Before counting how many Nobel Prizes in science have gone to Western/American scientists, it should be mentioned that “Ashkenazi Jews (European/white Jews: i.e most Jews) make up just 3% of the United States population, yet were responsible for 27% of the US science Nobel Prizes and 25% of the Turing Awards in the 20th century.”
Jeff Weintraub says, “It’s well known that overseas Chinese have often been compared to the Jews (by themselves and by others).
“Chinese and Jewish cultures are the two oldest civilizations in the world and share a lot in common. Both highly emphasize the family tie function and educational value, and although both have absorbed various exotic cultures, their central core has never changed since birth.” Source: Jews in China: Legends, History and New Peresepectives
“Moreover,” Weintraub says, “it seems like my friends were more or less correct that their Chinese diaspora constitutes the ‘Jews of Asia.’ From Hanoi to Bangkok to Jakarta and beyond, the merchant classes are overwhelmingly peopled with well-educated ethnic Chinese whose connections to the homeland and each other — the ‘Bamboo Network’ — constitute a huge business advantage. They are also, like the Jews, periodically expelled (from Vietnam), repressed (under Indonesia’s Suharto) and rioted against (in Malaysia, Thailand and really everywhere else). Like Jews, they are fiercely proud of their heritage, assimilating somewhat while maintaining temples that assert identity.”
In addition, China’s government has thrown billions in recent years into building a top-notch research establishment, hoping to keep its best scientists working here and lure back those who are abroad. Moreover, there are more foreign students from China attending US universities than from any other country—more than 150,000 annually spending over $4 billion for their US educations, and those students first went to school in China and then came to the US as a college student. In fact, China’s next president has a daughter attending Harvard. When these students return to China with their university degrees, they will be bringing the innovative, critical thinking, problems solving skills home with them.
One example of the results of this investment in “top-notch research” may be seen in a recent breakthrough in carbon nanotube-based cables technology at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Source: Science Daily
To the hardcore skeptic demanding more evidence, in early 2012, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, one of the world’s most prestigious research foundations, announced Tuesday that it was honoring 28 biomedical researchers who studied in the United States and then returned to their home nations. Each will receive a five-year research grant of $650,000.
Seven — more than any other nation — were from China.
“They’re incredibly energetic, extremely smart, highly productive and accomplished,” Robert Tjian, president of the institute, said of the Chinese winners in a telephone interview.” Source: New York Times
Return to The Return of Innovation to China – Part 1
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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