the strengthening of technology and science was, along with the introduction of the market economy, the biggest factor in China’s successes after 1978. After the Cultural Revolution, mathematics at China’s universities was at the level of German high school lessons. As we all know, things have turned around since then. China’s schools and universities are world-class, and the country’s IT companies rank far ahead of their German competitors, where they exist at all.
In the CEO Talk with China.Table, Niels Peter Thomas talks about an important aspect of the science business: publishing. He heads the China branch of the publishing house Springer Nature, which publishes important journals. According to Thomas, the rise of Chinese science is currently entering a new phase. He has seen a rapid increase in the number of outstanding publications. Returnees from foreign universities have brought the methods and spirit of science to China. A new generation is now on a par with fellow researchers in the US and Europe. The positive effect: “Diversity is increasing.”
But Thomas also looks beyond his field of expertise. Particularly when it comes to scientific cooperation, he sees no trend towards compartmentalisation. At a time when China seems increasingly inaccessible, that’s good news. “The population continues to be incredibly open-minded and curious about the world,” says Thomas, adding that no one here is interested in a confrontation with the West.
Shortly before the major conference in Glasgow, China published its major climate plan online on Sunday. It contains the familiar goals: a reduction in coal burning from 2030 and CO2 neutrality by 2060. But in addition there are numerous new details that Nico Beckert has taken a closer look at.
Wishing you a good start to the week
Dr. Niels Peter Thomas is only 49 years old, and yet he still knows a China without any cars. As a student he lived in Beijing from 1985, his mother was a teacher there. Fascinated by the country, he later returned as a student. The graduate electrical engineer earned his doctorate in economics. He is now in China for the second time as a manager.
Today, he is president for the region Great China of one of the largest academic publishers: Springer Nature. That means a lot of tradition. The publishing house includes, for example, the British science journal Nature (founded in 1908), and Scientific American (founded in 1844), for which Albert Einstein later also wrote. And the German Springer Verlag from Heidelberg is even older: it was founded in 1842.
But Springer Nature stands just as much for innovation as it does for tradition. The publisher runs the largest open-access academic platform in the world. It has published reference books that are no longer written by humans, but by artificial intelligence. Its parent company is Stuttgart-based Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which owns a 53 percent stake. You can watch the entire interview in German here.
Disclaimer: This interview has been translated into English and is not considered an official translation by any party involved in the interview.
Mr. Thomas, how well does China utilize its knowledge?
What is impressive when talking to universities, scientists, or public authorities, is an increasing awareness of the value of knowledge. It’s about the collection, organization, and effortless exchange of knowledge. The sense of this is sometimes even more pronounced than here in the West
Where’s that coming from?
It is more apparent to a fast-growing country with a long successful past, how important innovation and the exchange of knowledge are for economic and technological progress. China has a long tradition of exchanging knowledge. This also results in a desire to better manage knowledge. Beijing does not want to leave this to chance, as is, unfortunately, the case in some areas in the West.
Does this also apply to international cooperation? Or does Beijing believe that it can handle knowledge management more and more on its own?
No, Beijing is also aware that it is impossible to maintain the pace of development as a global loner. This applies not only to science but also to politics. There, too, international cooperation is more crucial than ever. Although there are also areas where people isolate themselves, this is not the main trend at universities. Collaborative scientific productions between Chinese and foreign scientists have increased significantly in the past decade. We can see this in the number of scientific papers accepted and published in peer-reviewed international scientific journals by Chinese researchers. By now, 27 percent of them are co-written with foreign scientists. And the trend is growing. So there is no question of isolation.
But surely the focus is on natural sciences, then?
Certainly, if you look at the absolute numbers. However, there is also a considerable percentage growth in Chinese-foreign articles in the social sciences and humanities, even if we find it difficult to find common ground on some ideological topics. And topics are being researched at Chinese universities that are currently only a niche in Europe, for example, the sociology of rural areas.
What is the cause of this boom?
It is a fundamental element of Chinese policy to promote international exchange in many areas. International publications or conferences at an international level are funded or are associated with better career chances. At the same time, it wants to bring global scientific research to China. Both help to improve Chinese science and increase the rate of innovation in global competition.
Why are China’s scientists so innovative once again? For two or three decades, we were convinced that what the Chinese do best is copying the West.
They first had to catch up again. In science, we would call that diligence rather than copying. For a long time, there was a post-narrative growth in academic papers. In the meantime, however, we are noticing a significant leap in quality at Nature, with all its strict selection for relevance and quality. All articles, no matter where they come from, must undergo peer review. That means they have to be deemed scientifically sound and relevant by independent peers, which usually means Western scientists reviewing the articles of their Chinese colleagues.
Did that surprise you?
No, this has been going on behind the scenes for many years now. The best universities receive a lot of money and infrastructure. For a long time, more than a decade, there have been incentives for Chinese academics who have made careers overseas to return to China. That in turn shapes the next generation of PhD students. They can now earn their doctorates in some disciplines at many Chinese universities as if they were abroad.
You have been to China as a student in the eighties. Can you tell us about some of your experiences?
China is a country that you can only really understand if you spend a longer period of time there. And I am grateful that I had the chance to experience China time and time again over such a long period. Back then, if I took the subway to school and was sick for one day, fellow passengers would ask me where I had been the next day. That’s probably not going to happen anymore now, and it says a lot about the old Beijing and the new Beijing. And I can still remember a time when the third ring road was built, which runs past the Kempinski Hotel. At that time, a six-lane highway was placed into the greenery. I wasn’t the only one who wondered back then whether that made any sense at all. In the beginning, only horse carts and a few bicycles drove there. Today, the third ring road runs through the middle of the city, it is always congested and there is now a sixth ring road. Because of this experience, I see China’s current future projects in a completely different light.
