Consider one index: the number of papers that are being published by China and India in high-calibre journals - ones that are accessed by Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index. The Kostoff study indicates that in 1980, papers from China were one-fifteenth of the papers produced from India. In 1995, they became about equal. By 2005, papers originating from China had become almost thrice those from India. Between these dates, papers from India increased by 2.5, China’s ten times. Kostoff and his associates point out that the scientific output of South Korea already exceeds that of India, and that of Taiwan and Brazil is catching up fast.

As part of the dramatic growth in Chinese research output may be caused by the multiplication of journals, Kostoff and his colleagues turned to three high Impact Factor journals - the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the Physical Review Letters, and the Journal of Biological Chemistry. “India had noticeably more publications in the three journals prior to about 2000,” they note. In 2005, their figures show, Chinese researchers published more than five times the number of papers than Indian researchers in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Mashelkar points to his own field, Chemistry: every eighth paper published in Chemical Abstracts is now from China; every fortieth Indian.

Nor is this accidental. The US National Science Board’s Science and Engineering Indicators shows the focused effort behind China’s leap. In 1991, China was spending around $ 12 billion on R&D, $ 85 by 2003. Our total R&D expenditure is around $ five billion. Over this period, China’s academic R&D expenditure increased ten-fold. “China’s R&D expenditures are rapidly approaching those of Japan, the second largest R&D performing nation,” the study notes. “OECD data show China’s investment at 17% of Japan’s in 1991 but at 74% of Japan’s in 2003.” The National Science Board’s analysts observe, “such a rapid advance on the leading R&D performing countries and regions would still be unprecedented in recent history.”

... contd.