As China and the UK seek to collaborate more closely in science and innovation, there are lessons they can share about how to govern and debate new technologies
This week's visit to Beijing by George Osborne and David Willetts is important. Sensible collaboration with China in science, technology and innovation is not only in Britain's economic interests but can also help to address environmental challenges shared by the entire international community. Doing this effectively requires an appreciation of innovation policies and processes in both countries. One interesting strand of this is the different role that citizen participation plays in Chinese and UK innovation policy.
The past few years have seen a raft of science and innovation partnerships springing up between China and the UK, including in the areas of low-carbon technologies – a UK priority for collaboration ever since China topped the world table of CO2-emitters in 2007.
Green and low carbon technologies, however, come in many varieties – each requiring different forms of government support or citizen action. For China as for Britain, low carbon innovation raises significant political challenges, not just technological ones. As such, effective collaboration requires both sides to grapple with these political dimensions of decision making.
Both countries face distinct challenges in constructing what Mariana Mazzucato describes as an "entrepreneurial state". China's innovation system is shaped primarily by government intervention, whereas in the UK such policies have – until recently – been associated with clumsy attempts at "picking winners".
As a result of targeted policies and investment, the growth of low-carbon technologies in China has been spectacular. To reach the goal in China's 12th Five Year Plan of 100 gigawatts of installed wind capacity by 2015, and 1000 gigawatts by 2050 (roughly equivalent to the current capacity of the entire US grid), the government has invested heavily in R&D, used aggressive local regulations to demand the involvement of Chinese suppliers, and provided strong support for partially state-owned firms like GoldWind.
Such intense state involvement is not by itself sufficient to bring about the system-wide changes necessary for the shift to a low-carbon economy. The issue for China (as for other countries) is the more political one of constructing an inclusive and responsive innovation culture, which aligns technological developments with social and organisational change in firms and communities.
China's approach may seem to be a strength, rather than a weakness, on this score. While efforts to expand onshore wind power in the UK are often hampered by nimbyism, Chinese civil society has largely remained silent about wind power, allowing a massive rollout to proceed.
However, other technological efforts to reach the country's official objective of reducing carbon intensity of production by 17% have met with more resistance. Indeed, while support for explicitly political agendas of democratic reform remains subdued, ostensibly non-political issues of science, innovation and the environment are the focus of increasingly visible public attention.
For instance, the Chinese government is fully committed to promoting nuclear power as part of its low-carbon energy mix. Yet plans for the Longwan Industrial Park project in south-east China, which would have included a uranium processing facility, were recently called off by the authorities in response to public protest.
Agri-science or agricultural biotechnology – central to the Chinese government's food security strategy (and also one of David Willetts's "Eight great technologies") – is another area where China's strong state has met with resistance. Although GM cotton has been found to have environmental benefits in China, the public are not fully persuaded, and fierce debate in China's burgeoning social media has contributed to delays in the cultivation of GM rice and maize, despite formal approval from China's Ministry of Agriculture back in 2009.
Debates around nuclear energy and GM crops are illustrative of a wider shift towards citizen influences on policy-making, especially in the environmental arena. A recent book, China and the Environment: The Green Revolution, edited by Sam Geall, describes some of the citizen-led initiatives and journalistic efforts that are slowly and informally democratising moves towards a more sustainable model of development. A priority now for Chinese policymakers is to find ways of accommodating and harnessing these uninvited forms of public engagement.
The UK has experienced similar controversies over the years, and still struggles with how to govern the introduction of risky but potentially transformative technologies. However, policymakers in the UK have at least begun to experiment with mechanisms through which citizen perspectives can be taken into account. Various forms of public consultation now play an important, if still imperfect, role in decision making.
China and the UK could share insights from their respective experiences of promoting more entrepreneurial states. China could teach the UK a thing or two about the rapid deployment of low-carbon technologies. And the UK could perhaps help China's leadership to engage more constructively with the social debates and uncertainties generated by new technologies.
Building public confidence in innovation is a challenge for both nations. As the UK and China work more closely together, they need to build conversational, as well as entrepreneurial, states.
Adrian Elyis head of impact and engagement, STEPS Centre, University of Sussex; David Tyfield is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Lancaster
Science policy
China
Energy
Carbon emissions
Adrian Ely
David Tyfield
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