Has the China of today become more nationalistic?
That’s a difficult term. If nationalism means pride in one’s achievements and greater confidence, to the point that one begins to no longer want to be told what to do, then I would agree. But if nationalism means isolation, I would disagree. There is an incredible openness and curiosity about the world among the people- at least among those I deal with – a willingness to learn from one another.
Does that also apply to the relations between Chinese and international scientists? Politically, there is a lot of friction.
In science, you hardly feel that. The focus is on networking, not confrontation. Scientists are less interested in where the new knowledge that advances their field comes from, but more in whether they can get ahead faster together than alone. This has led to very successful international collaborations. Some Western scientists now look at the equipment of their Chinese colleagues in envy.
What role did the Coronavirus play? Did it politically divide the virology field?
No. In fact, in the face of adversity, people have tended to pull together. Shortly after the Corona outbreak, the major science publishers decided to make all content on the matter available without a paywall. This made it even easier to collaborate globally. The first wave of publications mainly came from China because China had been affected by the virus first and already had experience with SARS. The now stable and trusting networks between Chinese and international scientists had proven their worth. The fact that Westerners were not able to go to the laboratory, but had to sit in their home offices while their Chinese peers were already able to resume their lab work, increased exchange even more. I find all this very encouraging. Of course, I am also aware of the political tensions in this context, but at the working level, there is still very trusting cooperation.
How is the scientific landscape changing now that China is a major new player on the market who is both a partner and a competitor?
The diversity is increasing. A great deal of new scientific topics come from China. Even now, some Chinese metropolitan regions are among the world’s most innovative regions. Beijing is one of them, certainly Shanghai and Nanjing, and especially the Greater Bay Area with Shenzhen and Guangzhou in southern China. They no longer have to hide from traditional centers such as Boston in the US, Silicon Valley for applied research, Oxford in England, or even Munich in Germany.
But the situation is still different when it comes to Nobel Prize winners. China is not even among the top 10 nations. The US has around 400, China not even 10.
Since the prize has been awarded for 120 years, it naturally takes longer to catch up. I recently heard that the Chinese raised this concern at a conference on the future of Chinese science. An American Nobel laureate was asked what China must do to win more Nobel Prizes.
So?
The answer was: Find the smartest minds in your country, bring them together, give them enough resources and maximum freedom to explore what they want to explore, and also make mistakes. By all means, don’t tell them which direction to go. And then wait patiently for 30 to 35 years.
Bitter news for politicians who are not able to keep their top positions for 30 years, even in China.
In any case, that’s a great incentive to find a shortcut. I’m very curious to see if China won’t be faster after all.
The topic of Open Access is certainly also important here. What is the position in China?
Surprisingly, there is a lot of talk about Open Access at the moment. The main issue here is that scientific institutions in smaller cities should also have adequate access to the global knowledge pool and that research, if it is relevant, should also be noticed on an international level.
Understandably, the Chinese have an interest in this. But does the West also have an interest in it?
I believe it is important to understand that only together we can only solve major social and technical challenges. That is why we have an interest in further promoting networking. There is no alternative to this from a scientific view!
That’s clear. But there is no way that an academic publisher is interested in Open Access. After all, it depends on paywalls.
With Open Access, too, our service is paid for. However, not by the reader, but by the budget of the institution funding the research, which has a great interest in ensuring that the research results are widely noticed.
Doesn’t that limit journalistic independence?
No. Open Access does not mean that anyone who pays can publish anything they want. Only what has passed our strict quality control is made accessible to all. That is why there is a very clear trend towards Open Access. In some fields, the 50 percent threshold has already been exceeded. It started in the life sciences and is now reaching the humanities and social sciences. Engineers are still lagging a little behind. In the Chinese political context, I find it very exciting that both politics and science are beginning to show interest in how OA works. The Chinese Academy of Sciences, China’s leading scientific institution, will be hosting an Open Access Week this year to provide information on the subject.
Open Access and ideology do not go well together, however. Ideology wants to channel and censor knowledge.
We have to be realistic. In China, open access and censorship will exist side by side. In the end, there will probably be open access with Chinese characteristics. This is still probably considerable progress, but it may not go as far as we would have liked.
How do you deal with the issue of censorship in general?
It hardly plays a role in our main work focus: We want to give Chinese authors, like all other authors worldwide, the opportunity to publish internationally. But we also license Western content for China. That’s more difficult in some areas, no question. But it is good to know that the supply of Chinese scholars with international literature, including from the social sciences and humanities, is more diverse overall today than it was just a few years or decades ago. Beijing’s focus is still more on obtaining knowledge than on isolation. What is important for us in this context is that, as a publishing house, we do not apply different criteria for publications from different countries.
China is very open to technology. Sooner rather than later, the question will be what impact all this data and artificial intelligence will have on academic texts and publishers
That is a young and very exciting discussion that is extremely relevant for the further development of the academic world. We are no longer talking about Open Access, but about Open Science. This term includes not only texts but data, also. Easy and free access to an unimaginable amount of data will give birth to new science. In the field of research and development, China is much more open to this than it initially seems.
How will publications change as a result?
We are actually already relatively far along. For two years now, we have been publishing books that no longer have a human author, but have been written by an algorithm. The first book was about lithium-ion batteries, a topic in which Chinese research also plays a central role.
