Don't judge research by Nobel Prize

Every year after the Nobel prizes for physics, chemistry and physiology or medicine are announced, the media in China ask when a Chinese will get such an award. The Nobel prizes may be authoritative, but they cannot be used as yardsticks to measure China's scientific research.

I have been collaborating with educational institutions in Beijing for the past 10 years. Sometimes my Chinese colleagues ask me in bewilderment why none of their countrymen had won the Nobel Prize in physics or chemistry. Their voice drifts away when they talk about Chinese Nobel laureates in the United States or Europe perhaps to make the point that Chinese, too, are very intelligent.

There are problems in the Chinese education and research systems, because they lack and do not honor true creativity.