The world’s largest radio telescope is just one part of the far-seeing investment which has made China a powerhouse of world-class scientific research

China’s investment in the world’s largest radio telescope delivers a nice metaphor for China’s investment in science: it represents the big picture, and the potential payoff for a far-seeing strategy.

In 1985, China was held in suspicion by most of the rest of the world. Its economy had been twice ruined, first by Mao’s Great Leap Forward, between 1958 and 1960, a step that precipitated a devastating famine and deaths by the million; and then by the calamitous Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, which committed scholars and experts wholesale to the humiliation of manual labour, an act that squandered decades of intellectual capital.

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But in 1985, China announced another approach: it would become an intellectual power by investing in research and creativity. With centralized, unopposed authority, and unquestioned control, China could do what it liked, and this time the people liked what they got: hope, science and vision.

The start was slow, but within three decades, China has overtaken Japan to become the world’s second largest economy – behind only the US. And during that time its investment in research and development has grown: China is now a power in space research and manned flight; with a billion potential patients on its books, it has become a ambitious player in medical, biological and chemical research. Indeed, in 2015 pharmacologist Tu Youyou became the first Chinese winner of a Nobel prize for medicine, awarded for her discovery of a treatment for malaria.

The graduate workforce expanded, Chinese-born scientists who had moved abroad were tempted back, more than 4,000 distinguished non-Chinese scientists were attracted to Chinese academies and universities and by 2014, more than 110,000 PhDs who had left to work aboard had returned to China, largely because, for the first time, there was a better chance of research support at home than there is now in Europe, or the US, where investment in research has been faltering.

Science is an international endeavor, and although the Chinese government has encouraged indigenous talent an increasing proportion of scientific papers now carry the names of Chinese-based scientists in partnership with western (and western-based Chinese) researchers. In 2006, a 15-year-plan announced that China would become a “science powerhouse” by 2020. It is a powerhouse already.

It has also invested hugely in energy research: by 2020, 15% of its energy will be from renewable sources. Between 2012 and 2014, according to the journal Nature, China’s output in the life sciences grew by 30%. The nation’s science directorate has ambitions in the fields of gene therapy, stem cell and cloning research; there has also been big spending on the science of agriculture, water and the environment. And – thanks to remarkable discoveries preserved in unique geological strata – China long ago became a powerful player in the world of palaeontology.

The people who have been told to move to make room for the world’s biggest reflector may not see it this way, but the new 500-metre telescope is not just a tool for tuning in to the distant universe: it is a felicitous examplar of the grand vision.