Upsurge in R&D Support: China, India, Japan. (July 12, 2009)

Recent announcements regarding the R&D budgets of our populous northern neighbours ought to give us some pause.

 Responding to the effect of the global financial depression China has raised R&D spending in 2009 to A$33.9 billion, an increase of 25.6% over 2008, according to Du Zhanyuan, China's vice minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology. ScienceInsider reports that much of the increased funding will go to applied research. The government plans to spend A$6.1 billion on 16 special S&T projects, including software development, infectious disease research, and a home-grown commercial airplane industry.

China's overall R&D budget, while approaching that of Japan (currently A$47.5 billion), still has some way to go. And neuroscientist Guosong Liu of the School of Medicine at Tsinghua University says it "is just so much less than America", and he adds that it is skewed too far toward applied research.

Meanwhile two editorials, one in  Nature the other in  Science refer to Japan's and India's research sectors respectively.

Nature sets out the case that Japan with its "changing demographics, tight economy and increasing competition ... could slide from the top ranks of research nations. Drastic action is needed".

The editorial reminds readers, "Last October... four scientists who were born and educated in Japan received Nobel prizes", but then asks, "can Japan continue to produce large quantities of high-calibre science as its researchers age and science-hungry university students grow scarce?"

A government white paper released in June notes that only 21% of researchers are under the age of 37. Furthermore, the number of university students who want to study science and engineering decreased from approximately 1 million in 1992 to around 630,000 last year.

The editorial points out that Japan's: "challenge is huge. After decades of extolling internationalization, only 10% of PhDs from Japanese universities go to people from other countries (compared with 42% in the United States and 41% in the United Kingdom). The percentage of foreign scientists at the country's universities and research institutes sits at a meagre 1.34%." Moreover, "According to last month's white paper, only 2% of Japanese researchers had plans to work overseas. As international competition for scientific talent intensifies, Japan is closing in on itself."

To help overcome the problem "under the encouragement of the science and education ministry, 28 institutions have developed tenure-track systems that offer independence to younger scientists. And competitive grants for young scientists now contain about 30% towards indirect costs, which gives them more flexibility.

Japan's economic stimulus package has injected a large sum of ¥270-billion (A$3.7 billion) into R&D and will fund 30 projects over 5 years. However, Nature's editorialist feels it: "is likely to boost applied research, but in the interests of Japan's longer-term research fitness, such a sum should be spent extending the life of competitive grants, supplying more of them and creating new, independent tenure-track positions for young researchers at universities."

The Science editorial this week is contributed by C. N. R. Rao, a National Research Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, India who notes that India now maintains 13 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), "the national degree-granting institutions devoted to the training of high-quality engineers and scientists".

Nevertheless Professor Rao says, "the higher-education sector has not received adequate support. Part of the reason for the decline in India's university science education system in the past decades has been the preferential funding for R&D activities in national research laboratories". Part of the government's attempt to correct the imbalance is the creation of "two new government departments dealing with Earth system science and health research", while "In addition, the Indian parliament has approved creating a National Science and Engineering Research Board, an entity somewhat similar to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), that will be responsible for funding scientific research. It will provide competitive grants and establish new facilities in priority areas. Like NSF, the board will also produce annual 'science indicators': detailed analyses for measuring progress in S&T from year to year".

However, India, just as Japan and many other first world nations, is finding that the human resources essential for supporting an expanded S&T agenda are in short supply. To address the problem India has established five new Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research since 2006, and is in the process of adding two new IITs, to bring the total to 15.

It remains to be seen if India will be able to staff the new institutions with well qualified individuals, but one thing is certain, Australia's academe and R&D sectors will be facing increasing competition in the coming decade.