Tech breakthroughs require long-term thinking

In the Government Work Report he delivered to the National People’s Congress, the country’s top legislature, on Friday, Premier Li Keqiang said that basic research is the source of scientific and technological innovation. He vowed to further increase the central government’s support for “sources of innovation” and to reform the talent and research evaluation system so as to achieve breakthroughs in key fields.

Statistics of the Ministry of Science and Technology show that the country’s spending on research and development last year was about 2.4 trillion yuan ($369.4 billion), and over the past five years, the country’s input in fundamental research has been more than 6 percent of its overall input into research and development.

Although China now tops the world in terms of the number of published papers in science and technology, it still lags behind many developed countries in some key technologies and industries, particularly in chip manufacturing, airplane engines and large-scale industrial software.

That’s why in the Central Economic Work Conference held late last year, the central authorities pledged to resolve the technological issues that “seize the country by the throat”.

Which entails, as Li said, longterm inputs into fundamental research and the reform of the project and talent evaluation system. It is not uncommon for researchers to be distracted from their work by the many unnecessary and overelaborate formalities of the current system, and why they are so keen to publish as many papers as possible and apply for as many patents as possible in a short time, rather than spend years “sitting on cold stools” dedicating themselves to fundamental research that might produce no findings or returns in the end.

Li has hit the nail on the head by highlighting the urgency of reforming the research-related institutions, rather than simply vowing to increase the input in research and development. That all researches must have findings to prove the value of their work is a concept that must be scrapped, for only if they are emancipated from the shackles of the rigid performance assessment system can researchers be emboldened to act as trailblazers.