Why are there so few Chinese Nobel laureates? And does it matter?

If we Chinese are so clever, why have we only had two Nobel Prize winners?' said David Tang, founder of the fashion chain Shanghai Tang, in a recent Far Eastern Economic Review interview. The question is interesting to investigate given the worries about a Hong Kong 'brain drain' and the city's desire to attract - or retain - the region's best and brightest.

The most obvious answer to Mr Tang's question is rooted in history. Although Alfred Nobel specifically wanted the prize to be open to people of all countries, the 19th century 'world' that he had in mind was tacitly limited to the developed countries of the West. Typically, attempts to widen the perspective have been clumsy. In 1938, the committee seemed intent on collecting politically correct brownie points when it awarded a Western woman, Pearl Buck, the prize in literature for her insider's views of China.

The Nobel committee appears to want to retain something of the spirit of Mr Nobel himself. He was a scientist in the classic European mould, with a character and an approach that was - and arguably still is - unlikely to emerge spontaneously in any of the major Chinese cultures without a great deal of mentoring in the ways of the West. It is analogous to expecting a Westerner to excel in examinations steeped in Chinese cultural and academic traditions.

Nevertheless, Chinese do make it to the podium at the Stockholm ceremonies. If you count those who were born Chinese, they have received four out of the 747 prizes given since the awards began in 1901, including the economics category, which was added in 1969. Gao Xingjian, now a French national, won for literature in 2000 and three have won for physics. The story of one of these, Professor Daniel Tsui, shows the effort it takes to attain such rarefied achievement. He jointly won the 1998 Nobel Prize in physics for discovering that electrons, acting together in strong magnetic fields, can form new types of particles with charges that are fractions of electron charges.

His story begins in a remote village in Henan province. Although his parents were illiterate, they devoted themselves entirely to his future.

They jumped at the chance - the one and only chance - to send their son away to Hong Kong in 1951. The boy started formal study at Pui Ching Middle School in tumultuous times, both personally and politically. Because of the turmoil in China, the faculty at Pui Ching School was outstanding. Wildly overqualified teachers - top intellects and visionary graduates from the best Chinese universities - had fled the mainland.

Professor Tsui remembers the magical experience of being inspired to 'look beyond the dollar sign' that dominated the culture of Hong Kong.