JUS494 Week 13 Blog China
Crystina Riffel
This week’s discussions included the topic of reform processes in countries such as China and Vietnam. In the China article, they “summarize knowledge of what is happening in the reform process in general, how the role of some key institutions are changing and what added complexity springs from the current state of provincial municipal relations in the fields of science and technology”.
In the post-Mao period, there was a major conference, the National Conference on Science and Technology of 1978. This conference “Marked the beginning of the S&T reform process”. It attempted to set a broad and ambitious research agenda for basic science and high technology. It attempted to reverse the low status of science.
The old system provided for no effective mechanisms of accountability; therefore there was a switch to new orientations that required major reforms. Different reforms began in the 1980s. Most importantly were S&T reforms that were “a series of measures intended to change to challenge the ways research was funded”.
China attempted a new approach to research management. They encouraged new multichannel approaches to funding due to increasing exposure to foreign government and corporate models for organizing and managing S &T. In 1985 China also established their own patent system to “place a value on knowledge and to clarify and protect the ownership rights of this commodity”. By the mid 1980s China was seeing efforts to “commercialize technical knowledge through the establishment of new companies”.
In the early 1990s, China’s S&T system changed dramatically. The reforms changed policies not only in S&T areas but also the economy, law and social-security arrangements. In 1993 new initiates in S&T and the economy were developing as China prepared for the “Ninth Five-Year Plan”.
The reforms in S&T were adjustments to global forces. China attempted and is attempting to adjust to globalization of industry and technology “while continuing the still incomplete process of reforming its old S&T system”.
