China leads in top papers for math and computing

Hardly a day goes by when’s there not an article or two about the increasing dominance of China in technology. It’s often instructive to think about the root causes for that. One of those has to be the increasing quality of China’s researchers. The Economist has a nicely written article on the rise of the top Chinese universities – particularly Tsinghua. A few points that caught my eye:

• In 2006-2009 Tsinghua was 66th in the ranking table for maths and computing research. Now it’s at the top. That’s a fast rise. 
• Chinese universities give our bonuses to their researchers for getting a paper published in a top journal equivalent to about 20x their annual salary. Wow – that’s in incentive. 
• Tsinghua and Peking universities are neighbors modeled about Oxford and Cambridge. 

Worth a read. Emphasizes the need for long range planning and investments.