all of us, then it will undoubtedly be harvested by selfish people in the mili
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The reference to small nation was an example that %of GDP is only of relevance if the GDP is in the same ballpark. The amount of money spent in research is at best a weak indicator of actual research advancement.
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So it is hard.
Maintaining control while having a relaxed attitude towards human rights and no social equality isn't trivial. If it was easy, every other country would be doing that.
Or you believe that power abides by human rights (more or less, and only when it's not convenient to forget them) because of the goodness of its heart.
Eventually, China will have to deal with revolting masses just like everyone else; and it will probably use a mix of some tiny rights, lies, misdirection and propaganda, just like
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> Or you believe that power abides by human rights (more or less, and only when it's not convenient to forget them) because of the goodness of its heart.
This is actually more or less what Spinoza learned Western Europe in 1670.
Example English translation:
"If men’s minds were as easily controlled as their tongues, every king would sit safely on his throne, and government by compulsion would cease; for every subject would shape his life according to the intentions of his rulers, and would esteem a th
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France had been around long enough for a couple thousands years one form or the other. Controlling revolts was something they had dealt with before.
And yet the king's head rolled.
Even to the eyes of the most cynical, society evolves in one sense only. Maybe with ups and downs, but at the end, no form of government has achieved total control with optimal advance. Once China reaches the still more powerful countries, sooner or later, it will have to deal with the same problems they live with nowadays.
There wi
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It's not so hard ... When you have a very relaxed attitude towards human rights and don't believe in (social) equality.
True as that criticism about China is, what does it have to do with R&D spending?
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What does it matter how it is called? Morals have no impact in the confrontation between nations. It's not the rightest country that wins wars, it's the one with the mightiest military.
If China can reach the technology level of competing countries by stealing it, that's how it will happen. Once the play field is level, other strategies will have to be applied.
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You best get used to the idea. The next century belongs to china.
Funny, that's the same thing they said about Japan in the 80's.
It's tough to make predictions - especially about the future.
Cold War non-sense (Score:1)
FTFY (Score:2)
"China Tops Europe in Arcane & Unverifyable Propaganda Statistics From an Authoritarian Communist Country"
Chung Kuo (Score:1)