Scientists who left Japan for better prospects elsewhere said the nation’s decision-makers could learn from China’s massive push to become a world leader in scientific research.

China has aggressively invested in research and development, poaching more and more scientists from places like Japan, where researchers face restrictive work environments and a dearth of funding.

One expert said if Japan wants to improve its international research standings and stop the brain drain of its fledgling researchers, it will have to foster work environments that allow scientists to devote themselves freely to their research.

MORE OPPORTUNITIES, MORE PRESTIGE

A Japanese scientist in his 30s remembers the immense pressure he felt when his term as assistant professor was about to expire in 2022.

He had been job hunting for a few years, seeking to become an associate professor at a national university in Japan, but nothing turned up.

“Oh, I failed again,” he said to himself. “Perhaps it’s time to begin applying for jobs at places other than universities I want to work at.”

As he pondered the thought, one scene would not leave his mind.

When he attended a scientific meeting in the United States in winter 2019, he had an opportunity to see a professor from China he knew who was wooing Chinese students studying abroad to his new research center.

As he watched young Chinese researchers listen to the professor with beaming eyes, he started to feel frustrated by the thought that Japan could end up being left behind in China’s dust.

The Japanese researchers he knew were all prone to fatalism. They would make up excuses or become resigned about their work. They often complained of minuscule budgets or a lack of time for doing adequate research.

Once he was back in Japan, he told his wife, “Those (Chinese students) are the sort of enthusiastic people I wish to work with.”

The scientist had also been approached by the professor for recruitment.

He worried that going to China offered promised nothing in return, but he decided to give it a shot.

“I needed the determination of someone announcing himself as a warlord during the Warring States Period (late 15th and 16th centuries),” he said.

He got a gig as an associate professor and moved to China with his family in spring 2022.

He found the scientists there to be highly motivated. They care about publishing many research articles and rarely miss an opportunity, he said.

The man said he feels that, unlike in Japan, Chinese society holds science and academia in high esteem, and promising young scientists are being hired and given status while they are still budding.

But he does not believe everything is rosy about being a researcher in China. There can be top-down policy changes that make it unnervingly difficult to tell whether scientists will continue to grow in number and whether political authorities will continue to place importance on science.

Yet he said he still feels excited at the prospect of doing something new.

WORKPLACES STIFLING PROGRESS

Motoharu Nowada, a 49-year-old space plasma physicist, was employed as a postdoctoral research fellow at Peking University in Beijing in 2010. His monthly take-home pay was only about 32,500 yen ($245) at the time.

Nowada said he ended up in China by chance.
After obtaining a Ph.D. at Tokai University in Japan, he could not find work at national universities. He landed a job at a university in Taiwan on a contract that would last two and a half years.

When that term expired, he was back in the job hunt but was met with the same rejections from universities in Japan. He was offered a job after he contacted a Peking University professor whose research paper had interested him.

Nowada’s contract expired again after five years, and his third spell of job hunting was even tougher than the previous time, possibly because he was older.

In the end, the Peking University professor introduced Nowada to a professor with Shandong University in China’s Shandong province, who hired him as a research associate.

He is being paid five times what he received five years earlier, thanks partly to China’s economic growth.

Although his job comes with a term that expires in 2024, Nowada said he has no regrets about his choice.

One thing that he finds strikingly different between Japanese and Chinese universities is the way people communicate within a lab.

In China, researchers form strong connections not only with supervisors but also with fellow lab mates, who respond immediately to social media messages.

But at many universities in Japan, the hierarchy is much more rigid, with the professor being the king of the castle.

After spending more than a decade at Chinese universities, Nowada said he does not necessarily agree with the popular view that China’s remarkable scientific results are made because research is better funded there than it is in Japan.

“I believe the environment that allows scientists to discuss anything among themselves is a major reason that China’s research capabilities improved,” he said.

Nowada said he has the impression that more Japanese scientists in recent years hope to go to China, where they believe there is better funding and more time set aside for research.

“By basic principle, however, your research proposals will not pass the screening and you will not be given posts in China unless your research is novel and you have delivered results,” he said.

Nowada said that had he stayed in Japan, he would not have published as many research articles.

“I hope young Japanese scientists will think of China as one optional destination on the understanding that competition is tough in the country,” he said.

JAPAN FALLING BEHIND IN RANKINGS

Japan and China have switched places when it comes to their presence in the world of science over the past 20 years.

An education ministry study found China overtook the United States in recent years to become the world’s top publisher of research papers and the country with the highest number of high-quality papers with citation counts in the top 10 percent.

Japan ranked fourth in terms of the number of top 10 percent articles 20 years ago. It fell to sixth place 10 years ago, and the latest survey from 2022 found it had fallen out of the top 10 nations to rank 12th.

Japan’s decline in research abilities is blamed partly on the nation’s “selection and concentration” policy, where it invests intensively in only a few research fields because of limited funds.

Budgets tend to be focused on a limited set of universities, and scientists find it particularly hard to obtain grants in basic research fields.

Government subsidies for the operating costs of national universities, which are used to cover personnel, have either continued to shrink or, at best, have not improved. Young scientists are hard-pressed to land permanent posts.

Fewer researchers are obtaining Ph.D.s because of the uncertainty about the future.

Education ministry figures show the annual number of Ph.D.s obtained in Japan peaked at 17,860 in fiscal 2006 and has hovered around 15,000 in recent years. The number of Ph.D.s obtained in China skyrocketed from 26,506 in fiscal 2005 to 65,585 in fiscal 2020—an increase of about 150 percent.

Japan has set a goal of becoming a leader in science and technology, but its rank will only decline further if the scientist brain drain accelerates.

China is investing aggressively in science and technology, with research and development expenses in the country reaching 59 trillion yen in 2020, making it second in the world only to the United States. Japan only spent 17.6 trillion yen.

Basic research spending in China is also rising. In 1991, it was less than one-20th of Japan’s amount. In 2020, it reached 3.5 trillion yen—exceeding Japan’s 2.7 trillion yen.

The spectacular growth of China is often attributed to its abundant personnel and research funding.

But an expert on China’s approach to science, Atsushi Sunami, president of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, said institutional arrangement is key before everything else.

China pressed ahead with university reforms on the government’s initiative and gave considerable discretion to members of university management, including presidents.

That created an environment that allows free research, where even young scientists have opportunities to be promoted and to win research grants if they are competent, Sunami said.

The country is also aggressively luring excellent researchers who have studied abroad.

It is unknown, however, whether China will be able to remain so competitive in the shadow of rising tensions between Washington and Beijing.

“I feel that China’s research environment is undergoing a major change because the state and its political circles have started intervening in freedom of speech,” Sunami said. “I am also worried about the extent to which the country’s ‘zero-COVID’ policy, which entailed extremely strict regulations, and other factors have influenced the research environment.”

(This article was written by Yu Fujinami, Mutsumi Mitobe and Shoko Tamaki.)