China is an economic catastrophe waiting to happen. China is poised to become the world’s largest economy by 2025. Both these statements are true. They provide the context we must understand in order to evaluate rightly what the Chinese are attempting to do in the sciences.
When Deng Xiaoping came to power in the early 1980s, China was a Third World country, its vast population mired in poverty, trapped by massive economic failures and structural rigidities. Deng decreed that China must have the benefits of capitalist modes of investment and competition. He declared, also, that the foundation of economic and so of national greatness is science and technology.
A quarter-century later, the dynamism of the Chinese economy is without precedent — steel, automobiles, toys, textiles, household appliances, on and on. Official statistics put the year-on-year growth of gross domestic product at 7.5 percent in 2001, 8.3 percent in 2002, 9.3 percent in 2003, 9.5 percent in 2004. Some Western economists think the real rates have been significantly higher. In any case, agreement is general that China’s economy will soon outstrip that of the United States.
(This article was a feature story in Technology Review’s December 2005/January 2006 print issue. It has been divided into three parts for presentation online. This is part 1; part 2 will appear on Tuesday, January 10, and part 3 on Wednesday, January 11.)
