Like much news about China, there is certainly more hype than there are real achievements. I will be putting together an ongoing assessment of challenges China will face in the next twenty years ranging from the environment and health to finance and education.

Professor Pinker's pop-star status in cognitive linguistics hardly makes him an authority to quote about China's scientific and academic community. I laud the role of self appointed public intellectuals to speak out against what they perceive as injustices in the world, but what are the specific analytical factors to watch concerning science and technology research in China? Your comment on manual labor seems a bit off topic.

Like discussion about communism and capitalism, idealizations of China's totalitarian state seldom deal with the complexities of what is actually happening. Instead, they continue the standard Western narrative, promulgated by Karl Wittfogel and Max Weber, of a despotic Chinese state suppressing innovation, resulting in backwardness. These narratives were equally uninformed and intended more as an explanation of the inevitable rise of the West and justification for empire.

The fact is, in less than 15 years China has taken a quantum leap in almost every field of science and technology research. The concrete achievements are in the news quite frequently. Moreover, there is tremendous political and social will as well as financial backing to keep these advancements going. This momentum is rising rather than diminishing, as evidenced by the world-class research facilities being built. Academically, China has been extremely aggressive in opening up and establishing ties around the world, including developing countries.

That said, there is of course no guarantee that China will be able to continue to barrel forward at the speed it has in recent years. And there are certainly many problems to face. Claims that China will be the next world superpower are mostly made in the Western media by pundits who haven't quite wrapped their minds around the concept of a multi-polar world. This seems more a reflection of the anxiety of some about America's sustainable hyperpower. No one in China even aims to take on such a role, but instead to become one of several major players on the world stage.