Editor's Note: Lu Yongxiang, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), attended the fourth World Science Forum (WSF) held in Budapest on 5–7 November 2009. "12 Scientists on the 21st Century", a special book of interviews with some of world's top scientists was published before the forum in honour of the tenth anniversary of WSF. The exclusive interview of Professor Lu Yongxiang was included in the book.
LU YONGXIANG
IN SEARCH OF TRUTH AND INNOVATION
By Ferenc Cservenka
 Professor Lu Yongxiang has been the president of China’s preeminent organization for natural sciences, advanced-technology R&D and innovation, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), since July 1997.
Professor Lu was born on April 28, 1942, in one of the most ancient cities in China, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, Eastern China. He graduated in 1964 from Zhejiang University, which was founded in 1897, and he himself became the President of the University in 1988.
As an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, he completed his doctoral studies in a record-breaking two years, and received his PhD in engineering from the Technical University of Aachen, Germany. Lu Yongxiang is a world-renowned scientist, who has made lasting contributions to the development of mechanical engineering, especially in the field of fluid power transmission and control. His fundamental insights into the Freeman-Jinken and Vickers principles have changed electro-hydraulic thinking worldwide. His achievement in electro-hydraulic proportional control has been regarded as one of the most important examples of progress in the field of the electro-hydraulic control technique since the 1980s.
His achievements have been recognized through numerous awards. He received the Knight Commander’s Cross of the Order and Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany from the Federal President of Germany in 2000. He was awarded the Abdus Salam Medal of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) in 2006. He is an honorary and a corresponding member of many academies all over the world, and has been elected an Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Professor Lu is also vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the top legislative body in China, and President of the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society (CMES).
– You studied in Germany for many years. Have you taken Western ideas back to China and incorporated them into traditional Chinese ways of thinking?
– I have not only acquired knowledge and learnt about innovations in my professional field, but also recognized the general mechanisms of innovation systems, particularly the excellent approach to engineering training that prevails in Germany. And of course, I have introduced some of those experiences and lessons into our higher education system, and also into research organization, and administration. I’m particularly highly impressed by the German engineering educational system, which better incorporates theoretical concepts into practical experimental research, and secondly by the way research is very systematically and continually oriented towards application in industry.
And you probably know that China is a major manufacturing country. We do need to improve our higher education in the field of engineering and I’m sure that it’s not enough merely to continue with the standards of our excellent national traditions. We should also learn a lot from abroad, from other nations and other systems, in order to promote real improvements in our system, so we can become much better at facing the challenges of the future.
– What is China’s role and responsibility in the 21st century, in this rapidly changing world?
– In the 21st century, China will always adhere to its multilateral policies, maintain common security, uphold mutually beneficial cooperation to achieve common prosperity, and uphold the spirit of inclusiveness to build a peaceful and harmonious world together. In response to emerging global issues, China will assume more responsibility for enhancing international cooperation and creating an equitable international order.
China’s S&T has been growing rapidly in recent years: in terms of the total number of international peer-reviewed papers, China was ranked 2nd in the world. But to be honest, China still lags behind in many fields compared with other countries. China is a huge country facing many challenges, such as rapid population growth, issues of energy and environmental security, a social welfare divide, and a wide urban/rural gap. We must address these issues in a scientific manner. We shall strengthen our collaboration with the international scientific community to make a greater contribution to China and the world.
As for the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in basic research areas, focusing on the forefront of world science and targeting the crucial scientific issues, CAS will further intensify its efforts to promote original innovation, and to achieve world standards.
In strategic advanced technology and systems integration, CAS will respond to the strategic needs of the country and precisely identify the global frontiers of advanced technology.
In the fields of vital public interest, CAS will continue to focus on the important scientific and technological requirements of sustainable national or regional social and economic development in China, giving full play to its overall advantages.
In terms of research systems, CAS will reform, innovate and forge ahead in harmony, so as to achieve even greater innovation and make more contributions to building a harmonious society.
– What are the most challenging problems facing the world, generally speaking and in science?
– Sustainable development, global warming, health issues, energy, clean water, environmental pollution, natural disasters, and public security are among the list of problems that challenge the development of the whole world. The present global economic crisis has made it more difficult for the world to deal with these problems. The rich-poor gap between the developed nations and the least developed and developing ones is widening, and this includes capacity in science and technology. The low S&T investment and weak S&T innovation capacity of the least developed and developing countries leave them in a worse position when it comes to tackling these common challenges.