How does that work?
We trained an algorithm to read everything that could be found on this topic. This can be 15,000 or more articles or chapters, more than any human could read and process in a reasonable time frame. The algorithm tries to separate the important from the less important, for example by looking at what is cited, how often, and where. In this way, clusters are formed, from which a structure for such a book gradually emerges. In the end, this results in a book that the researchers are convinced actually adequately represents the state of research.
A book, though, with nothing new in it.
That’s what we thought, too. However, a new structure emerges in these clusters. The way the algorithm connects these findings differs considerably from existing reviews on the topic. A new independent point of view is definitely emerging, pointing in a new direction. Such a text will not win a Nobel Prize in literature. But the electro-chemists say it gives my doctoral students new ideas because it is an incredibly compact way of presenting the state of research. In addition to the authors, we can also offer a new service to the readers. Language barriers can increasingly be overcome by software and readers can, in a sense, tell the book how much time they have for which aspect of the book and then immediately get the proper summary or a higher level of detail. There is then still an original edition, but otherwise, the book can adapt to the reader’s wishes.
How convenient. The publisher gets rid of the annoying author …
… and the editor at the same time. We’ll produce books like washing machines at the push of a button. No, that’s not the point, of course. It’s like autonomous driving. It will never completely replace actual driving, but it is helpful in getting where you want to go more easily and quickly. When it comes to writing books, it will probably become the norm for algorithms to help the author prepare the data and the state of research in a way that gives the researcher more time and leeway to interpret it. Thus, authors manage to write books that would have been impossible to write under analogous circumstances. So the algorithm allows the author to spend his time discovering new things. Our job as publishers in the future will be to provide this service to authors. As we all know, one of the biggest obstacles to the publishing business is the author’s weaker self. In the future, we will be able to use algorithms to help authors overcome it.
Just ahead of the global climate conference in Glasgow, China unveiled its long-awaited “Supreme Planning Document” for achieving national climate targets on Sunday. The policy document outlines key climate targets through 2025, 2030, and 2060. The targets outlined in the document are largely in line with previously voiced targets, but there were surprises as well:
The People’s Republic is therefore not acting in the short term with absolute targets for reducing CO2 emissions. Instead, there are still only targets that are related to economic growth. The relative targets mean that CO2 emissions will only fall slowly with high growth.
The climate plan unveiled Sunday is the top planning document for China’s path to a net-zero target – that is, phasing out greenhouse gas emissions while accounting for offsets. The plan sets the framework “for all future climate planning,” according to analysts at consulting firm Trivium China. The central plan will now be followed by a series of action plans that will provide more details on how to achieve the climate targets.
These action plans then relate to specific sectors, such as power, industry, or transport sectors. Altogether, the climate plan and its action plans make up the so-called “1+N framework”. The “1” stands for the climate plan, the “N” for a certain number of action plans. It thus follows the approach of the five-year plans, which comprise detailed sub-plans for sectors and regions based on a guiding document.
According to Trivium China, the People’s Republic was in dire need of this central climate plan to “curb all haphazard planning already underway.” Because all kinds of actors, from ministries to provincial and local governments, as well as the often state-owned enterprises, are “frantically trying to demonstrate their compliance with Xi Jinping’s climate goals,” according to Trivium’s analysts.
The climate plan also includes a passage on the transport sector. The expansion of e-mobility is to be accelerated. This includes expanding the network of charging stations and battery exchange stations for EVs. In addition, power efficiency standards for cars with combustion engines are to be further tightened. Train lines are to be electrified more quickly and freight transport is to become greener.
The building sector should also work more power-efficient, and existing buildings should consume less electricity. Innovations and technologies should help to reduce CO2 emissions in all sectors.
The plan also reiterates the commitment made in the past to “strictly control” investments in CO2-intensive projects such as coal-fired power, steel, aluminum, concrete, and petrochemical products. In addition, carbon capture and storage projects are to be supported. The green finance sector is also to be further expanded and standards in this area established (China.Table reported). Banks are to be encouraged to provide cheap loans for sustainable investments, according to the climate plan (China.Table reported).
The Climate Plan also lists several so-called “guiding principles”. These are the political and economic mechanisms that are to drive implementation. For example, the state and the market should contribute equally to achieving climate targets.
Beijing has already increasingly relied on market mechanisms in recent years. In July, after years of planning, a national emissions trading scheme was launched. So far, however, coal-fired power plants have been the main participants. The price per ton of CO2 is currently still very low (China.Table reported).
Nevertheless, emissions trading already covers about 40 percent of all emissions generated in China. The slow start to trading could soon be followed by a significant speedup, as the first phase of emissions trading is only considered a careful test phase. The climate plan provides for the “gradual expansion” of emissions trading, which was originally intended to cover more sectors than just the 2,000 or so power plants in the energy sector that it currently encompasses.
A market mechanism that has also been discussed in recent months is the pricing of natural goods and services. The idea behind this is, if the environment has a price, there is a greater incentive to protect it. This should make it possible to preserve natural services such as the storage of CO2 by forests and moors. The political elites are even debating the introduction of a so-called “gross ecosystem product”, which would make environmental protection measurable and in the long term could be on a par with economic performance and GDP (China.Table reported). The climate plan now envisions the introduction of “an ecological compensation mechanism that reflects the value of carbon sinks.”
Another guideline of the climate plan is “guarding against risks”. The plan highlights that “efforts to reduce pollution and carbon emissions must be balanced with the need to ensure the security of energy, industrial chains, supply chains” and calls for “excessive response”. This means that the reduction of CO2 emissions must not come at the expense of the power security of industry, or that the development of new power sources other than coal must proceed fast enough to avoid another energy crisis like the current one (China.Table reported).
