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(Global Times) 09:55, October 28, 2013

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Corrupting culture

Chen is not alone in his opinions. In 2010, Shi Yigong, director of the School of Life Sciences at Tsinghua University and Rao Yi, director of School of Life Sciences at Peking University, both returned from the US, published an editorial article criticizing China's problematic scientific research fund application and review mechanism in Science, one of the world's top scientific journals.

"To obtain major grants in China, it is an open secret that doing good research is not as important as schmoozing with powerful bureaucrats and their favorite experts," the article said.

It concluded that although most Chinese scientists complained about this defective application and distribution system in public, the vast majority of them choose to accept it.

"A signiﬁcant proportion of researchers in China spend too much time on building connections and not enough time attending seminars, discussing science, doing research, or training students (instead, using them as laborers in their laboratories). Most are too busy to be found in their own institutions. Some become part of the problem: They use connections to judge grant applicants and undervalue scientiﬁc merit," the article said.

When such a corrupting culture is formed, it creates a crisis where scientific funds may be misused or embezzled when some people who have no interest in pursuing science have control over large amounts of money, and it can be no surprise to see corruption grow.

A nationwide survey conducted by the China Association for Science and Technology published in 2004 said that only 40 percent of research funds were spent on R&D. The claim is backed by Guangzhou Vice Mayor Wang Dong, who revealed at a press conference on July 31 that the other 60 percent is actually used for activities such as meetings and travel.

A report from the Xinhua News Agency last week said at least 39 reports from auditing authorities over the past three years revealed serious problems of misuse and embezzlement of billions of yuan in scientific research funds in 2007 and 2012.

The report concluded that some of the most common methods of embezzling funds included paying benefits to staff members, which is not allowed in China; organizing recreational activities; and purchasing properties or cars for private use.

Chen from Fudan told the Global Times that scientific research funds can mostly be divided into "vertical" and "horizontal" parts, based on their source. The former mostly comes directly from government-backed funds, which have to go through the school's financing and auditing systems, making it less likely for them to be misused.

But the latter type of funding usually comes from government entrusted enterprises, and functions as a product of jointly developed projects between enterprises and schools, leaving room for profiting from lax supervision.

"In some projects, enterprises promise the project leaders that they can use as much as 20 to 40 percent of the funds for their own purposes," Chen said.

Time to act

Minister Wan Gang said at the news conference on October 11 that authorities had realized the significance of the problem and the key to fighting corruption is strengthening information transparency and public supervision.

Wan said the ministry is now working with other departments to build a unified platform to openly share all information related to scientific institutions that receive funds as well as their project application content and research results. This will ensure that his colleagues and related parties can supervise the process and prevent underhand operations.

However, Wang Pingxian, Professor of Marine Geology at Tongji University and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Global Times that corruption in scientific research funds was not only due to a failure in the management system, but also the result of a collective moral decline in Chinese society today.

"Science used to be thought of as one of the few clean sectors left in society. In the past, scientists always acted as if they were morally better than other people, but now it has changed. Maybe we should think about whether we are focusing too much on the productive forces science can bring us and ignoring the humanity side of science, which urges us to follow some basic moral codes. And if we fail to stand for that, the result will be really terrible," Wang said.