– It’s interesting how everything changed with the financial crisis. Before it all happened, the Western world was debating how to handle the rise of China: how to stay one step ahead of China. Now Chinese thinkers are trying to find a way to manage the West’s decline. Are we going through a transitional period? It seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born.
– I don’t altogether agree to your opinion. In my view the financial crisis is not just a negative influence: it also brings new challenges, new opportunities for future development. I believe that through common efforts the crisis will be overcome in one, two, three or maybe more years. But all of our nations, including China, have to make use of this opportunity, and not just follow short term policies in response to the crisis. We should also accelerate the structuring of our industries. In particular, we must accelerate the process of transition from current energy systems to the greener, more sustainable energy systems of the future, and we must also move away from current approaches to development, which jeopardize the environment and our ecosystems, towards more eco-friendly models of development, at the same time as, through our innovation activities, we increase job opportunities and create the potential for new industrial development. And besides this, we must improve our systems of general education, professional training and higher education, as well as bringing up the younger generations to acquire a more multidisciplinary kind of knowledge, to learn much better concepts that promote the sustainable, development steps of mankind into the future.
China has made enormous progress in its development over the past 30 years of reform and opening-up, but we have still only reached the first phase of modernization.
– And in your own specific scientific field, what are the most challenging problems?
– In terms of my field of research, mechanical engineering, we too are faced with the challenges that I have listed; especially the explosive growth of the global population, the gap between rich and poor, changing patterns of consumption and production, and the scarcity of resources. Mechanical engineers will be challenged to develop new technologies and techniques that support economic growth and promote sustainability. In addition, the interrelated forces of globalization and information technology are causing such enormous changes in the engineering profession! Engineering requires comprehensive skills to use technologies and to respond to the interdisciplinary requirements of engineering projects.
– What role can science play in meeting, or at least reducing, those challenges and threats?
– Science and technology are increasingly recognized as the drivers of economic growth today, and they will play an increasing role in the future. The improvement of the scientific, technological and engineering capacity of a nation will enable it to tackle these challenges in a better way, which is sustainable, environment-friendly and efficient in terms of the use of resources.At present, the least developed and developing nations have fallen far behind the developed countries in science and technology. In order to achieve balanced and sustained development, it is essential to transfer technologies from the developed nations to the least developed and developing ones.
– Can the Chinese scientific community upgrade its status in the world without international cooperation?
– I don’t think so. Every country today should be in the closest cooperation and correlation with other nations, countries or regions. The world is becoming more globalized. Long ago, particularly after the industrial revolution, mankind already created some knowledge, scales and technologies. These also became not just one nation’s, one country’s activities, but multilateral innovative activities. Every nation, whether the biggest and strongest or the smallest, the not so well developed, can make its own contribution to world civilization.
– Sometimes I feel that we know everything and nothing about China. Why is it that we know so little about the thinkers of China who are indeed shaping the world?
– The main reason might be that people have limited time when visiting China. They should contact more Chinese, and then they could better understand what the people have in mind. And China has a very long history and cultural tradition, wide cultural traditions. China is a vast country, with diverse landscapes, natural resources, and characteristics and multinational cultures all merging together. I would suggest that perhaps people should spend more time visiting places in China and communicating with the different groups of people.
Information about Chinese research and social development, as well as the countries industrial goals, is now widely available abroad. Most of the information on our Internet web pages is in Chinese, so if people want to understand China better they should also learn the Chinese language. Many foreign scientists, particularly the famous ones, have a much better understanding of Chinese development and Chinese culture, as well as of Chinese scientific society.
The CAS is a very open organization. All our laboratories are open to our foreign partners. We have now started to receive and support highly qualified foreign scientists who would like to join us. We have just established special scholarships in different areas, supporting mostly foreign scientists, and we will improve the atmosphere in our institutes by becoming more international, by merging multinational cultures together to promote our world-class innovation activities.
– In recent years you’ve been busy working towards the establishment of your country’s innovation system, to establish an innovation system of China’s own. You coined the phrase “Seek the Truth and Be Creative”, which could also express your own guiding principle.
