Editorial | World can benefit from China science
- Proposed facilities at Guangdong are billed as ‘a paradise for scientists’ and, despite US suspicions, results can be shared and disseminated within the global community
China’s spending on basic research has lagged behind many developed countries. But Beijing’s policy is to make up for lost time. A plan is afoot to build two particle colliders in Huizhou, a city in Guangdong, to study the building blocks of matter such as the “strong” nuclear force as well as the particles, called gluons, which carry it.
Billed as “a paradise for physicists”, the proposed facilities are part of the Greater Bay Area push to turn this part of southern China into one of the world’s technological powerhouses. Also under construction at Huizhou is another facility to study next-generation nuclear power with the aim of solving the problem of what to do with the dangerous waste produced. When both projects are completed in the next few years, more than 1,500 researchers from around the world are expected to work together.
For decades, Chinese students and researchers have had to go overseas for research and study. A rising China can now provide a home base for them. Opening the nation’s top science facilities to the outside world will also encourage scientific cooperation and cross-cultural understanding.
As in many other areas, from trade to technology, China and the United States are locked in a race to build bigger particle colliders. In 2015, the US Nuclear Science Advisory Committee recommended the energy department accord the construction of an electron-ion collider as “the highest priority”. One estimate put the cost of construction at US$1.5 billion.
Providing a top-notch environment for foreign and domestic scientists and engineers is especially important as ethnic Chinese researchers increasingly fall under suspicion just on the basis of their race in the US, which has also pressured allies to follow its lead. Science is not a zero-sum game. In basic research such as particle physics, the results can be shared and disseminated within the global scientific community without much concern about trade competition and national security.
China can prove that it has much to offer the world in basic science and that it does not have to rely on other countries to carry out the most advanced research.