Science & Technology in China: A Roadmap to 2050: Strategic General Report of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Yongxiang Lu

Sep 2009 · Springer Science & Business Media

About this ebook

China’s modernization is viewed as a transformative revolution in the human history of modernization. As such, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) decided to give higher priority to the research on the science and technology (S&T) roadmap for priority areas in China’s modernization process. What is the purpose? And why is it? Is it a must? I think those are substantial and signifcant questions to start things forward. Significance of the Research on China’s S&T Roadmap to 2050 We are aware that the National Mid- and Long-term S&T Plan to 2020 has already been formed afer two years’ hard work by a panel of over 2000 experts and scholars brought together from all over China, chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao. Tis clearly shows that China has already had its S&T blueprint to 2020. Ten, why did CAS conduct this research on China’s S&T roadmap to 2050? In the summer of 2007 when CAS was working out its future strategic priorities for S&T development, it realized that some issues, such as energy, must be addressed with a long-term view. As a matter of fact, some strategic researches have been conducted, over the last 15 years, on energy, but mainly on how to best use of coal, how to best exploit both domestic and international oil and gas resources, and how to develop nuclear energy in a discreet way. Renewable energy was, of course, included but only as a supplementary energy.

Ratings and reviews

The Chinese Academy of Sciences reports how the country is modernizing science and technology and social changes for a developed world expected to triple in population and economic size over the next five decades. Revolutions in S&T require changing from imitation to innovation, independence, and institutions. Breakthroughs are expected in information science that will outpace technology. Computational thinking combines man-cyber-physical in a ternary universe. The plan is to absorb global innovations and intellectual resources. The format is like a brochure that defines structure, characteristics, steps and research support.The text is supported by data formatted in tables, charts, and highlighted boxes which detail characteristic indicators. There are five chapters by a committee of five writers and forty reviewers representing over three-hundred members. It is written at the level of principles and categories rather than specifics like the design of a new plane, and compares the rate of modernization of twenty-four countries. The major topics are economics, emerging areas, security, basic science, sustainability, and strategic efforts. This will be followed up by actual research, publications, workshops, peer review and priorities. It refers to relevant past plans, the immediately previous of which lasted for four years. It adds integration between demonstration and application, e.g. the topic of social computing and how it goes from electronic to ubiquitous. By 2050, China sees itself as an open society, advanced in culture, ethics, politics, materials, and conservation. Eight basic and strategic systems for economic development include energy, materials and manufacturing, networking, agriculture and biology, health, ecological and environmental, space and ocean, and security. Three emerging cross-disciplinary areas are nanotech, space, and complex systems. Security recognizes open-source intelligence and has two areas, space situational awareness, and social computing and parallel management systems. Four basic science areas are dark matter and energy, controlling structure of matter, synthetic biology, and photosynthesis. Seven sustainability efforts are comprised by 4k meter transparence underground to see ore deposits, renewable energy, deep geothermal, nuclear, marine, stem cells and regenerative medicine, and early diagnosis and intervention of chronic diseases. Six strategic efforts are post-IP networking, green manufacturing, process engineering, ubiquitous sensing, exa supercomputing, and molecular design. The primary milestones are shown for the years 2020, 2030 and 2050.