Time: 5:00PM-6:10PM AEDT
Date: 24 March 2023
Location: Online
China aims to become the world’s leading science power by 2050. The country’s political leadership want world-class universities, key laboratories, first-class disciplines and breakthrough discoveries to pave that way. Xi Jinping calls science a cosmopolitan and globally governed endeavor and plegdes that Chinese scientists will be participating in solving humanity’s urgent common problems. At the same time, a trend towards more nationally-grounded and domestically-oriented academia is observable in the People’s Republic of China: scientists and scholars are called upon to tell the “China story”, to develop theories with Chinese characteristics, and to increasingly publish in Chinese (formats). The Communist Party has strengthed its own role in institutions of higher education and research and the PRC, like other countries, increasingly seeks to securitize research data which further complicates international collaboration, among other things. In the talk, I will trace these paradox trends and thereby seek to map the complex incentive structure that shapes the working environment for scientist and scholars in the PRC. Altogether, I would also like to discuss whether this already heralds the emergence of a new authoritarian model of governing and advancing science in the 21st century.
About the speakers
Dr Anna Lisa Ahlers is head of the Lise Meitner Research Group »China in the Global System of Science« at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Trained in sinology and political science, her research areas include Chinese domestic politics and administrative reforms, the interactions of science and scholarship and the political regime in China, as well as the comparative analysis of modern authoritarianism.
She is a member of the editorial teams/boards of The Environments of East Asia book series (Cornell University Press), the European Journal of East Asian Studies, Soziale Systeme, and the Journal of Chinese Governance. Among her book publications are Rural Policy Implementation in Contemporary China: New Socialist Countryside (Routledge 2014), Democratic and Authoritarian Political Systems in 21st Century World Society (Transcript 2020), and The Great Smog of China: A Short History of Air Pollution (Columbia UP/AAS 2020).
Dr Marina Yue Zhang (chair and discussant) is an associate professor at the Australia-China Relations Institute, University of Technology Sydney (UTS: ACRI). Prior to this position, Marina worked for UNSW and Swinburn University in Australia and Tsinghua University in China. Marina holds a bachelor’s degree in biological science from Peking University, an MBA, and a Ph.D. from Australian National University.
Marina is the author of three books, including “Demystifying China’s Innovation Machine: Chaotic Order,” co-authored with Mark Dodgson and David Gann (Oxford University Press, 2022).
Marina has published in leading innovation and management journals, including Technological Forecasting & Social Change, Research Policy, Management & Organization Review, Asia Pacifica Journal of Management, and Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, among others.
In addition to academic publications in technology and innovation, Marina also writes analysis pieces on China’s science and technology in a geopolitical context for The Conversation, The National Interests, The Diplomat, and Australian Outlook, among others. Marina also comments on Australia-China relations in news outlets, including BBC World News, Bloomberg TV, and Reuters.