However, Refinitiv analysts do not expect China to make any new concessions at the conference in Glasgow, despite the climate plan presented beforehand. China’s political leadership needs to “secure power supplies in the winter and subsequent spring” in the short term, Refinitiv states.
China has published the plan ahead of the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP26). The People’s Republic finds itself in a bigger dilemma ahead of COP26 than originally thought (China.Table reported). This is because an increase in power outages currently makes a quick phase-out of coal seem less likely. China is currently still too dependent on coal-fired power. The sharp rise in the price of raw materials has made consumption more expensive. Since electricity rates were regulated by the state for a long time, they could not rise in turn. It was no longer profitable for power plants to produce power. Power from other sources could not replace the shortfall in coal-fired power. In whole regions, lights and air conditioners went out, factories came to a standstill. All this shows how dependent China still is on coal as things stand. Collaboration: Finn Mayer-Kuckuk
Love is good for integration. It is an anchor. Love even educates, as Jochen Goller, President, and CEO of the BMW Group Region China, confirms. He had already spent some time in the People’s Republic from 2004 to 2009 – as Head of Marketing. That was where he met his wife. When he returned to China in 2015, he already had a very good grasp of the language. Their daughter even learns three languages: German, English, and Chinese.
With decent language skills, it is of course a lot easier to really arrive in China. Goller didn’t need an orientation or acclimation period. “There are rarely any in-betweens when it comes to China. Either you like the country or you don’t. I belong to the former and I felt at home right from the start,” he says.
Goller’s first visit to China came at an exciting time. BMW, the traditional German carmaker, was experiencing a development that would otherwise be more suited to start-ups. In 2004, sales figures exploded in the People’s Republic. From 15 dealers selling 12,000 cars a year, the curve jumped to 100 dealers and 90,000 cars in 2009. Today, thanks to 550 dealers, the Bavarian brand sells about 750,000 vehicles.
BMW’s development in China is reflected in the development of the country as a whole. The People’s Republic had double-digit growth rates in gross domestic product. “The automotive industry is a reflection of what is happening in the economy and society,” says Goller. The landscape of large cities is still changing at a rapid pace. Infrastructure and mobility have to keep up.
A pace that shapes interaction and the culture of conversation. “It’s a very direct and competitive country. No doubt about it. Because all of China wants to move up socially,” is how Goller perceives it. The Chinese tea ceremony serves as a counterweight for him. He has learned to love it. It slows down meetings. Managing directors and company presidents would first prepare tea, which allowed for a relaxed level of discussion. Even if the mood remains results-focused.
That is the way it has to be. Because mobility in China is on the verge of a major shift- in the coming years, the government wants to focus more on hydrogen. First in the field of commercial vehicles, emphasizes Goller. BMW is “open to technology” and currently has a small hydrogen fleet on the streets. Should this drive technology play a role in passenger cars from 2030, his brand would also be ready.
Goller is also rather relaxed about the semiconductor shortage. BMW has come through the crisis well and is successfully relying on local suppliers. Goller predicts that the problem with microchips could last a few more quarters. But a long-term change in strategy is not necessary.
The fact that BMW is in a position to guide the industry on such issues is also owed to Goller: “What I helped shape from the very beginning was the brand perception of BMW and MINI and the positioning of both brands, and the corresponding product policy.” Christian Domke Seidel
Monday morning before the first coffee? Are you perhaps sitting in front of this column with panda eyes right now? You heard me right! The panda is not only the fluffy national treasure of the Chinese, but also the eponym for a meme that existed even before social media: namely, thick, black rings under the eyes. In Chinese slang, these are actually called “panda eyes” (composed of 熊猫 xióngmāo “panda” and 眼 yǎn from 眼睛 yǎnjing “eyes”).
The most effective way to grow panda rings is to spend the night “cooking the night away”, as the Chinese would say (熬夜 áoyè “to cook the night away”). Working late into the night, as we all know, sometimes feels as wheeling as if you’d been behind the wheel all night – in Chinese, it’s conveniently called “driving the night car” (开夜车 kāi yèchē) is synonymous with rascalling until dawn.
By the way, the view into the eye region in China holds some more wonderfully figurative word creations ready, which sweeten the vocabulary learning for us foreigners. Here is a small selection: If you’ve had too many panda-eye phases over the years, you may soon have “fishtail wrinkles” (鱼尾纹 yúwěiwén) running through the corners of your eyes (better known to us as “crow’s feet”). But fortunately, these can be easily concealed with “ink glasses” (墨镜 mòjìng “sunglasses”, literally “ink” or “ink glasses”).
Or, alternatively, with a bulky frame. If they are too extravagant, however, you run the risk of being made fun of as a “four-eyed” person (四眼 sìyǎn – China’s equivalent of “glasses snake”). And with too much glasses camouflage, one is quickly no longer “cooked” to the eyes of friends and colleagues, but “raw” (眼熟 yǎnshóu “known, familiar” – literally “cooked to the eyes”; in contrast to: 眼生 yǎnshēng “foreign, unknown” – literally “raw to the eyes”). Then rather courageously show fishtail fold, also gladly with contact lens. Chinese also has a refreshingly simple translation for this: 隐形眼镜 yǐnxíng yǎnjìng – “invisible glasses”.
