After 1,000 Year Slumber, China Vows to Invent AgainBeijing spends billions on moonshot projects such as teleportation and artificial intelligence, hoping to shake off its reputation as a copycat economy and curb dependence on foreign powers
The world’s No. 2 economy has long trailed Western nations in technological innovation. Even after a quarter-century of world-beating growth, China is known as a fast follower more interested in copying foreign innovations than inventing its own.
This is beginning to change. China is opening the taps with billions of dollars for moonshot projects—such as studying teleportation—at a time when Western research budgets are lackluster. It is luring top scientists with promises to let them pursue pet projects.
And like the U.S. in the decades after World War II, it is doing so with an uncommon sense of national mission, driven by a desire to burnish China’s standing and reduce its dependence on foreign powers.
It is too soon to know how much innovation China’s efforts will yield. Skeptics say it faces insuperable hurdles, including an education system that emphasizes memorization over original thinking. The country’s weak patent-protection system skews incentives toward imitation over invention.
But Chinese researchers are already catching up in areas such as artificial intelligence, drones and internet technology. In August, China launched the world’s first quantum-communications satellite, potentially putting the country in a lead position to develop hack-proof communications.
China has the world's two fastest supercomputers
Locations of top five supercomputers, as measured by trillion floating point operations per second, a standard for computer speed
Source: TOP500 list of supercomputers
China now has the world’s fastest commercial high-speed train, the Shanghai Maglev. It is competing with U.S. companies to make a driverless car. And it is racing NASA to send rovers to Mars by 2020, while also trying to be first to stage a landing on the dark side of the moon.
Although many of these projects employ Western technologies, optimists believe they will spin off unexpected innovations, much as America’s space program did. At a minimum, China’s ambitious push means there is now another player in the global quest for technological breakthroughs—and a new competitor to stir creative juices that could ultimately set the global economy on a higher growth path again.
“Some policy makers in the West tend to think that China doesn’t have an innovative culture, so no matter how much money they spend, we will still always have the edge,” says Ed Gerstner, executive editor in China for the scientific journal Nature. “I don’t think it’s such a sure bet.”
Attendees at a Shenzhen, China, “Fab Lab” conference in August to showcase grassroots innovation, inspired by MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms Photos: Theodore Kaye for The Wall Street Journal
China’s efforts, while welcomed by many in the world’s scientific community, have sharpened tension with Washington and U.S. business leaders, who see China’s innovation push as a form of economic nationalism aimed at replacing U.S. technologies.
China’s strides are also spurring competition, which could accelerate advances. U.S. President Barack Obama last year issued an executive order for the U.S. to retake the supercomputing title. The European Union said in April it will plow €1 billion into quantum technology.
China’s strides are also spurring competition, which could accelerate advances. U.S. President Barack Obama last year issued an executive order for the U.S. to retake the supercomputing title. The European Union said in April it will plow €1 billion into quantum technology.
China’s potential for major innovation is still limited to a few areas, notably those—like quantum science or internet finance—with strategic economic or military importance. Quantum science makes use of particles so tiny they don’t follow normal laws of matter, with capabilities such as teleportation and existing in multiple states at once. Advances may also come in fields complicated by ethical debates in the West, like cloning, where regulation is looser in China. China’s main near-term contributions, experts say, will likely be incremental advances that can save companies money or boost efficiency.
Some markers of China’s progress are clearly overstated. China’s share of global patent filings under the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Patent Cooperation Treaty jumped to 13.7% last year, third behind the U.S. and Japan, with 29,846 filings, compared with 1.8% a decade ago.
Many of these patents are virtually worthless, experts say, often intended to ward off patent trolls. Almost every Chinese smartphone maker has patented a very similar-looking rectangle, according to filings. In one case, a Jiangsu company obtained a patent for making bamboo ”carpets,” which was later invalidated by a court on the grounds that they were the same as the mats that have been made for generations.
Beijing offers subsidies for successful patent filings, which critics say encourages middling ones.
“For every one million yuan ($145,000) we receive in government grants, we are required to produce one patent,” says Lu Xinchun, chief executive of Hwatsing Technology Co., a Chinese manufacturer of semiconductor-making equipment.
China still lags behind in R&D spending. But it overtook Japan in 2009, Europe in 2013 and is expected to outspend the U.S. by 2020, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD. China’s federal funding for basic science rose to $10.1 billion in 2015 from $1.9 billion in 2005, while U.S. funding dropped slightly in real-dollar terms to $32.4 billion in 2015.
“If there’s a well-defined direction, which requires funding and a large group, China can put up most of the resources,” says Zhang Shoucheng, a Stanford physicist researching next-generation computing materials who teaches part-time in Beijing.
In 2012, China churned out 964,583 science and engineering college graduates, compared with 589,330 in the U.S., according to the U.S. National Science Foundation.
“How many people do you need to be creative or innovative? Do you need a nation of Steve Jobs ? You just need one of them,” says Chris DeAngelis, Beijing-based general manager of consultancy Alliance Development Group. “China’s got five times the population of the U.S. That’s enough.”
