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OpinionTan Kong YamandClement CT Chan
China’s next big leap: becoming a frontier science civilisation
Beijing’s pivot to focus on basic research signals a transition from an industrial civilisation towards a scientific civilisation looking to lead
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Tan Kong YamandClement CT ChanPublished: 5:30am, 28 May 2026
Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew once offered a striking observation on the nature of American power, wrote Harvard professor Joseph Nye in 2011. China, Lee argued, could draw upon its massive population but the United States possessed a deeper structural advantage: the ability to attract and recombine global talent within an unusually open, diverse and creative ecosystem. America’s innovation system was not merely large. It was generative.
Fifteen years later, on April 30, President Xi Jinping convened China’s top scientific leadership in Shanghai for a symposium on strengthening basic research. On the surface, it seemed another high-level science policy meeting. In reality, it was a strategic declaration that China intends to compete not merely in manufacturing, commercialisation or industrial deployment, but in foundational scientific discovery itself.Remarkably, this meeting received almost no coverage in Western media. Yet its significance may ultimately rival the “Made in China 2025” plan and many widely discussed geopolitical events of the decade.Advertisement
Soon after, the official Liberation Daily reported extensive responses from leading private-sector technologists and academics. It cited Peng Zhihui, co-founder and chief technology officer of AgiBot; Xia Lixue, co-founder and CEO of Infinigence AI; Li Lin, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; and Xu Tianheng, researcher at the Shanghai Advanced Research Institute.
Their remarks underscored Beijing’s growing emphasis on basic research, scientific self-reliance and original innovation as foundational pillars of national power, technological competitiveness and China’s long-term economic and strategic security.AdvertisementFor decades, China’s rise has been driven by its exceptional ability to absorb, refine and scale up existing technologies, making it arguably the world’s greatest “one to 100” civilisation, to borrow from Peter Thiel’s framework. It excelled in commercialising and deploying technologies such as high-speed rail, electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels, drones and telecommunications through powerful manufacturing ecosystems and state coordination.AdvertisementSelect VoiceSelect Speed00:0000:001.00x