But, since the Nobel was established, China has been invaded by Germany, Japan, Russia, Britain (largely India), France, the United States, Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Japan again, and had a civil war which hasn't technically ended (plus the end of the Boxer Rebellion), a revolution, and the worst famine in human history. But probably the worst event for its Nobel chances was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution. The civil wars also brought to power brutal dictatorships, including in the so-called Republic of China.
The US has been invaded zero times and had zero civil wars during that period, and in the US, the Cultural Revolution and dictatorship are just starting. Consequently many people who might have been Chinese, German, Japanese, Russian, etc., during the period in question were instead born in the US. And note that, on the page I linked above, 6 Nobel laureates from the US were actually born in China: Charles K. Kao, Daniel C. Tsui, Edmond H. Fischer, Yang, Tsung-Dao Lee, and Walter H. Brattain (!).
> But, since the Nobel was established, China has been invaded...
> The US has been invaded zero times...
The number of external invasions is not a strong indicator of the number of Nobel Prizes, if you compare all countries, beyond just China or the US.
And as you mentioned, the Cultural Revolution greatly reduces the chance of Chinese Nobel, so internal events can take a large role. And Mao led to more deaths—not to mention destruction to science and culture—than external invasions in the last century combined.
> The civil wars also brought to power brutal dictatorships...
The dictatorship arguably hasn't ended, by taking another less brutal form. And to be precise, CCP brought the civil wars and its consequences, not the civil wars brought dictatorships.
I don't think even the Cultural Revolution or anything else Mao did had much of an effect on Nobel prize-worthy research, simply because there wasn't much to disrupt to begin with. In terms of education, the biggest change was in secondary school enrollment, which more than doubled during the Cultural Revolution before dropping back down, which I assume represents people staying students for longer instead of graduating, rather than an expansion of access. University education remained a rarity for long after that, only surpassing 10% enrollment in 2002: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-secondary-enrollm...
I guess we'll see Chinese scientists winning Nobels at a rate commensurate with other big countries in 20–40 years or so.
> I don't think even the Cultural Revolution or anything else Mao did had much of an effect on Nobel prize-worthy research, simply because there wasn't much to disrupt to begin with.
Count points:
- Intellectuals, academics, and teachers were persecuted, attacked, and killed by the youth (the Red Guards), in all schools and institutions in China.
- Search for “scholars killed during the cultural revolution”, or “list of scholars abnormally died in China during the cultural revolution” (or for a short list in Chinese https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-cn/中华人民共和国被迫害人士列表#科学技术人士). This includes the leader of Two Bombs, One Satellite (nuclear weapon, ICBM, artificial satellite) 赵九章. Besides, those returned from overseas were considered traitors or spies, and just within the Chinese Academy of Sciences (top science institution), there are 229 scholars died due to the Cultural Revolution [1]. This destroyed the environment needed to do great science. Imagine if Yang went back to China in the early 1950s.
> I guess we'll see Chinese scientists winning Nobels at a rate commensurate with other big countries in 20–40 years or so.
Such predictions—Chinese scientists will win more science Nobels—has been made long ago. In 1998, “The Chinese-American Nobel Laureate Chen Ning Yang has also predicted that mainland scientists will win a prize within twenty years – even more than one, if the country’s economic development continues at its current rate.“ [2]
But reality shows otherwise, not until scientists and academics are respected in China. During COVID, politics overruled science, resulting in the Zero-COVID policy, which were brought down by widespread protests, not by science (counter evidence to the ineffectiveness of the Zero-COVID policy).
Unless you are implying that you predict a regime change by that time...
Of course the number of scholars killed is large in absolute terms and relative to the size of the Chinese research ecosystem at the time, but it's also small relative to the number of researchers worldwide at the time and to the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of Chinese scientists researching all kinds of things now, which is the result of explosive growth primarily over the past few decades.
Chen-Ning Yang was technically not wrong with his 1998 prediction, since Tu Youyou got 1/3 of the 2015 Nobel in medicine, but it didn't really make sense for him to link this to continued development, since the delay between discovery and award means that most of the prizes from 1998–2018 were for work that was already done before he made his prediction.
Over the same time frame, tertiary school enrollment went from 6.3% to 53.4%, and my 20–40-year prediction is based on a guess of how long it will take for the work of all those freshly-minted scientists to enter the range of consideration for a Nobel.
> Chen-Ning Yang was technically not wrong with his 1998 prediction, since Tu Youyou got 1/3 of the 2015 Nobel in medicine, but it didn't really make sense for him to link this to continued development, since the delay between discovery and award means that most of the prizes from 1998–2018 were for work that was already done before he made his prediction.
