This article appears in the March 31, 2023 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
China’s ‘Two Sessions’: Boost Science
Research, National Self-Reliance
[Print version of this article]
March 22—China recently concluded the annual sessions of both its national legislature and of its top national political advisory body; together, they are known as the “Two Sessions.” The legislature is the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the policy advisory body is known as the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
The National People’s Congress is made up of 2,900 elected delegates, and the National Committee of the CPPCC has 2,100 elected delegates. Although the Communist Party of China (CPC) has by far the largest number of delegates, representatives from a total of eight political parties are represented. Also included are non-affiliated delegates.
The big news coming out of the sessions is a major re-organization of the State Council (Executive Branch Cabinet) departments in order to (1) bolster China’s self-reliance in science and technology, (2) expand the funding and focus on fundamental science research, (3) increase oversight of the financial sector, and (4) protect intellectual property rights. Included in the changes will be major restructuring of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and the setting up of a new national financial oversight body.
This report will focus on the plans to re-deploy science and re-focus on fostering creativity.
Premier Li Keqiang, a longstanding promoter of scientific innovation as the driver of economic progress, delivered the important Government Work Report at the opening session of the NPC. This report sets economic policy for the coming period. Li focused on the need to make China self-reliant in science and technology and to leverage the role of the central government to mobilize the resources to enable scientific breakthroughs.
China is now, along with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa—the BRICS group of nations—at the center of a new Global Majority. It is focused on quickly developing, within the still-impoverished former colonial sector, energy-intense science, and advanced industry and the labor force to run it. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) now includes 149 nations and over 30 international organizations. Sadly, Global NATO, Global Britain, and the current U.S. administration see this fabulously successful economic development policy as a casus belli.
A New National Science and Technology System
The current escalation of U.S. sanctions against Chinese companies and leaders, the banning of microchip and related technology sales to China by the U.S. and allies, the West’s escalating political and military promotion of so-called Taiwan independence, and the military encirclement of China have now triggered a more intense Chinese response. That response includes policies of both technological self-sufficiency and an increased funding and focus on fundamental research in the physical sciences—rightly seen as the generator of new technologies and thus of national economic advance. Liu Feng, a researcher at the Institutes of Science and Development of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, calls it, “a new national science and technology system.” The design seeks to accelerate major breakthroughs in manned space flight, lunar and Mars exploration, supercomputing, satellite communication, quantum information technology, nuclear power, aircraft manufacturing, artificial intelligence (AI), and high-end computer chip production and chip lithography machines. [Box: President Xi Launches Global Civilization Initiative]
Basic Research: Pushing Forward Human Civilization
“Basic research is a driving force pushing forward human civilization and it is the origin of innovation in science and technology,” according to Wang Rufang, head of the research office and national leader of the Central Committee of the Jiu San Society. The Jiu San Society, an independent political party in China, was founded on September 3, 1945, and is made up of intellectuals in the science and technology field. “Jiu San” translates as “September 3rd,” the date of the liberation from Japanese fascist occupation. Wang stated, “The more we care about innovation, the more we should dedicate to basic research. This has been proven by the world’s research programs in quantum physics and DNA at the start of the 20th century.”
Wang Guilin, director of the Guangzhou Science and Technology Bureau, explained that China achieved its meteoric development over the last 40 years by achieving breakthroughs at three levels, in sequence: production, technology, and then science. However, China cannot become a major pioneering country in manufacturing “because its basic science, which lags behind the existing pioneering countries, constitutes the bottleneck for achieving this major breakthrough. To deal with this bottleneck, achieve high-quality development, and become a real pioneering country in manuacturing, China has to take a reverse path: effectively develop its scientific research, then give a push to its technology research and development, and then its high-end production sections.”
Delegate scientists of both the NPC and the National Committee of the CPPCC made varying detailed proposals to upgrade the national science system. These suggestions included shifting university research policy to change both teacher evaluation and the defining of scientific disciplines to effect an increase in the capacity for original innovation at the college and graduate student level. Yin Jie, an NPC deputy and executive vice president of ShanghaiTech University, called for designing “double mentoring teams,” in which both industry experts and university teachers jointly would oversee advanced student work. One ongoing deficiency in the quality of the evaluation of scientific work, which has been under discussion since 2018, is the ceiling of “the four onlys”: papers, titles, education and awards, typically used as the main criteria for an individual’s advancement in the world of science.
Discussed in the various public sessions was that a new evaluation metric is required. It should measure long-term fundamental science advance—which cannot be measured by mere numbers of papers published, or awards given.
What we can see in these sessions is a detailed debate as to the best science pathway to follow, in both pedagogy and in the executive directing of science, to optimize in the family of scientists creativity itself.
A New ‘Chip Law’ To Promote Breakthroughs
In response to Global NATO’s ongoing practice of attempting to suppress China’s development by blatant economic warfare, that is, by banning China’s purchase of high-end microchips and essential manufacturing equipment, the two sessions debated a multi-pronged campaign to accelerate its chip production capacity. The number of senior scientists and academicians involved in the semiconductor sector who were delegates to the NPC and to the CPPCC had greatly increased this year.
Xie Shanghua, a delegate to the consultative council proposed a “chip law” to support rapid advances in the semiconductor industry. Xie said, “The chip policies that have been issued in China are mainly regulatory and departmental rules at the State Council level.” Xie called for a law to unify the efforts of the many companies working in the field and to support the research in the production of advanced manufacturing processes at the 7-, 5-, and 3-nanometer level.
As of May 2022, China had 29 universities which had established Integrated Circuit Colleges. Proposals were discussed to increase that number. One of China’s very top political leaders and economic strategists, Vice Premier Liu He, added his voice to the discussion. He called for immediately increasing the number of Integrated Circuit Colleges, for increasing the recruitment of talent from throughout the world to join China’s top scientists—receiving status and support equal to that of China’s top scientists—and for overall directed support for the semiconductor industry by the central government.
What China Knows
What was the secret that China knew, which allowed it to move from mass poverty and illiteracy 40 years ago, to become the world’s largest economy today, measured in real terms? What secret did it use to eliminate, by 2020, 100% of extreme poverty within its population of 1.4 billion? What dialogue did it recently have with the leaderships of Saudi Arabia and Iran which allowed it to catalyze the “impossible”: the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between those two major nations? What secret was discussed at the recent Two Sessions which will allow China to break all foolish economic containment assaults by the West?
It was a secret known to Alexander Hamilton, to Friedrich List, to Dr. Sun Yat-sen, to Franklin D. Roosevelt, to Lyndon LaRouche. Human creativity is in exact coherence with the laws of the natural universe. Tap it!
Can a policy written 40 years ago, be so prescient, that it is still as visionary and path-breaking, as well as specific for what might be accomplished today? In “Saudi Arabia in the Year 2023,” written by LaRouche in 1983, LaRouche anticipated the mind-set of China’s Global Civilization Initiative, as well China’s recent successful diplomacy in Southwest Asia, based in a respect for the long arc of civilization, a concept utterly anathema to the mad members of today’s U.S. State Department.
See the review by Gail G. Kay in EIR, Oct. 18, 1983, “Saudi Arabia: a Generation beyond the Dark Ages”
