Japanese media: China and the United States are getting closer in the field of scientific research, and Japan's presence is decreasing

Source: Content from Nikkei Chinese website , Thanks.

The survey on research trends in Japan and abroad recently released by the Institute for Science, Technology and Academic Policy of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan shows that in the field of scientific research, the United States and China are leading the world and strengthening their connections. Japan ranks third in the world in terms of research funding and the number of researchers, but lags far behind China and the United States in the number of "notable papers" with global impact, and also lags behind European countries such as the United Kingdom and Germany. Japan is facing a situation where it must take fundamental countermeasures.

The institute released "Science and Technology Indicators 2017" and "Science Research Benchmarking Method 2017", which summarize the research trends of major countries as of 2015.

In eight major fields such as chemistry and physics, the number of the top 10% of papers (top 10% papers) that are highly cited by other researchers and considered to be of high quality in major countries was compared (average from 2013 to 2015).

The results show that the United States, a research powerhouse, ranks first in the number of papers in four fields, including physics (43%) and clinical medicine (49.3%), while China also ranks first in four fields, including chemistry (33%) and engineering (29.2%). In contrast, Japan only stands out in chemistry (5.6%), which ranks fifth.

In addition, the survey also produced analytical results that prove that China and the United States are close in the field of scientific research. After analyzing the joint research partner countries of the papers published by the United States with other countries from 2013 to 2015, it was found that China ranked first in six of the eight major fields. In addition, Germany is the largest research partner country of the United States in the field of physics, and the United Kingdom is the largest research partner country in the field of clinical medicine.

Japan's highest ranking is in the field of materials science, where it ranks fifth. From 2003 to 2005, there were some Japan-US cooperation, such as Japan ranking third in chemistry and materials science. However, against the backdrop of China's rise, Japan's presence in the United States is declining.

Some analysts believe that high-quality papers that attract global attention are more likely to be produced through international cooperation. If Japan wants to break the status quo, it must strengthen cooperation with overseas countries such as the United States and strengthen measures to introduce outstanding overseas talents to universities.

Scientific research papers are the source of technological innovation. According to a survey conducted by the Science and Technology Agency under the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan, China ranks first in the world in the number of papers in four fields, including computer science, mathematics, and chemistry. In the eight major fields, China is on par with the United States, entering the era of "China and the United States are the two superpowers". The expansion of research funds and talent recruitment policies have played a role.

The agency conducted a survey on the influence of papers using the number of citations by other papers as an indicator. The level of researchers in the United States, Britain, Germany, France, China and Japan was evaluated based on the top 10% of papers with the most citations. China ranked first in computer science and mathematics, chemistry, materials science, and engineering. The United States ranked first in physics, environment and earth sciences, basic life sciences, and clinical medicine. Japan, which has won the Nobel Prize in Physics for three consecutive years, ranked only 5th or 6th.

The symbol of China's rapid progress is in the field of computer science. In this field, the proportion of Chinese papers ranked in the top 10% by citations was 3% in 2000, but reached 21% in 2015. The performance of Chinese supercomputers has also been ranked first in the world since 2013. In 2016, it even took the top two places.

In the field of physics, where the United States excels, China is also catching up at an accelerated pace. China has invested more than $6 billion to build the world's largest accelerator, and in the cutting-edge field of particle physics, China is likely to become the world's center.

The rapid development of Chinese scientific research is driven by abundant funds and talent competition strategies. In terms of research funding, the Chinese government and enterprises invested a total of about 5 trillion yen around 2000, but by 2014, it had rapidly expanded to 38 trillion yen. This is twice that of Japan, which has been hovering around 18 trillion to 19 trillion yen, and is close to the 46 trillion yen of the United States. In addition to actively calling on Chinese researchers studying in developed countries to return to China, they are also building overseas research networks and rich channels through studying abroad and dispatching.

Yuko Ito, a researcher at Japan's Science and Technology Agency, pointed out that "China surpassing the United States in many fields is unexpected." US President Trump recently proposed a policy of drastically cutting the science and technology budget, and China's presence is expected to increase day by day.

The technological competition between China and the United States was first reflected in the "struggle for hegemony over semiconductors between China and the United States."