Agreed. Though to nitpick, the part on “even more than one, if the country’s economic development continues at its current rate” is technically wrong, if we just count Chinese Nobel scientists developed in Mainland China (only Tu Youyou).
Chen-Ning Yang was bullish on Chinese science, but reality did not deliver.
Shing-Tung Yau is as bullish on Chinese mathematics in the future, but even he admitted that China is still decades behind in mathematical research, due to systematic issue which ‘“places too much emphasis on material rewards” and tends to encourage young researchers to work for titles instead of scientific advancements’. [1]
[1]: https://archive.is/MRDlP "China has problems to solve before its mathematics research can rise above WWII levels, scholar says"
The parent poster is talking about the Younghusband expedition into Tibet of 1903[1], I don't think it is the boxer rebellion in which British Indian troops had no direct involvement(AFAIK) and also those events happened before 1901 establishment of the Nobel Prize, which is the time period OP cites as the starting time range.
To see the Tibetan military expedition as an invasion of China, means to accept the Qing dynasty and its successor states (ROC,PRC)claim of sovereignty and not suzerainty over Tibet. A claim at the time which was not recognized by other countries specifically Russia, Britain and also Tibet.
The refusal of Tibetan government to accept terms of treaties they were not party to directly (i.e. the ones Qing China signed) was the official reason stated for the invasion by the British.
Either way it is a deeply contentious topic never legally settled in the 1907 agreement and had implications both to that era and modern geopolitics. No one then or now is purely looking at merits of the arguments.
The points will end up into esoteric discussion on whether is kowtowing and kneeling are the same thing, or is acknowledging supremacy is same as sovereignty, or the differences between vassal state or autonomous region or protectorate or suzerain.
Also the views of the countries/entities (or their successors) have also changed including the Tibetan government-in-exile in the last 120 years.
My knowledge of history is at best a passing student at high school level, this kind of discussion requires deep understanding of relationship of states, and of Chinese culture and language during Qing dynasty i.e. professional expertise which I certainly don't have.
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[1] My initial read was they meant either Arunachal Pradesh( South Tibet to the Chinese), Aksai Chin or the MacMohan line etc, but they clarified it wasn't the case.
The Boxer Protocol wasn't signed until September 01901 and involved permanently establishing a dozen foreign military bases inside China, so didn't, from my point of view, end the invasion. But it's true that the actual fighting was almost completely the previous year.
The research competition is basically a funding competition nowadays. In the 20th century, China had far less research funding for universities compared to U.S.. That's due to two facts:
1. China was poor back then.
2. China had barely no high-tech industries which can provide additional financial support to labs and cultivate talents.
Therefore, people got high-level education who want to pursue a research career would have less chance to get a job in China (at least mainland) and had to go to U.S., EU or Japan to utilize their knowledge.
In fact, until now, U.S. still offers the highest the research funding to its universities. That's why there're so many Chinese students in U.S. schools.
Yang got out before Mao. China managed to birth and educate several world-class mathematicians and scientists in the short span between the beginning of Westernized education and Mao's take over... and then it stopped for several decades. The lucky ones managed to get out.
Strange to think that revolutions, unrest, the Sino-Japanese war, and the civil war all provided better conditions for fostering top talent than Mao's China did.
India has similar number of laureates and nowhere had the similar kind of social upheaval or authoritarian regime like China or the soviet union had.
I think it is bit more nuanced than just Mao, pre 1935 you could do ground breaking research in almost any field with limited to no funding at all. Since the war you need increasingly large amount of budgets which western universities with full government support enjoy, ans it was not possible to compete for India or China or even the Soviet Union to keep up.
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The cultural changes you allude to, certainly were a medium term negative factor, but the pre 1950 setup were hardly sustainable or efficient. In pre Mao China or similarly British India (or even till recently) it was not a meritocracy there was a privileged elite who had all the opportunity and few shined if they were also talented.
Today China is one of the most meritocratic economies after all - despite all the authoritarian flaws, we are only seeing positive growth in foundational scientific research and rapidly in contrast with the rising anti-science sentiment we are seeing in so many parts of the western and western influenced world.
The socio-cultural reset was important and necessary for both China and India to progress, the methods of the Mao era are questionable both for their cruelty and also for how efficient and effective they were it was just bad all around however the need of the reset came from a valid place I think.
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There is whole dimension of bias which does disadvantage particularly Chinese research output today. Don't get me wrong I am not saying there is conscious bias against Chinese researchers. The bias is because despite the esteem the Nobel prize is not a global one.
The committee sit in Scandinavian countries closely working with Norway government. The members are predominately affiliated to western universities and fluent in English or other European languages and read Nature / Science type of western journals.