Verena Menzel runs theNew Chineselanguage schoolin Beijing.
the strengthening of technology and science was, along with the introduction of the market economy, the biggest factor in China’s successes after 1978. After the Cultural Revolution, mathematics at China’s universities was at the level of German high school lessons. As we all know, things have turned around since then. China’s schools and universities are world-class, and the country’s IT companies rank far ahead of their German competitors, where they exist at all.
In the CEO Talk with China.Table, Niels Peter Thomas talks about an important aspect of the science business: publishing. He heads the China branch of the publishing house Springer Nature, which publishes important journals. According to Thomas, the rise of Chinese science is currently entering a new phase. He has seen a rapid increase in the number of outstanding publications. Returnees from foreign universities have brought the methods and spirit of science to China. A new generation is now on a par with fellow researchers in the US and Europe. The positive effect: “Diversity is increasing.”
But Thomas also looks beyond his field of expertise. Particularly when it comes to scientific cooperation, he sees no trend towards compartmentalisation. At a time when China seems increasingly inaccessible, that’s good news. “The population continues to be incredibly open-minded and curious about the world,” says Thomas, adding that no one here is interested in a confrontation with the West.
Shortly before the major conference in Glasgow, China published its major climate plan online on Sunday. It contains the familiar goals: a reduction in coal burning from 2030 and CO2 neutrality by 2060. But in addition there are numerous new details that Nico Beckert has taken a closer look at.
Wishing you a good start to the week
Dr. Niels Peter Thomas is only 49 years old, and yet he still knows a China without any cars. As a student he lived in Beijing from 1985, his mother was a teacher there. Fascinated by the country, he later returned as a student. The graduate electrical engineer earned his doctorate in economics. He is now in China for the second time as a manager.
Today, he is president for the region Great China of one of the largest academic publishers: Springer Nature. That means a lot of tradition. The publishing house includes, for example, the British science journal Nature (founded in 1908), and Scientific American (founded in 1844), for which Albert Einstein later also wrote. And the German Springer Verlag from Heidelberg is even older: it was founded in 1842.
But Springer Nature stands just as much for innovation as it does for tradition. The publisher runs the largest open-access academic platform in the world. It has published reference books that are no longer written by humans, but by artificial intelligence. Its parent company is Stuttgart-based Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, which owns a 53 percent stake. You can watch the entire interview in German here.
Disclaimer: This interview has been translated into English and is not considered an official translation by any party involved in the interview.
Mr. Thomas, how well does China utilize its knowledge?
What is impressive when talking to universities, scientists, or public authorities, is an increasing awareness of the value of knowledge. It’s about the collection, organization, and effortless exchange of knowledge. The sense of this is sometimes even more pronounced than here in the West
Where’s that coming from?
It is more apparent to a fast-growing country with a long successful past, how important innovation and the exchange of knowledge are for economic and technological progress. China has a long tradition of exchanging knowledge. This also results in a desire to better manage knowledge. Beijing does not want to leave this to chance, as is, unfortunately, the case in some areas in the West.
Does this also apply to international cooperation? Or does Beijing believe that it can handle knowledge management more and more on its own?
No, Beijing is also aware that it is impossible to maintain the pace of development as a global loner. This applies not only to science but also to politics. There, too, international cooperation is more crucial than ever. Although there are also areas where people isolate themselves, this is not the main trend at universities. Collaborative scientific productions between Chinese and foreign scientists have increased significantly in the past decade. We can see this in the number of scientific papers accepted and published in peer-reviewed international scientific journals by Chinese researchers. By now, 27 percent of them are co-written with foreign scientists. And the trend is growing. So there is no question of isolation.
But surely the focus is on natural sciences, then?
Certainly, if you look at the absolute numbers. However, there is also a considerable percentage growth in Chinese-foreign articles in the social sciences and humanities, even if we find it difficult to find common ground on some ideological topics. And topics are being researched at Chinese universities that are currently only a niche in Europe, for example, the sociology of rural areas.
What is the cause of this boom?
It is a fundamental element of Chinese policy to promote international exchange in many areas. International publications or conferences at an international level are funded or are associated with better career chances. At the same time, it wants to bring global scientific research to China. Both help to improve Chinese science and increase the rate of innovation in global competition.
Why are China’s scientists so innovative once again? For two or three decades, we were convinced that what the Chinese do best is copying the West.
They first had to catch up again. In science, we would call that diligence rather than copying. For a long time, there was a post-narrative growth in academic papers. In the meantime, however, we are noticing a significant leap in quality at Nature, with all its strict selection for relevance and quality. All articles, no matter where they come from, must undergo peer review. That means they have to be deemed scientifically sound and relevant by independent peers, which usually means Western scientists reviewing the articles of their Chinese colleagues.
Did that surprise you?
No, this has been going on behind the scenes for many years now. The best universities receive a lot of money and infrastructure. For a long time, more than a decade, there have been incentives for Chinese academics who have made careers overseas to return to China. That in turn shapes the next generation of PhD students. They can now earn their doctorates in some disciplines at many Chinese universities as if they were abroad.
You have been to China as a student in the eighties. Can you tell us about some of your experiences?
China is a country that you can only really understand if you spend a longer period of time there. And I am grateful that I had the chance to experience China time and time again over such a long period. Back then, if I took the subway to school and was sick for one day, fellow passengers would ask me where I had been the next day. That’s probably not going to happen anymore now, and it says a lot about the old Beijing and the new Beijing. And I can still remember a time when the third ring road was built, which runs past the Kempinski Hotel. At that time, a six-lane highway was placed into the greenery. I wasn’t the only one who wondered back then whether that made any sense at all. In the beginning, only horse carts and a few bicycles drove there. Today, the third ring road runs through the middle of the city, it is always congested and there is now a sixth ring road. Because of this experience, I see China’s current future projects in a completely different light.
