Dialogue with XiaoIce CEO Li Di: The C position on the national stage - basic scientific research

Author | He Sisi

Why are China’s key technologies frequently stuck?

Nowadays, with the increasing international competition, war is no longer the traditional armed struggle in the past, and its concept has been widely extended to economic war, technological war, cultural war, etc. All industries and fields are in danger of being challenged by foreign regions at any time.

The topic of the Sino-US trade war has been all over everyone's WeChat Moments. The Sino-US trade war is a multi-faceted war involving economy and politics. It not only exposes the ambition of the United States to become a technological power, but also verifies the weakness of basic science, including theoretical research, in various industries in my country.

The lesson the Sino-US trade war teaches us is that if a country does not have solid basic science, including theoretical research, it is difficult for it to possess core technologies, and it is difficult for it to firmly grasp the initiative in the industry by controlling core technologies and key materials or key components.

The Huawei Meng Wanzhou incident, the US ban and restriction policies, and the chip bottleneck phenomenon have all verified this truth - basic scientific research plays a key role in the country's development process.

In his "Science: The Endless Frontier", the "pioneering work" of US science policy, American engineer Vannevar Bush mentioned that it enabled the United States to quickly break away from its dependence on basic research and scientific research talents in Europe, which led to the United States' current status as a technological power. It also permanently changed the pattern of human scientific development. It is also an important work for us to understand the origin of US science and technology policy, the path of scientific development and its future direction.

This year, Science: The Endless Frontier, written by Vannevar Bush after World War II, was republished, and XiaoIce CEO Li Di wrote a preface for it. The preface reads: "For more than 70 years, the discussion, review and revision of Science: The Endless Frontier has never stopped. Rather than saying that it is an important factor that led to the rapid development of American science in the 20th century, it is better to say that its significance goes far beyond the United States - in the rapidly developing secular world, it has marked out a promised land for science."

Basic science is a science that studies natural phenomena and forms of material movement and explores the laws of development of nature. It includes seven basic disciplines, namely mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, earth science, and logic, as well as their branch disciplines and marginal disciplines. The research results are the theoretical basis of the entire science and technology, and play a guiding role in technical science and production technology.

In Li Di's view, science is the cornerstone and origin of many things. Technology is more easily observed for its instrumental attributes, and science is often a series of laws and discoveries.

In fact, basic scientific research has been going on for more than a hundred years. The opportunity period for the development of basic scientific research in the United States was during World War II. At the same time, this period also confirmed the importance of basic scientific research to national development, and then laid the foundation for the US government's determination in basic scientific research.

The brutal war caused serious damage to the soldiers' bodies and minds. During World War II, the mortality rate of various diseases dropped from 14.1% in World War I to 0.6% in World War II. Serious diseases such as yellow fever, dysentery, and tetanus were conquered by drugs such as penicillin, sulfonamides, and more effective vaccines such as the insecticide DDT. In addition, in the military field, radar, high-performance aircraft, and atomic bombs all added weight to the victory of the war.

During peacetime, the life expectancy of the American population increased from 49 to 65 years. The significant increase in life expectancy was mainly due to the decline in infant mortality, which was based on the dissemination of new scientific knowledge by scientific talents through a large amount of basic research in medicine and preclinical sciences and medical and health institutions;

Between 1900 and 1940, the U.S. population increased from 75 million to 130 million. In other countries, such an explosive population growth would inevitably lead to famine, but in the United States it brought abundant food supply, more leisure, longer life and better health.

Whether it is the decline in mortality during World War II, the extension of life expectancy in peacetime, or the arrival of a better life under rapid population growth, it all stems from the fact that the United States has accumulated a large amount of scientific data through basic research in many scientific fields. When the international community is facing crises, people are suffering, and employment difficulties, basic scientific research has played a key role.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science's Committee on Science and Society declared that "scientific research policy is as essential to the survival of the nation as foreign policy and defense policy," and that the status of science in modern government is "no less important than that of laws and courts."

Li Di commented on the basic science in the United States: "In fact, the reason why basic scientific research has been well studied and developed in the United States is that World War II provided fertile soil for its development, created good development conditions, and was an opportunity."

In contrast, China's basic scientific research seems to have started a little later than the United States.

Taking the 2020 coronavirus outbreak as an example, it is essentially a public health emergency and falls within the research scope of public sector risk governance. In fact, it is also a contest involving science.

According to relevant data, as of May 13, Beijing time, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide has risen to 160 million, and the number of deaths has reached 3.32 million. Although the epidemic has shown a positive trend under the effect of vaccination, the number of confirmed cases per day in countries such as the United States, India, Britain and France is still fluctuating at the level of tens of thousands.

At present, the cumulative number of confirmed cases of new coronary pneumonia in China is about 100,000, and the cure rate is also increasing significantly.

Judging from the development of the global epidemic, China's epidemic has been better controlled than other countries. This is mainly because after the outbreak, my country's scientific research institutions have focused on pathogen identification, virus tracing, and the development of effective drugs and vaccines, providing important scientific and technological support for front-line prevention, control and treatment.

