Scientists welcome Xi’s call for more research and fewer meetings but admit problems will take time to fix

China’s top scientists broadly welcomed President Xi Jinping’s latest call for researchers to spend more time in labs and less time on events, although some said they often find it hard to avoid promotional activity, non-academic meetings and banquets in the course of their work.

In an address last Friday to the country’s top scientists, engineers and researchers, Xi said that scholars should be freed from “unnecessary distractions, such as meaningless functions, events and administrative paperwork”, saying this was a necessary condition for China to become a technology super power.

Xi said that the country’s top scientists should focus on their own disciplines and avoid too many external responsibilities, in a thinly-veiled criticism of the bureaucratic distractions and outside interests that many of the country’s top science brains become embroiled in.

Zhong Nanshan, an 84-year-old infectious disease expert and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told state media on Friday that he is sometimes so busy with non-academic meetings that he is forced to conduct his scientific research in the evenings.

Zhong added that if he cannot attend an event in person, he often has to make a video for it instead. “I once spent two hours recording five of these videos,” he was quoted by state-owned China News Service as saying.

Sun Yutao, a 39-year-old professor focusing on science policy at the Dalian University of Technology, said he is often so busy with administrative work he has to spend his weekends doing academic research. Teaching and other non-research activities take up most of his week days.