Has the China of today become more nationalistic?
That’s a difficult term. If nationalism means pride in one’s achievements and greater confidence, to the point that one begins to no longer want to be told what to do, then I would agree. But if nationalism means isolation, I would disagree. There is an incredible openness and curiosity about the world among the people- at least among those I deal with – a willingness to learn from one another.
Does that also apply to the relations between Chinese and international scientists? Politically, there is a lot of friction.
In science, you hardly feel that. The focus is on networking, not confrontation. Scientists are less interested in where the new knowledge that advances their field comes from, but more in whether they can get ahead faster together than alone. This has led to very successful international collaborations. Some Western scientists now look at the equipment of their Chinese colleagues in envy.
What role did the Coronavirus play? Did it politically divide the virology field?
No. In fact, in the face of adversity, people have tended to pull together. Shortly after the Corona outbreak, the major science publishers decided to make all content on the matter available without a paywall. This made it even easier to collaborate globally. The first wave of publications mainly came from China because China had been affected by the virus first and already had experience with SARS. The now stable and trusting networks between Chinese and international scientists had proven their worth. The fact that Westerners were not able to go to the laboratory, but had to sit in their home offices while their Chinese peers were already able to resume their lab work, increased exchange even more. I find all this very encouraging. Of course, I am also aware of the political tensions in this context, but at the working level, there is still very trusting cooperation.
How is the scientific landscape changing now that China is a major new player on the market who is both a partner and a competitor?
The diversity is increasing. A great deal of new scientific topics come from China. Even now, some Chinese metropolitan regions are among the world’s most innovative regions. Beijing is one of them, certainly Shanghai and Nanjing, and especially the Greater Bay Area with Shenzhen and Guangzhou in southern China. They no longer have to hide from traditional centers such as Boston in the US, Silicon Valley for applied research, Oxford in England, or even Munich in Germany.
But the situation is still different when it comes to Nobel Prize winners. China is not even among the top 10 nations. The US has around 400, China not even 10.
Since the prize has been awarded for 120 years, it naturally takes longer to catch up. I recently heard that the Chinese raised this concern at a conference on the future of Chinese science. An American Nobel laureate was asked what China must do to win more Nobel Prizes.
So?
The answer was: Find the smartest minds in your country, bring them together, give them enough resources and maximum freedom to explore what they want to explore, and also make mistakes. By all means, don’t tell them which direction to go. And then wait patiently for 30 to 35 years.
Bitter news for politicians who are not able to keep their top positions for 30 years, even in China.
In any case, that’s a great incentive to find a shortcut. I’m very curious to see if China won’t be faster after all.
The topic of Open Access is certainly also important here. What is the position in China?
Surprisingly, there is a lot of talk about Open Access at the moment. The main issue here is that scientific institutions in smaller cities should also have adequate access to the global knowledge pool and that research, if it is relevant, should also be noticed on an international level.
Understandably, the Chinese have an interest in this. But does the West also have an interest in it?
I believe it is important to understand that only together we can only solve major social and technical challenges. That is why we have an interest in further promoting networking. There is no alternative to this from a scientific view!
That’s clear. But there is no way that an academic publisher is interested in Open Access. After all, it depends on paywalls.
With Open Access, too, our service is paid for. However, not by the reader, but by the budget of the institution funding the research, which has a great interest in ensuring that the research results are widely noticed.
Doesn’t that limit journalistic independence?
No. Open Access does not mean that anyone who pays can publish anything they want. Only what has passed our strict quality control is made accessible to all. That is why there is a very clear trend towards Open Access. In some fields, the 50 percent threshold has already been exceeded. It started in the life sciences and is now reaching the humanities and social sciences. Engineers are still lagging a little behind. In the Chinese political context, I find it very exciting that both politics and science are beginning to show interest in how OA works. The Chinese Academy of Sciences, China’s leading scientific institution, will be hosting an Open Access Week this year to provide information on the subject.
Open Access and ideology do not go well together, however. Ideology wants to channel and censor knowledge.
We have to be realistic. In China, open access and censorship will exist side by side. In the end, there will probably be open access with Chinese characteristics. This is still probably considerable progress, but it may not go as far as we would have liked.
How do you deal with the issue of censorship in general?
It hardly plays a role in our main work focus: We want to give Chinese authors, like all other authors worldwide, the opportunity to publish internationally. But we also license Western content for China. That’s more difficult in some areas, no question. But it is good to know that the supply of Chinese scholars with international literature, including from the social sciences and humanities, is more diverse overall today than it was just a few years or decades ago. Beijing’s focus is still more on obtaining knowledge than on isolation. What is important for us in this context is that, as a publishing house, we do not apply different criteria for publications from different countries.
China is very open to technology. Sooner rather than later, the question will be what impact all this data and artificial intelligence will have on academic texts and publishers
That is a young and very exciting discussion that is extremely relevant for the further development of the academic world. We are no longer talking about Open Access, but about Open Science. This term includes not only texts but data, also. Easy and free access to an unimaginable amount of data will give birth to new science. In the field of research and development, China is much more open to this than it initially seems.
How will publications change as a result?
We are actually already relatively far along. For two years now, we have been publishing books that no longer have a human author, but have been written by an algorithm. The first book was about lithium-ion batteries, a topic in which Chinese research also plays a central role.