In terms of pathogen isolation, four units including the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences independently isolated the pathogen and reported it to the Science and Education Department of the National Health Commission. Subsequently, four scientific discoveries were made, including isolating the virus, cracking the gene sequence, determining the incubation period, and determining the transmission route, providing important scientific basis for the formulation of COVID-19 prevention and control;

In terms of virus tracing, the World Health Organization released the China part of the WHO global novel coronavirus tracing investigation, including the basic conclusions of the tracing investigation, research methods and conclusions in epidemiology, molecular epidemiology, animal and environmental research, and hypothetical analysis of the four transmission routes of the novel coronavirus;

In terms of drug treatment, the “three medicines and three prescriptions” (“three medicines” refers to Jinhua Qinggan Granules, Lianhua Qingwen Granules and Capsules, and Xuebijing Injection; “three prescriptions” refers to Qingfei Paidu Decoction, Huashi Baidu Decoction, and Xuanfei Baidu Decoction) and other traditional Chinese medicine treatment methods that were screened out clinically have achieved remarkable results;

In terms of vaccine research and development, my country currently has five vaccines undergoing phase II clinical trials. China has donated Chinese vaccines to more than 80 countries and exported Chinese vaccines to more than 50 countries. Chinese vaccines have now been approved by the World Health Organization, making it easier to provide medical assistance to more countries.

In addition, scientists have summarized and analyzed many studies and published articles. As of May 10, a total of 2,151 articles on COVID-19 have been published in well-known journals around the world, of which 650 were published in China, accounting for almost 1/3. These articles provide very good experience in guiding the world on how to prevent and control the epidemic.

It can be seen that China has laid a solid foundation and played a key role in the global epidemic prevention and control. This is mainly due to the experience accumulated by scientific researchers in disciplines such as biology, physics, and medicine, which has led to important research results in basic science. At the same time, it has also made many people gradually realize the great significance of strengthening basic scientific research to national development.

This also fully verifies the view advocated by Vannevar Bush in "Science, the Endless Frontier": "Basic research is a well, and this well is the source of all practical knowledge. Basic research is the driving force of the entire research and innovation process."

In Li Di's view, basic scientific research needs an important opportunity to be promoted, just as World War II was an opportunity for basic scientific research in the United States. When this opportunity came, China did not blindly copy the United States, but based on the successful experience of the United States, conducted targeted analysis and effective scientific research based on the actual situation faced by China.

Li Di admitted that we do basic scientific research not for the benefits it can bring, but the emergence and development of many new things are based on basic scientific research.

For example, it is easy to find that the current Meituan grocery shopping is a new form of business spawned by new technologies, and the basic scientific research behind it is worth thinking about by each of us;

For example, the success of the atomic bomb explosion was not achieved naturally in an instant, but was achieved through the formation of a standardized system through the research of basic science.

For example, my country has done relatively well in industries such as iron ore and printing. In fact, this is all related to the research in physics, fossil science, materials science and other disciplines behind them. These are the forces behind basic research.

Li Di believes that whether it is the United States, China or other countries, if they want to have better development in basic scientific research, they cannot do without the support of the country, society, enterprises and talents.

Vannevar Bush also said in Science, the Endless Frontier that scientific progress is a necessity. Without scientific progress, no matter how many achievements we have in other areas, our health, prosperity and security cannot be guaranteed. Basic scientific research requires the government to introduce a series of policies to advocate, support and coordinate, while also focusing on the innovation of scientific talents.

Although China started later than the United States in basic scientific research, as some basic scientific research has brought important value to society, the Chinese government has become increasingly aware of the importance of basic scientific research.

In the "Several Opinions on Comprehensively Strengthening Basic Scientific Research" issued by the State Council in 2018, it is mentioned that the three-step development goals of basic scientific research are:

• By 2020, the overall level and international influence of my country's basic scientific research will be significantly improved, a number of major original scientific results will be achieved in important frontiers of science, and a number of forward-looking major scientific problems facing national strategic needs will be solved, providing strong support for the comprehensive building of a moderately prosperous society and joining the ranks of innovative countries.

• By 2035, my country's overall level of basic scientific research and international influence will have made a significant leap, leading global development in more important fields, and producing a number of original scientific achievements that have an important impact on the world's scientific and technological development and the progress of human civilization, laying a solid foundation for basically realizing socialist modernization and becoming one of the leading innovative countries.

• By the middle of this century, my country will be built into a major scientific center and innovation base in the world, and a number of major original scientific achievements and world-class scientific masters will emerge, providing strong scientific support for building a prosperous, democratic, civilized, harmonious and beautiful modern socialist country and a world science and technology power.

Talking about the development of basic scientific research in China, Li Di said that the development of basic scientific research must meet certain firm conditions: first, the country must have a certain amount of wealth accumulation, because basic scientific research is more resource-intensive; second, enterprises are willing to establish specialized scientific research institutions as investors to provide good hardware conditions for scientific research industries; finally, it is to reserve solid scientific research talents.

It is not that my country does not have scientific research talents, but that scientific research talents do not stay in scientific research positions, Li Di added. The biggest problem in my country's current basic scientific research is the talent problem, which requires joint efforts from the government and enterprises to increase government guidance and financial support to strengthen my country's scientific research talent team.

Competition in basic science is also a competition in the comprehensive national strength of a country. Today, we no longer need to expand our territory, but the frontiers of science are still waiting for us to explore.