A century ago, at the 1908 Olympic Games in London, China failed even to field a team. Some 80 years later, in Seoul, it finished in 11th place in the medal table. In Athens, in 2004, it climbed to second, just behind the US. And this summer, as Beijing played host to the most spectacular Olympics in history, China topped the table for the first time, with a staggering tally of 51 gold, 21 silver and 28 bronze medals.
China’s sporting success is emblematic of a wider shift in the economic and political order, which has seen a more assertive China gradually taking an increasing role on the world stage. When Beijing won the race to host the Olympics back in 2001, the official Xinhua News Agency heralded it as “another milestone in China’s rising international status and a historical event in the great renaissance of the Chinese nation”.
But if this is what China can achieve in sport, how quickly will it become a global leader in other areas like science and technology (and, consequently, physics)? There are some striking parallels between sport and science: in both areas, the Chinese government has set ambitious, long-term targets and then mobilized vast resources to achieve them. Just as the $40bn spent on the Beijing games dwarfed anything that had gone before, so China is now at an early stage in the most ambitious programme of research investment the world has ever seen.
In the October issue of Physics World, James Wilsdon charts a course though the fledging scientific nations from China to Brazil and many countries in between.
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