China's scientific development is in golden age, but challenges remain, CPPCC member says

A renowned Chinese doctor has urged his peers to uphold the scientific spirit, keep searching diligently for objective truth, train capable talents that can collaborate as a team, and dutifully serve the nation and its people.

"Our nation's scientific development is in golden age, but we are also facing some issues and challenges," Ge Junbo, president of the Institutes of Biomedical Sciences at Fudan University, said at the a plenary meeting of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference on Sunday.

Ge, also a member of the CPPCC National Committee, said these issues include shortsighted pursue of success and the exclusionary culture in academic coteries.

"It is still an arduous task to improve the scientific community's practices and standard of conducts," he said. "We need the scientific spirit more than ever."

The scientific spirit in the new era include patriotism, innovation, truth-seeking, sacrifice, collaboration and training future talents, he said. "The new era has provided science workers with ample opportunities to succeed."

In the following year, Ge asked all science workers to wear their patriotism on their sleeves, and work hard to create solutions for bottleneck problems in the nation's strategic needs and social development.

"The epidemic has an end, but science does not," he said. "We should make safety and wellbeing of the people priority."

There is also a need to improve research evaluation criteria and science communication to public, Ge said. More support mechanism for basic research and universities to encourage scientific exploration are necessary, so that scientists can focus on scientific research and not be burdened by administrative work, he added.

The older generation of scientists should pass down their scientific spirits and knowledge to future talents, Ge said. "We have to give more accolades to people willing to spend decades tackling a hard problem, this will foster an academic environment of valuing meticulous hard-work and the courage to scale scientific summits."