Interview: Chinese gene sequencing capacity attracts western scientists: Dutch researcher

"Indeed, more recently China has also built up an enormous gene sequencing capacity, up to the point that many scientists in Europe and the U.S. send their samples to China!" said Dirk Stemerding, senior researcher in technology assessment at the Dutch Rathenau Instituut, in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Stemerding, an expert on how the ethics of science and technology are expressed in discourse and policy, was highlighting Chinese successes in innovation to illustrate the positive aspects of a preference he perceived in China for homegrown research and development initiatives.

Having presented research on behalf of the Rathenau Instituut at a Council of Europe (CoE) sponsored conference on emerging technologies and human rights in Strasbourg on May 4 and 5, Stemerding is also co-editor of "Science and Technology Governance and Ethics: A Global Perspective from Europe, India and China" (Springer International Publishing, Switzerland, 2015).

With the book, he and his co-editors from China, India, and Britain, aimed to make a comparative study of the ethical discourses around science and technology as they were expressed between different countries.

Stemerding stressed, however, that the results of the study could only offer "snapshots" of certain ethics debates represented in the societies examined.

"China and India are strong contenders for the production of science and technology," the book's introduction states, going on to note that between them, the two countries account for half of the global population and a quarter of the world's economic output.

"Europe, India and China are at different stages of economic and social development, but all face similar challenges with regard to ethics issues in science and technology," the book continues.

Despite the similar challenges, however, the responses between the two countries and Europe vary, and Stemerding and his colleagues found marked differences in approach and reception.

"In Europe, ethics debates focus on the potential consequences -- 'impacts' -- of science and technology for social values and fundamental rights, and these debates are strongly developed and institutionalized as part of a dominant 'risk' discourse," he said.

This orientation can lead to the prioritization of individual rights over the common good, he explained. But in China and India, he sees a more societal approach.

"In China and India, ethics debates first of all relate to the policy agendas -- 'aims' -- driving science and technology for the sake of societal progress (i.e. the common good)," he explained.

These differences in discourse implicate sets of cultural values, "like affluence and harmony in China," as well as "access and inclusion in India."

In both China and India, the study found that debates around innovation were more likely to ask who a technology was meant to serve, and what societal problems it could hope to address.

"In Europe, we still have this notion of science and technological progress as something you should not steer because you can never know what it will lead to," Stemerding said, explaining a reluctance in Europe to target concrete issues with innovation.

For China, the study found there is also a question of autonomy and the prosperity that stands to accompany it following fruitful science and technology policy.

"As our Chinese colleagues point out in chapter 6 (of our study), science and technology are seen in this context as a major driver of productive forces in society in the pursuit of an independent, wealthy and strong nation standing confidently among all the nations of the world," Stemerding said.

He also saw a growing level of public participation in Chinese ethics debates around science and technology:

"A strong and increasingly educated and assertive civil society in (China, India, and Europe) are changing the rules of policy debates."

What seemed abundantly clear for Stemerding, however, was the need for more global exchange between the nations, in order to help each other establish a better balance between science and technology discourses, where "risk" concern doesn't overpower the drive for "innovation," and vice versa.

"I think there is a need for mutual learning here between all three regions," Stemerding asserted.

Even as China, India and Europe learn from each other, though, science and technology development will not benefit from a universal approach, even as researchers try to standardize elements of ethics debates.

"I don't think the ideal is that in all these regions that we need to do it all in the same way. By exchanging our experience, I see that as a learning process. We can learn from each other, but we should not just adopt approaches from one region to another," Stemerding explained. Endit