Can Science and Technology Save China?

Can Science and Technology Save China? PDF Author: Susan Greenhalgh
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781501747038
Category : SCIENCE
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
"This study of the intimate connections between science and society in China shows that science and technology, far from saving China, as the country's leaders promise, are producing unanticipated, often deeply disturbing effects"--

Science and Technology in Post-Mao China

Science and Technology in Post-Mao China PDF Author: Denis Fred Simon
Publisher: Harvard Univ Asia Center
ISBN: 9780674794757
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 484

Book Description
Along with the political and economic reforms that have characterized the post-Mao era in China there has been a potentially revolutionary change in Chinese science and technology. Here sixteen scholars examine various facets of the current science and technology scene, comparing it with the past and speculating about future trends. Two chapters dealing with science under the Nationalists and under Mao are followed by a section of extensive analysis of reforms under Deng Xiaoping, focusing on the organizational system, the use of human resources, and the emerging response to market forces. Chapters dealing with changes in medical care, agriculture, and military research and development demonstrate how these reforms have affected specific areas during the Chinese shift away from Party orthodoxy and Maoist populism toward professional expertise as the guiding principle in science and technology. Three further chapters deal with China's interface with the world at large in the process of technology transfer. Both the introductory and concluding chapters describe the tension between the Chinese Communist Party structure, with its inclinations toward strict vertical control, and the scientific and technological community's need for a free flow of information across organizational, disciplinary, and national boundaries.

Science in Traditional China

Science in Traditional China PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674794399
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 148

Book Description
The world's preeminent authority on Chinese science explores the philosophy, social structure, arts, crafts, and even military strategies that form our understanding of Chinese science, making instructive comparisons along the way to similar elements of Indian, Hellenistic, and Arabic cultures. A major portion of the book concentrates on Taoist alchemy that led not only to the invention of gunpowder and firearms, but also, through the search for macrobiotic life-elixirs, to the rise of modern medical chemistry.

China's Scientific Elite

China's Scientific Elite PDF Author: Cong Cao
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134337299
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Book Description
China's Scientific Elite is a study of those scientists holding China's highest academic honour - membership of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Having carried out extensive systematic data collection of CAS members Cao examines the social stratification system of the Chinese science community and the way in which politics and political interference has effected the stratification. The book then goes on to compare the Chinese system to the stratification of the US scientific elite. The conclusions are fascinating, not least because one national elite resides in a democratic liberal social system, and the other in an authoritarian social system.

A Cultural History of Modern Science in China

A Cultural History of Modern Science in China PDF Author: Benjamin A. Elman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674030428
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Historians of science and Sinologists have long needed a unified narrative to describe the Chinese development of modern science, medicine, and technology since 1600. They welcomed the appearance in 2005 of Benjamin Elman's masterwork, On Their Own Terms. Now Elman has retold the story of the Jesuit impact on late imperial China, circa 1600-1800, and the Protestant era in early modern China from the 1840s to 1900 in a concise and accessible form ideal for the classroom. This coherent account of the emergence of modern science in China places that emergence in historical context for both general students of modern science and specialists of China.

The Science of Chinese Buddhism

The Science of Chinese Buddhism PDF Author: Erik J. Hammerstrom
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231539584
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Book Description
Kexue, or science, captured the Chinese imagination in the early twentieth century, promising new knowledge about the world and a dynamic path to prosperity. Chinese Buddhists embraced scientific language and ideas to carve out a place for their religion within a rapidly modernizing society. Examining dozens of previously unstudied writings from the Chinese Buddhist press, this book maps Buddhists' efforts to rethink their traditions through science in the initial decades of the twentieth century. Buddhists believed science offered an exciting, alternative route to knowledge grounded in empirical thought, much like their own. They encouraged young scholars to study subatomic and relativistic physics while still maintaining Buddhism's vital illumination of human nature and its crucial support of an ethical system rooted in radical egalitarianism. Showcasing the rich and progressive steps Chinese religious scholars took in adapting to science's rising authority, this volume offers a key perspective on how a major Eastern power transitioned to modernity in the twentieth century and how its intellectuals anticipated many of the ideas debated by scholars of science and Buddhism today.

Innovation in China

Innovation in China PDF Author: Richard P. Appelbaum
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745689604
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Book Description
China is in the midst of transitioning from a manufacturing-based economy to one driven by innovation and knowledge. This up-to-date analysis evaluates China's state-led approach to science and technology, and its successes and failures. In recent decades, China has seen huge investments in high-tech science parks, a surge in home-grown top-ranked global companies, and a significant increase in scientific publications and patents. Helped by state policies and a flexible business culture, the country has been able to leapfrog its way to a more globally competitive position. However, the authors argue that this approach might not yield the same level of progress going forward if China does not address serious institutional, organizational, and cultural obstacles. While not impossible, this task may well prove to be more difficult for the Chinese Communist Party than the challenges that China has faced in the past.

The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5

The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 5 PDF Author: Joseph Needham
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521467735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

Book Description
This fifth volume abridgement of Joseph Needham's monumental work is concerned with the staggering civil engineering feats made in early and medieval China.

China's Cold War Science Diplomacy

China's Cold War Science Diplomacy PDF Author: Gordon Barrett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108956254
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
During the early decades of the Cold War, the People's Republic of China remained outside much of mainstream international science. Nevertheless, Chinese scientists found alternative channels through which to communicate and interact with counterparts across the world, beyond simple East/West divides. By examining the international activities of elite Chinese scientists, Gordon Barrett demonstrates that these activities were deeply embedded in the Chinese Communist Party's wider efforts to win hearts and minds from the 1940s to the 1970s. Using a wide range of archival material, including declassified documents from China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archive, Barrett provides fresh insights into the relationship between science and foreign relations in the People's Republic of China.

Explorers and Scientists in China's Borderlands, 1880-1950

Explorers and Scientists in China's Borderlands, 1880-1950 PDF Author: Denise M. Glover
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295804513
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
The scientists and explorers profiled in this engaging study of pioneering Euro-American exploration of late imperial and Republican China range from botanists to ethnographers to missionaries. Although a diverse lot, all believed in objective, progressive, and universally valid science; a close association between scientific and humanistic knowledge; a lack of conflict between science and faith; and the union of the natural world and the world of "nature people." Explorers and Scientists in China's Borderlands examines their cultural and personal assumptions while emphasizing their remarkable lives, and considers their contributions to a body of knowledge that has important contemporary significance. Essays are devoted to D. C. Graham, Joseph Rock, Reginald Farrer and George Forrest, Ernest Henry Wilson, Paul Vial, Johan Gunnar Andersson and Ding Wenjiang, and Friedrich Weiss and Hedwig Weiss-Sonnenburg. Richly illustrated with historic photographs, this collection reveals the extraordinary lives and times of these remarkable people.