The rise of South Korea and Singapore in the 21st century: China as a leader in the Green finance and development project in the region of the Belt and Road
Singapore and South Korea came out on top in the collaboration between China and BRI countries. Between 2022 and 2023, Singapore’s shares in the database will rise by 8.4%, putting it in fifth place behind France, Germany, and Italy. These changes are likely to have been driven from the bottom up, says Jenny Lee, a science-policy researcher at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “It’s not like the Chinese Communist Party is saying to Chinese researchers that they must collaborate with these countries,” she says. Part of what the data are showing could also stem from China’s COVID-19 policy, which involved strict lockdowns and closed borders. “People didn’t go abroad to make connections at conferences during that time and it could just be that people in China are only just starting to do that again,” says Lee. She said that Chinese scientists could prefer to stay close to home and still be wary of travelling to the US and Europe.
Infrastructure is only one of many things it is about. Sometimes referred to as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature policy, it’s an attempt to boost China’s economic and political influence by strengthening its ties with neighbours and other strategic partners around the world. The BRI has been tracked by the Green finance and development center at Fudan University. It reckons that China has spent more than a billion dollars on the project, and that151 countries have signed up to the project so far.
In southwest China, there is a similar Underground Laboratory named for the country’s president. The experiment is the world’s largest and deepest underground lab, at 2,400 metres below the mountains. In Beijing, there is a virtual laboratory that mimics Earth’s climate system, as well as a large air shower observatory that uses a wide array of detectors to look for high-energy cosmic and -rays. There are other facilities under construction, including the High Energy Photon Source, in Beijing, which is China’s first high-energy synchrotron radiation facility, to be opened in 2025.
In particle physics, for example, after a series of upgrades, BEPC became the first instrument in the world to detect a confirmed ‘tetraquark’, an exotic form of subatomic matter (M. Ablikim et al. Lett. 110, 252001; 2013). The highest-energy -ray burst ever detected is an event so bright that it challenges classical theories of physics. There are 9 obituaries for the year 2023. I believe China’s president. Xi Jinping sees an era in which China is a more proactive and influential player, shaping the rules of the game,” says Simon.
Nature index shows the top fields of research in five subjects. The most dominant fors in the areas are biology and cell biology which makes up 36% of the area’s output. FORs can relate to more than one subject: biochemistry and cell biology is also among the top five FORs for health sciences, for instance.