China’s urgency to score breakthroughs has intensified with its slowing economy. There is also a security imperative.
“Our country is under others’ control in core technologies of key fields,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a March speech. “The state needs the strategic support of science and technology more urgently than any other time in the past.”
China’s innovative spirit reached a nadir during the Cultural Revolution. Leaders urged peasants to make semiconductors and steel in their woodsheds.
Since then, China has rolled out a series of projects, such as the “Thousand Talents Program,” launched in 2008, which aims to attract world-class researchers with one million yuan up front, plus further grants and competitive compensation. The program, which began with the goal of attracting back to the country Chinese researchers living abroad, was later expanded to target foreigners as well. Authorities say the effort has lured more than 4,000 researchers.
Barry Sanders, a quantum physicist at Canada’s University of Calgary, says he set up a second lab at the University of Science and Technology of China because of “Thousand Talents” funding. “We publish all our research, so it doesn’t matter too much where we are doing it,” he says.
Another draw for some scientists: The government often encourages academics to blur into the private sector, using their research to start companies.
China’s ambitions are reflected in people like Pan Jianwei, the leading researcher for its quantum satellite.
Quantum communications involves phenomena so far outside our traditional understanding of the universe that Albert Einstein called it “spooky.” It posits the existence of particles that can instantaneously “teleport” information to one another, seemingly in defiance of space and time.
In 2014, Mr. Pan’s team made two infinitesimally small bits of information disappear and then reappear elsewhere—a primitive version of Star Trek-style teleportation that marked the world’s most advanced effort to date. The results of the experiment were published in Nature, a prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal. The work has other applications, making unbreakable codes and super-powerful computers.
All of that was far off for Mr. Pan in the 1990s. Looking at the state of Chinese research, he says he had no choice but to head overseas, securing a fellowship at the University of Vienna. His English was so poor that on his first day he mistakenly went to his landlord instead of the university fellowship office to request his stipend.
“I couldn’t bear the food, but I found that salami was palatable if you soaked it in oolong tea,” Mr. Pan says.
Many of these patents are virtually worthless, experts say, often intended to ward off patent trolls. Almost every Chinese smartphone maker has patented a very similar-looking rectangle, according to filings. In one case, a Jiangsu company obtained a patent for making bamboo ”carpets,” which was later invalidated by a court on the grounds that they were the same as the mats that have been made for generations.
Beijing offers subsidies for successful patent filings, which critics say encourages middling ones.
“For every one million yuan ($145,000) we receive in government grants, we are required to produce one patent,” says Lu Xinchun, chief executive of Hwatsing Technology Co., a Chinese manufacturer of semiconductor-making equipment.
China still lags behind in R&D spending. But it overtook Japan in 2009, Europe in 2013 and is expected to outspend the U.S. by 2020, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD. China’s federal funding for basic science rose to $10.1 billion in 2015 from $1.9 billion in 2005, while U.S. funding dropped slightly in real-dollar terms to $32.4 billion in 2015.
China is catching up with the U.S. in R&D spending
Research-and-development expenditures as a percentage of GDP
United States China
Source: OECD
In 2012, China churned out 964,583 science and engineering college graduates, compared with 589,330 in the U.S., according to the U.S. National Science Foundation.
“How many people do you need to be creative or innovative? Do you need a nation of Steve Jobs ? You just need one of them,” says Chris DeAngelis, Beijing-based general manager of consultancy Alliance Development Group. “China’s got five times the population of the U.S. That’s enough.”
China’s urgency to score breakthroughs has intensified with its slowing economy. There is also a security imperative.
“Our country is under others’ control in core technologies of key fields,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a March speech. “The state needs the strategic support of science and technology more urgently than any other time in the past.”
Since then, China has rolled out a series of projects, such as the “Thousand Talents Program,” launched in 2008, which aims to attract world-class researchers with one million yuan up front, plus further grants and competitive compensation. The program, which began with the goal of attracting back to the country Chinese researchers living abroad, was later expanded to target foreigners as well. Authorities say the effort has lured more than 4,000 researchers.
Barry Sanders, a quantum physicist at Canada’s University of Calgary, says he set up a second lab at the University of Science and Technology of China because of “Thousand Talents” funding. “We publish all our research, so it doesn’t matter too much where we are doing it,” he says.
Another draw for some scientists: The government often encourages academics to blur into the private sector, using their research to start companies.
China’s ambitions are reflected in people like Pan Jianwei, the leading researcher for its quantum satellite.
Quantum communications involves phenomena so far outside our traditional understanding of the universe that Albert Einstein called it “spooky.” It posits the existence of particles that can instantaneously “teleport” information to one another, seemingly in defiance of space and time.
In 2014, Mr. Pan’s team made two infinitesimally small bits of information disappear and then reappear elsewhere—a primitive version of Star Trek-style teleportation that marked the world’s most advanced effort to date. The results of the experiment were published in Nature, a prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal. The work has other applications, making unbreakable codes and super-powerful computers.
All of that was far off for Mr. Pan in the 1990s. Looking at the state of Chinese research, he says he had no choice but to head overseas, securing a fellowship at the University of Vienna. His English was so poor that on his first day he mistakenly went to his landlord instead of the university fellowship office to request his stipend.