How does that work?
We trained an algorithm to read everything that could be found on this topic. This can be 15,000 or more articles or chapters, more than any human could read and process in a reasonable time frame. The algorithm tries to separate the important from the less important, for example by looking at what is cited, how often, and where. In this way, clusters are formed, from which a structure for such a book gradually emerges. In the end, this results in a book that the researchers are convinced actually adequately represents the state of research.
A book, though, with nothing new in it.
That’s what we thought, too. However, a new structure emerges in these clusters. The way the algorithm connects these findings differs considerably from existing reviews on the topic. A new independent point of view is definitely emerging, pointing in a new direction. Such a text will not win a Nobel Prize in literature. But the electro-chemists say it gives my doctoral students new ideas because it is an incredibly compact way of presenting the state of research. In addition to the authors, we can also offer a new service to the readers. Language barriers can increasingly be overcome by software and readers can, in a sense, tell the book how much time they have for which aspect of the book and then immediately get the proper summary or a higher level of detail. There is then still an original edition, but otherwise, the book can adapt to the reader’s wishes.
How convenient. The publisher gets rid of the annoying author …
… and the editor at the same time. We’ll produce books like washing machines at the push of a button. No, that’s not the point, of course. It’s like autonomous driving. It will never completely replace actual driving, but it is helpful in getting where you want to go more easily and quickly. When it comes to writing books, it will probably become the norm for algorithms to help the author prepare the data and the state of research in a way that gives the researcher more time and leeway to interpret it. Thus, authors manage to write books that would have been impossible to write under analogous circumstances. So the algorithm allows the author to spend his time discovering new things. Our job as publishers in the future will be to provide this service to authors. As we all know, one of the biggest obstacles to the publishing business is the author’s weaker self. In the future, we will be able to use algorithms to help authors overcome it.
Just ahead of the global climate conference in Glasgow, China unveiled its long-awaited “Supreme Planning Document” for achieving national climate targets on Sunday. The policy document outlines key climate targets through 2025, 2030, and 2060. The targets outlined in the document are largely in line with previously voiced targets, but there were surprises as well:
The People’s Republic is therefore not acting in the short term with absolute targets for reducing CO2 emissions. Instead, there are still only targets that are related to economic growth. The relative targets mean that CO2 emissions will only fall slowly with high growth.
The climate plan unveiled Sunday is the top planning document for China’s path to a net-zero target – that is, phasing out greenhouse gas emissions while accounting for offsets. The plan sets the framework “for all future climate planning,” according to analysts at consulting firm Trivium China. The central plan will now be followed by a series of action plans that will provide more details on how to achieve the climate targets.
These action plans then relate to specific sectors, such as power, industry, or transport sectors. Altogether, the climate plan and its action plans make up the so-called “1+N framework”. The “1” stands for the climate plan, the “N” for a certain number of action plans. It thus follows the approach of the five-year plans, which comprise detailed sub-plans for sectors and regions based on a guiding document.
According to Trivium China, the People’s Republic was in dire need of this central climate plan to “curb all haphazard planning already underway.” Because all kinds of actors, from ministries to provincial and local governments, as well as the often state-owned enterprises, are “frantically trying to demonstrate their compliance with Xi Jinping’s climate goals,” according to Trivium’s analysts.
The climate plan also includes a passage on the transport sector. The expansion of e-mobility is to be accelerated. This includes expanding the network of charging stations and battery exchange stations for EVs. In addition, power efficiency standards for cars with combustion engines are to be further tightened. Train lines are to be electrified more quickly and freight transport is to become greener.
The building sector should also work more power-efficient, and existing buildings should consume less electricity. Innovations and technologies should help to reduce CO2 emissions in all sectors.
The plan also reiterates the commitment made in the past to “strictly control” investments in CO2-intensive projects such as coal-fired power, steel, aluminum, concrete, and petrochemical products. In addition, carbon capture and storage projects are to be supported. The green finance sector is also to be further expanded and standards in this area established (China.Table reported). Banks are to be encouraged to provide cheap loans for sustainable investments, according to the climate plan (China.Table reported).
The Climate Plan also lists several so-called “guiding principles”. These are the political and economic mechanisms that are to drive implementation. For example, the state and the market should contribute equally to achieving climate targets.
Beijing has already increasingly relied on market mechanisms in recent years. In July, after years of planning, a national emissions trading scheme was launched. So far, however, coal-fired power plants have been the main participants. The price per ton of CO2 is currently still very low (China.Table reported).
Nevertheless, emissions trading already covers about 40 percent of all emissions generated in China. The slow start to trading could soon be followed by a significant speedup, as the first phase of emissions trading is only considered a careful test phase. The climate plan provides for the “gradual expansion” of emissions trading, which was originally intended to cover more sectors than just the 2,000 or so power plants in the energy sector that it currently encompasses.
A market mechanism that has also been discussed in recent months is the pricing of natural goods and services. The idea behind this is, if the environment has a price, there is a greater incentive to protect it. This should make it possible to preserve natural services such as the storage of CO2 by forests and moors. The political elites are even debating the introduction of a so-called “gross ecosystem product”, which would make environmental protection measurable and in the long term could be on a par with economic performance and GDP (China.Table reported). The climate plan now envisions the introduction of “an ecological compensation mechanism that reflects the value of carbon sinks.”
Another guideline of the climate plan is “guarding against risks”. The plan highlights that “efforts to reduce pollution and carbon emissions must be balanced with the need to ensure the security of energy, industrial chains, supply chains” and calls for “excessive response”. This means that the reduction of CO2 emissions must not come at the expense of the power security of industry, or that the development of new power sources other than coal must proceed fast enough to avoid another energy crisis like the current one (China.Table reported).
