Cultural history holds back Chinese research

摘要

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently lamented that, when it comes to scientific research, China is now ahead of India. "India's relative position in the world of science has been declining," he said. "And we have been overtaken by countries like China." But although China is now second only to the United States in the number of scientific papers produced, many say that the quality of its research needs to improve. Misconduct is a common problem, but there are other, cultural, reasons for Chinas poor performance, too.