This always put Soviet researches before and now Chinese and Indian(to a lesser degree) at a disadvantage compared to their western peers.
The committee are not equipped to judge the research output of the whole world, till recently this was not a problem, because western research post WW-II was the majority of the world output, but that is increasingly not true and in a multi-polar world.
> the methods of the Mao era are questionable both for their cruelty and also for how efficient and effective they were
Also for killing tens of millions of people, which not only is murder of each person but also those millions of people - and then their families - never benefit.
Absolutely, I am in no way saying Mao era methods were justified, warranted or even effective.
They were misguided, ineffective, and directly or indirectly killed people in the millions.
I am just pointing out that, the atrocities of the era doesn't justify seeing pre 1960s or pre1950s years of China with rose tinted glasses as a better era, it wasn't unless you were in the elite.
It would be no different than seeing the 1970s or any earlier generation in U.S. history as a better era. Only a very small in-group perhaps had it good. Everyone else be it black, women, indigenous, various immigrants, religious, neuro or sexually diverse have only seen net improvements in last 300 years.
They were awful and achieved almost nothing but ruin, so by definition they were unnecessary.
But are you saying reform and change were unnecessary? The people of China were suffering immensely; the country had been in a state of domestic violent conflict, on and off, since before 1911 (as of 1949). The Communist Party became more corrupt.
Mao's policies and politics made all that much worse, but that doesn't mean nothing needed to be done.
China was already developing economically and technologically -- especially in coastal areas and in Manchuria (there was a large migration of Chinese to the area after it came under Japanese control).
That development would have continued.
I understand the anger and the desperation that made the Communist takeover possible but doing nothing at all and keeping all the elites in charge (instead of replacing them with new ones) would have been better.
> China was already developing economically and technologically
That's an odd version of history. China just went through WWII, including the awful Japanese invasion, which interrupted a massive civil war that restarted afterward, and which followed decades without a real national government.
> there was a large migration of Chinese to the area after it came under Japanese control
Japanese control didn't work out well for Chinese people, to say the least.
> keeping all the elites in charge
The elites had led China to disaster for a century, 'the century of humiliation' it's called (though blaming outside forces, which do deserve some blame).
> replacing them with new ones
Here we agree.
> would have been better
Certainly there is no source that can more than guess at that.
The better option would have been true democratic reform. It has worked superbly well in parts of China - Taiwan and Hong Kong. It was starting to work in 1989, and leaning in that direction before Xi.
Another point about Soviet scientists: it was very often a career-ending move to accept a Nobel prize unless you were a truly untouchable cult of personality and/or direct friend of those in power. See Andrey Sakharov, who first invented the soviet hydrogen bomb and later dedicated himself to non-proliferation which earned him a Nobel Peace prize. He was however barred from traveling to Oslo to accept in 1975, having already been blacklisted from classified work since 1968.
I wonder to what extent that lead to the curbing of consideration of those behind the iron curtain.
Peace prizes are different from science prizes. The Soviet Union had no problems with its scientists getting science prizes. It did sometimes had problems with letting them leave the country to actually receive them, of course.
While your disambiguation is valid, they very much wanted to minimize the potential fallout from individuals staying in, say, a Norwegian hotel and sampling the local culture only to return and speak fondly of said trip "beyond the curtain". Usually this was outweighed by the national prestige (and subsequent propaganda opportunity) from having a Soviet Nobel recepient but the KGB had an extremely heavy hand in deciding who got to go, regardless of scientific breakthrough.
~2/3 of US Nobel Laureates have not been born in the US. This tells you that things are a bit complex to analyze. You can also take into account second generation ones.
If you're familiar with the history of China since the Nobel prize started in 1901 it's not surprising. Five of those eight did their work outside China too.
It's also quite interesting to compare to the Soviet Union, which managed around 30 Nobel laureates in spite of also going through a communist revolution and some genocides like China did.
Russia / the USSR had a recent intellectual, scientific, and technological history in ways that China largely did not.
One datapoint: Sir John Barrow, Second Secretary to the Admiralty from 1804--1845, was part of a British envoy to China in the 1790s. Attempts to impress the Emperor with British science and technology left far less an impression than was hoped, with the Emperor dismissing the demonstration. A brief account of this being in the biography Barrows Boys by Fergus Fleming (1998).
China does have a long history of scientific and technological development, though by the 20th century this was all but forgotten / overlooked by the Chinese themselves, and it fell on an outsider, Joseph Needham (TK-chinese) to reacquaint them with this past, in Science and Civilisation in China, a 30-plus volume work begun in the 1950s and still in production.
