The Asian Century: The Changing Geography of Science

Abstract

101 Wikipedia defines the Asian Century as “a term used to describe the belief that, if certain demographic and economic trends persist, the 21st century will be dominated by Asian politics and culture (and science), similarly to how the 20th century is often called the American Century, and the 19th century the British Century”. Accordingly, in the coming decades, Asian readers of the Journal of the Formosan Medical Association (JFMA) could look forward to being at the epicenter of rapid scientific progress in biology and medicine. What are the factors that are poised to shape scientific progress in the 21st (Asian) century differently from that in the 20th (American) and 19th (British) centuries? There are many, but here, in brief, two potentially pivotal trends are discussed. The first factor for change is the booming economic growth of Asia. Several respected projections have indicated that by 2040, China will overtake the United States to become the world’s largest economy, with India capturing third place. These predictions appear to be credible since extant statistics from the World Bank show that when calculated on a purchasing power parity basis, the top five countries worldwide in total 2006 gross domestic product already include three Asian nations: China, India and Japan (Table 1). Reassuringly, this rapid economic growth is paralleled by an Asian willingness to invest in research and development (R&D). Hence, 2002 statistics show Asia contributing a 31.5% share of the world’s gross expenditure on R&D, with North America and Europe contributing 37% and 27.3%, respectively.1 Asian R&D spending produces results. A recent report from the United States National Science Foundation revealed that whereas American scientists and engineers have not enhanced their recent rate (an average of <1% increase per year from 1992 to 2003) of scientific publishing in peer-reviewed journals, the commensurate metrics for East Asian countries such as China, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan have grown at an annual rate approximating 16%.2 Moreover, a new scientific database now ranks Japan, China, India, Korea and Taiwan in 2nd, 5th, 12th, 14th and 17th place, respectively, in terms of global output in scientific publishing (Table 2).3 These impressive rankings are likely to improve rapidly over the next few years. A second factor that could substantially reshape science is the new open access model of distributing knowledge over the Internet. With the advent of The Asian Century: The Changing Geography of Science