This may give the impression that China and the United States are competing with each other in a position of almost equal strength, but at present, the United States is clearly ahead in terms of development capabilities, production capabilities, IP (intellectual property) accumulation, and related industries such as semiconductor manufacturing equipment. However, what worries the United States is that this advantage "will sooner or later be threatened by China's offensive and may damage the industrial ecosystem that brings innovation."

Let’s start with China’s actions. In the “Outline for Promoting the Development of the National Integrated Circuit Industry” issued by the Chinese government in June 2014, specific goals were set: by 2015, the manufacturing process of 28 nanometers of circuit line width will be put into mass production, by 2020, the manufacturing process of 14 nanometers will be put into mass production, and by 2030, the main links of the integrated circuit industry chain will reach the international advanced level. This became the clarion call, and investment funds from the central and local governments were successively established. According to the statistics of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) mentioned below, the scale of these funds “will reach US$150 billion in the next 10 years.”

China has set a goal of having the world's highest level of capabilities in the semiconductor field by 2030.

Why is China so enthusiastic about catching up with advanced countries in the field of semiconductors? This may be because China has realized that as long as it is unable to independently manufacture semiconductors, which are called the "industrial food" of the IT era, industrial upgrading will be difficult. There is a symbolic number. Looking at China's trade statistics in 2016, it can be found that the trade deficit of "semiconductors and other electronic components" reached 166.4 billion US dollars, far exceeding the 114.3 billion US dollars of "petroleum and crude oil".

Of course, China assembles imported semiconductors into smartphones and re-exports most of them, so the actual trade deficit should be small, but the huge trade deficit in the semiconductor field reflects the backward industrial structure that cannot independently manufacture cutting-edge components and can only make profits through assembly and other foundry models. In order to solve this problem, China even spends a lot of money to acquire foreign companies to obtain technical resources and human resources whenever necessary. This is the actual situation of China's nationwide promotion of the semiconductor industry in the past three years.

One of the parties that has expressed concerns about this trend is Taiwan. When Taiwanese companies build semiconductor factories in mainland China, they need to obtain approval from the Taiwanese authorities. In addition, these Taiwanese companies are prohibited from introducing the most advanced production processes in related factories in mainland China, and are only allowed to introduce technologies that are one generation behind. From this, we can feel that the Taiwanese authorities want to prevent the semiconductor technology, which is a basic industry, from easily flowing out.

Another country standing in the way of China’s ambitions is the United States. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, an advisory body to the US President mentioned above, submitted a report on “ensuring US leadership and initiative in the semiconductor field” to then-President Obama in January 2017. The working group that wrote the report included executives from Intel, Qualcomm, and JPMorgan Chase.

The report points out that semiconductors "can be called the foundation of new generation technologies such as robots and artificial intelligence (AI), and are also crucial for national defense technology, and are an area where the United States cannot give up its dominant position to other countries." The report also sounded the alarm about the distortion that China's industrial policies may bring to sound market competition, and called for measures to be taken when necessary. It is worth noting that this report was not proposed under the Trump administration, which advocates trade protectionism, but at the end of the Obama administration, which adopted a stance of integration with China. It can be seen that maintaining the United States' leadership in the semiconductor field is a unanimous idea of ​​all parties in the United States.

Even before this report was released, Chinese capital's attempts to acquire US semiconductor companies had been repeatedly frustrated. The most famous of these was the 2015 acquisition proposal of Micron Technology by China's Tsinghua Unigroup. The proposal was eventually stopped by the US government. In addition, in November 2016, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) also stopped a Chinese investment company's acquisition of a semiconductor manufacturer (the US legal entity of Germany's Aixtron) on the grounds of "security concerns."

Although China has refuted the allegations, pointing out that it lags behind three generations in technology and process and poses no threat to the United States, and hopes that the United States will not be afraid of China's actions and welcomes American manufacturers to actively invest in China to make profits, the US attitude has not changed so far.

Japan is not immune to the tension between China and the United States. The US President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology used the terms "ally" and "like-minded partners" in its report, suggesting the need to work with partners to counter China's offensive. It will be interesting to see who will eventually take over Toshiba's semiconductor business, which has cutting-edge technologies such as 3D multilayer LSIs.

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