“I couldn’t bear the food, but I found that salami was palatable if you soaked it in oolong tea,” Mr. Pan says.
Pan Jianwei, a Chinese quantum physicist, is leading research into teleportation at the University of Science and Technology of China in Shanghai. Photo: Eric Michael Johnson for The Wall Street Journal
He got in on the ground floor of quantum teleportation. Chinese physics lagged behind so much that Mr. Pan didn’t know the field existed, and he remembers proudly outlining the idea to Vienna colleagues only to be met with pained silence. He thought he invented the idea; they were already working on it.
Mr. Pan stayed in Europe for a decade and worked under one of the field’s pioneers, Anton Zeilinger.
“I thought, first of all, you should try to do the best science that you can,” says Mr. Pan. “Of course, if later you can return to your home country to do your work, that is the ideal situation.”
The opportunity came after the Thousand Talents Program was launched and Mr. Pan’s alma mater, the University of Science and Technology of China, recruited him. He says his lab was outfitted with world-class gear.
“He has the vision to really push the envelope,” says Mr. Gerstner, the Nature editor. “He also has essentially an infinite budget. That’s a very potent combination.”
Mr. Pan’s Austrian mentor, Mr. Zeilinger, had dreamed of putting a quantum satellite into space as early as 2004 but couldn’t secure funding. While it isn’t yet known how well China’s satellite will function as it tests spy-proof messaging in space, it got there more quickly.
“China has one advantage: They can make decisions faster than the rest of the world,” says Mr. Zeilinger, who is now working with his student on China’s satellite tests.
Much of the U.S.’s quantum communications research is done under classified military projects. Researchers say there is a possibility the U.S. military has more advanced quantum technology it hasn’t made public. A spokesman for the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to discuss government quantum research.
Attention is also focusing on China’s startup scene, which hasn’t produced big breakthroughs but is attracting money and talent, including people like Meng Qiu Wang. He studied artificial intelligence at Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon and spent years helping Twitter Inc. develop its user algorithms.
Mr. Wang says his Beijing-based startup, Zero Zero Robotics, received $1 million last year from the city of Hangzhou, plus a 43,000-square-foot office and apartments for employees. It spent only $700,000 in its first 15 months for a 30-person team, which would have been “impossible” in Silicon Valley, Mr. Wang says.
He also had an easier time than in the U.S. recruiting skilled engineers, even if they sometimes lacked imagination compared with their U.S. cohorts, he says.
Zero Zero recently launched its Hover Camera drone, which unlike other popular drones can be grabbed out of the air without danger, due to a lightweight carbon frame surrounding the propellers.
Mr. Pan stayed in Europe for a decade and worked under one of the field’s pioneers, Anton Zeilinger.
“I thought, first of all, you should try to do the best science that you can,” says Mr. Pan. “Of course, if later you can return to your home country to do your work, that is the ideal situation.”
The opportunity came after the Thousand Talents Program was launched and Mr. Pan’s alma mater, the University of Science and Technology of China, recruited him. He says his lab was outfitted with world-class gear.
“He has the vision to really push the envelope,” says Mr. Gerstner, the Nature editor. “He also has essentially an infinite budget. That’s a very potent combination.”
Teleportation research equipment in Shanghai. Photos: Eric Michael Johnson for The Wall Street Journal
“China has one advantage: They can make decisions faster than the rest of the world,” says Mr. Zeilinger, who is now working with his student on China’s satellite tests.
Much of the U.S.’s quantum communications research is done under classified military projects. Researchers say there is a possibility the U.S. military has more advanced quantum technology it hasn’t made public. A spokesman for the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to discuss government quantum research.
Attention is also focusing on China’s startup scene, which hasn’t produced big breakthroughs but is attracting money and talent, including people like Meng Qiu Wang. He studied artificial intelligence at Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon and spent years helping Twitter Inc. develop its user algorithms.
When Mr. Wang decided to build a drone that is easier to fly than existing models, he says China was the “clear choice” because of its lower costs, and the “crazy amount” of financial support.
Mr. Wang says his Beijing-based startup, Zero Zero Robotics, received $1 million last year from the city of Hangzhou, plus a 43,000-square-foot office and apartments for employees. It spent only $700,000 in its first 15 months for a 30-person team, which would have been “impossible” in Silicon Valley, Mr. Wang says.
He also had an easier time than in the U.S. recruiting skilled engineers, even if they sometimes lacked imagination compared with their U.S. cohorts, he says.
Zero Zero recently launched its Hover Camera drone, which unlike other popular drones can be grabbed out of the air without danger, due to a lightweight carbon frame surrounding the propellers.
Professor Pan Jianwei in his teleportation lab. Photo: Eric Michael Johnson for The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Pan, the teleportation physicist, has more out-of-this-world goals for his research. One is to explain why quantum particles appear to defy the laws of time and space in the first place.
“Who knows?” he says. “Maybe we will discover something new.”
“Who knows?” he says. “Maybe we will discover something new.”
—Yang Jie in Beijing contributed to this article.
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