However, Refinitiv analysts do not expect China to make any new concessions at the conference in Glasgow, despite the climate plan presented beforehand. China’s political leadership needs to “secure power supplies in the winter and subsequent spring” in the short term, Refinitiv states.
China has published the plan ahead of the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference (COP26). The People’s Republic finds itself in a bigger dilemma ahead of COP26 than originally thought (China.Table reported). This is because an increase in power outages currently makes a quick phase-out of coal seem less likely. China is currently still too dependent on coal-fired power. The sharp rise in the price of raw materials has made consumption more expensive. Since electricity rates were regulated by the state for a long time, they could not rise in turn. It was no longer profitable for power plants to produce power. Power from other sources could not replace the shortfall in coal-fired power. In whole regions, lights and air conditioners went out, factories came to a standstill. All this shows how dependent China still is on coal as things stand. Collaboration: Finn Mayer-Kuckuk
Love is good for integration. It is an anchor. Love even educates, as Jochen Goller, President, and CEO of the BMW Group Region China, confirms. He had already spent some time in the People’s Republic from 2004 to 2009 – as Head of Marketing. That was where he met his wife. When he returned to China in 2015, he already had a very good grasp of the language. Their daughter even learns three languages: German, English, and Chinese.
With decent language skills, it is of course a lot easier to really arrive in China. Goller didn’t need an orientation or acclimation period. “There are rarely any in-betweens when it comes to China. Either you like the country or you don’t. I belong to the former and I felt at home right from the start,” he says.
Goller’s first visit to China came at an exciting time. BMW, the traditional German carmaker, was experiencing a development that would otherwise be more suited to start-ups. In 2004, sales figures exploded in the People’s Republic. From 15 dealers selling 12,000 cars a year, the curve jumped to 100 dealers and 90,000 cars in 2009. Today, thanks to 550 dealers, the Bavarian brand sells about 750,000 vehicles.
BMW’s development in China is reflected in the development of the country as a whole. The People’s Republic had double-digit growth rates in gross domestic product. “The automotive industry is a reflection of what is happening in the economy and society,” says Goller. The landscape of large cities is still changing at a rapid pace. Infrastructure and mobility have to keep up.
A pace that shapes interaction and the culture of conversation. “It’s a very direct and competitive country. No doubt about it. Because all of China wants to move up socially,” is how Goller perceives it. The Chinese tea ceremony serves as a counterweight for him. He has learned to love it. It slows down meetings. Managing directors and company presidents would first prepare tea, which allowed for a relaxed level of discussion. Even if the mood remains results-focused.
That is the way it has to be. Because mobility in China is on the verge of a major shift- in the coming years, the government wants to focus more on hydrogen. First in the field of commercial vehicles, emphasizes Goller. BMW is “open to technology” and currently has a small hydrogen fleet on the streets. Should this drive technology play a role in passenger cars from 2030, his brand would also be ready.
Goller is also rather relaxed about the semiconductor shortage. BMW has come through the crisis well and is successfully relying on local suppliers. Goller predicts that the problem with microchips could last a few more quarters. But a long-term change in strategy is not necessary.
The fact that BMW is in a position to guide the industry on such issues is also owed to Goller: “What I helped shape from the very beginning was the brand perception of BMW and MINI and the positioning of both brands, and the corresponding product policy.” Christian Domke Seidel
Monday morning before the first coffee? Are you perhaps sitting in front of this column with panda eyes right now? You heard me right! The panda is not only the fluffy national treasure of the Chinese, but also the eponym for a meme that existed even before social media: namely, thick, black rings under the eyes. In Chinese slang, these are actually called “panda eyes” (composed of 熊猫 xióngmāo “panda” and 眼 yǎn from 眼睛 yǎnjing “eyes”).
The most effective way to grow panda rings is to spend the night “cooking the night away”, as the Chinese would say (熬夜 áoyè “to cook the night away”). Working late into the night, as we all know, sometimes feels as wheeling as if you’d been behind the wheel all night – in Chinese, it’s conveniently called “driving the night car” (开夜车 kāi yèchē) is synonymous with rascalling until dawn.
By the way, the view into the eye region in China holds some more wonderfully figurative word creations ready, which sweeten the vocabulary learning for us foreigners. Here is a small selection: If you’ve had too many panda-eye phases over the years, you may soon have “fishtail wrinkles” (鱼尾纹 yúwěiwén) running through the corners of your eyes (better known to us as “crow’s feet”). But fortunately, these can be easily concealed with “ink glasses” (墨镜 mòjìng “sunglasses”, literally “ink” or “ink glasses”).
Or, alternatively, with a bulky frame. If they are too extravagant, however, you run the risk of being made fun of as a “four-eyed” person (四眼 sìyǎn – China’s equivalent of “glasses snake”). And with too much glasses camouflage, one is quickly no longer “cooked” to the eyes of friends and colleagues, but “raw” (眼熟 yǎnshóu “known, familiar” – literally “cooked to the eyes”; in contrast to: 眼生 yǎnshēng “foreign, unknown” – literally “raw to the eyes”). Then rather courageously show fishtail fold, also gladly with contact lens. Chinese also has a refreshingly simple translation for this: 隐形眼镜 yǐnxíng yǎnjìng – “invisible glasses”.
Verena Menzel runs theNew Chineselanguage schoolin Beijing.
