China’s scientific achievements are surrounded by secrecy – but this could change

Author: The Conversation / Source: The Next Web

China’s recent scientific achievements – including its embryo gene-editing research and historic moon landing – appear to be surrounded by secrecy. The global scientific community first learned about its experiments modifying the DNA of human embryos through rumors in 2015.

While China’s National Space Administrative (CNSA) acknowledged in December 2018 that its spacecraft was preparing to land on the moon, it didn’t broadcast or announce the actual touchdown.

Instead we learned about it through whispers among journalists and amateur astronomers.

These events demonstrate how little we actually know about what’s going on within the Chinese scientific establishment. They also cast doubt on the accountability of scientific projects carried out in and with China. Extreme cases such as scientist Jiankui He’s controversial claim of having created the world’s first gene-edited babies have tinted China’s image as a trusted player. In fact, China later condemned the research, which has not yet been published in a scientific journal – blaming the scientist. Unsurprisingly, this further challenges the global confidence in the country’s researchers.

It may be tempting to ascribe these secretive practices as a throwback to a Cold War mentality, with China competing with the West by incubating cutting-edge research programs behind closed doors. But my research on China’s life sciences over the last 14 years suggests that the culture actually stems from something else: a sense of sociopolitical insecurity.

Institutional pragmatism

The problem is rooted in the once-prized but increasingly problematic social ethos of “prioritising the doing, postponing the talking” (xian-zuoshi, hou-taolun). The phrase, often used by Chinese scientists, resonates strongly with a “do-not-argue” principle (bu-zhenglun) promulgated by China’s former president, Deng Xiaoping, in his watershed reform speech in 1992. The speech set out how to develop China with tangible socioeconomic betterment rather than rhetorical debates. While that may seem sensible, the approach has led to a number of problems in science governance.

At the institutional level, a pragmatism has taken hold in research oversight. The primary aim has become to minimize public concerns – delivering technological fixes to social problems instead of generating worries. So unless there is concrete evidence of wrongdoings, Chinese regulators will limit their interactions with the public and the scientific community to pragmatically fix problems that have already occurred. Unfortunately, though, this doesn’t help prevent them from arising in the first place.

As ministry officials and…

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