– Discoveries are still the cardinal points of innovation. New discoveries are important to knowledge, but knowing how to rationally apply any new discovery to knowledge is just as important to the ongoing progress of humanity. Newly developed knowledge must be used for a new technological invention, becoming a new application, methodology, tool or instrument to search for bigger systems serving bigger populations, not just a few individuals. S&T innovation has to be supported and given the best possible environment, which includes particular conditions and legal systems as well as cultural surroundings. Without all this it is difficult to encourage scientists and engineers to produce a really efficient innovation and transfer it into the industrial sphere.
– So, if I understand correctly, innovation is not necessarily just technical innovation, but also includes knowledge innovation.
– In my understanding innovation should include knowledge, technology and management, and indeed culture. Without management innovation, the current new technology can probably not be quickly and efficiently transferred to real productivity, or to real large-scale productivity.
– What are the most outstanding results of the last decade in your scientific field, and how can they influence the course of the 21st century?– Numerical methods of solving the basic equations of fluid mechanics created opportunities which have led to numerical solutions for practical flow problems. Metrological developments have also led to complementary experimental and numerical solutions for practical flow problems.
The experimental methods that contributed particularly to the rapid advancement of experimental fluid mechanics in the second half of the 20th century were hot-wire and laser Doppler anemometry. These methods have now reached a stage of development which enables them to be used in local velocity measurements in laminar and turbulent flows, and also in the measurement of impure gas and fluid flows.
Considerable developments in applied mathematics have taken place in solving partial differential equations numerically. Meanwhile, the computational performance of modern high-speed computers has improved considerably and computer programs have been made available that make it possible to solve practical flow problems numerically.
In the 21st century, the combined application of experimental and numerical methods will permit fluid-mechanics investigations that have so far not been possible because suitable methods of investigation did not exist.
– What are the major differences between “doing science” in the 20th and in the 21st centuries?
– A well-functioning interface between innovation and science is more necessary in the 21st century than it was in the 20th, to ensure the vitality and quality of scientific research. Innovation in methodology and theory is more important for research work in the 21st century.
Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research plays a more important role in the 21st century. Interaction or crossover between different disciplines or subjects in the late 20th century led to ingenious ideas in science and technology. For example, it has brought remarkable achievements through collaboration between life sciences and bio-physics and bio-chemistry, and new materials thanks to material science working together with condensed matter physics.
Rapidly developed advanced instruments, the scientific results of the 20th century, have greatly encouraged the birth of new scientific disciplines; for example, the most advanced vacuum, lithographic technologies, and atomic manipulation instruments (including for instance the Nobel prize-wining "Scanning Tunneling Microscope") have made possible the birth of nano-physics and nano-technology. The development of suitable tools has enabled scientists to manipulate chemical reactions at the molecular and even the atomic level.
Thanks to the rapid development of the internet and the information-based applications in the 21st century, it is extremely easy for us to find or search through the latest published or yet un-published papers from various powerful network resources. In the 21st century, scientists can access almost all the data that has been accumulated in our history via the internet.
In the new century, networking, email and many chat tools are commonly used. We can discuss things or exchange ideas with each other from anywhere on earth and at any time. We will enjoy and benefit from the advantages of the global spread of information.
Enhanced international exchanges (academic visits and project cooperation) are more frequent and flexible, and are open to various forms in the 21st century. An indispensable characteristic of scientists is that they are willing to exchange, to share their ideas and research results with their peers around the world.
As a social enterprise, international cooperation in science and technology is vital if we are to meet a broad range of global challenges related to economic growth, human health, and sustainable development.
– What are the major, “breakthrough-type” questions in your scientific field, what social responses will they elicit and what impacts will they have?
– In the future, scientists and engineers will work closely together at the extremes of very large and very small systems that require greater knowledge of and coordination between multidisciplinary and multi-scale projects across greater distances and timeframes. Systems science and engineering will incorporate much of the knowledge and practices of engineering and technological sciences.
Using new knowledge and tools, scientists and engineers will fashion solutions to the most pressing problems of developing new renewable energy, creating new ways to develop in a sustainable way and dealing with water shortage, climate change and other challenging issues of common concern.
– What measures, initiatives and actions do you suggest should be taken to enrich and reinforce the interrelationship between science and society?
– First of all, scientific research, which lays a solid basis one way or another for hi-tech development, should be essential engine for economic and social growth. Over and over again, the history of human society has proved that scientific advances provide the innovative thrust that fosters national strength and improves the quality of life. Modern science makes communication more effective, life easier and people healthier. In this respect, the pursuit of the discovery of the unknown will substantially push forward human society and thus, in the long run, any policies, measures or research initiatives that empower researchers will benefit the whole of human society.
