China's feudal history has hindered the country's scientific leaders for centuries, but old barriers are rapidly being removed, President Jiang Zemin reports in an exclusive, 16 June interview in the journal, Science.
"I often ask myself why China began to lag behind," says the 73-year-old Jiang, whose career included a cloaked assignment as director of a nuclear power research facility. "The reason lies with the feudal system in China ... That closed the door to external exchanges between China and the rest of the world."
Today, a host of initiatives demonstrate China's renewed commitment to global scientific collaboration, Jiang says. "China has signed agreements on scientific cooperation with governments of 95 countries and established scientific links with more than 150 countries and regions," he tells Science. "The Chinese government will, for example, fully support the development of worldwide and cross-region cooperation networks of scientific research and high-tech industries, such as setting up Sino-Israeli, Sino-Australian, and China-APEC scientific collaboration funds."
Science Editor Ellis Rubinstein interviewed Jiang in an unmapped Chinese government complex, near the western wall of the "Forbidden City," Beijing. Jiang's comments reflect his thoughts on international cooperation, basic versus applied research, Internet impacts on society, scientific literacy, and more.
Jiang calls for curriculum reform within China's nine-year, compulsory education system, for example, and he acknowledges a "brain drain," in the form of Chinese students leaving their homeland to study, and then remaining abroad to work.
The Chinese leader also offers his thoughts on Eastern versus Western societies. "The world we live in is a colorful and diverse one," Jiang says. "One should not expect to have one single universally applicable political model."
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