Secondly, our research projects should address global , emergency problems such as climate change, clean water, environmental pollution, natural disasters, human health and threats to public security. In our research planning and arrangements, we deliberately allocate considerable resources to research fields that are targeted at solving these major problems.
Thirdly, another vital role played by science is in improving scientific awareness among people. Both publicity for research activities and the dissemination of scientific knowledge are in fact forms of education for the whole of society, leading us towards a more civilized and rational world. Activities aimed at popularizing science, initiated by CAS, are always welcomed by the public, especially by teenage students at school, including opening labs to the public during the National Science & Technology Popularization Week, building up digital museums of popular science, and publishing series of Reports on Science and Society annually, and holding a series of other activities throughout the country such as popular science lectures, on-site consultations, symposia, demonstrations, and instructions . In this sense, the scientific community should create a correct system of scientific values, apt to promote and develop a scientific spirit, to abide by scientific ethics and moral codes, and to fulfill our social responsibility.
– Talking about physics：much of physics is about missiles and guns; war has been the investment opportunity of choice, and of necessity. This raises the question of the ethical responsibilities of science/technology towards human society, it’s interrelationships… All too often, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves is lost.
– Scientists should remember their own responsibilities to society, should follow ethics and morals. I personally think that this issue does not only depend on scientific spirit, it should also be closely combined with policy and the very conception of humanity. Our Academy constitutes a major consulting body both for society and for the decision makers. We focus not only on the strategic points of economic and social development, but also on the traditional and non-traditional safeguards of nations and societies as well as on education, on scientific ethics and morals. Our scientists should also remember their own responsibility towards society. Fields such as nanotechnology , biotechnology or space technology can bring many benefits to civilization, but on the other hand they may also cause certain dangers for mankind. We should conduct analyses and make the results available to society and to our decision makers so as to avoid negative or undesirable side-effects, and improve the positive impact on our future development.
– It is said that the number of studies in physics by Chinese scientists is increasing so fast that by 2012 it will exceed the number of studies published by Americans. Why is it that young people in China are so much more interested in science than German, American or British youngsters?
– In recent decades, it’s true, the number of our publications has increased dramatically. The quality of Chinese scholars has also improved considerably, but that’s not enough. In my opinion in the future we should encourage our scientists to pay more attention to quality, not just to quantity. I don’t believe that by 2012 publications by Chinese scientists will exceed the contribution made by the Americans. The USA also encourages the younger generation to carry out better innovative work, and what happened in America is now slowly reaching our society too. Compared to the time when I was very young, nowadays some of the top students have the chance to study law and economics as well as politics. Twenty years ago my daughter, and my young son, tried to study architecture, but now it’s over. But with our huge population we can still find highly qualified people who are interested in studying physics, engineering and, mathematics at a very high level.
– We often hear about the so called “American Dream”? But there is also a definition of the European Dream, the Australian Dream, the Arab Dream and even the Croatian Dream or the New Zealand Dream. Is there a “Chinese Dream”? And if there is one, how would you define the difference between the two?
– The dreams of different nations have many things in common, but they are never identical. Every generation of a nation has its own historical imprint. The European Dream is a multicultural collection, compared to the United States. But I think diversity is the best thing in the world. If every nation had the same dream, maybe that would be too simple for the world, not so good for future innovation. But the common ideologies, the common goals of every nation’s people should also be recognized . We live on the same planet, we meet common challenges, such as energy problems, health care, environmental protection, including mitigationand adaptaion to global challenges. There’s also international terrorism, and other non-traditional security issues including those in the future. We should be working more together with the same or similar conceptions.
– What kind of country, what kind of world do you dream of?
– I dream of a more peaceful and harmonious world, prospering. All civilizations could benefit more people. In 50 years the population of our planet may increase to 9-10 billion, but right now 2-3 billion people live on 2-3 dollars a day. So all the achievements of S&T should be shared by more people, serving more individuals in the world. As for the developed countries as well as the more advanced developing countries such as China, we should not just think of our own development, but also consider how to help the least developed countries.
– If you had a chance to formulate one of the main messages of the World Science Forum 2009, what would it be?
– Foresight in scientific policy and technology for global sustainability. |
