Rest of Asia science policy

The Pacific Circle

Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, et al., 2025, Bridging the gap: Indonesia’s research trajectory and national development through a scientometric analysis using SciVal, in: Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity. “Disparities between Indonesia’s research output and economic driver sectors, such as mineral fuels and agricultural products, highlight opportunities for enhanced research investment to support better leading economic contributors and elevate scholarly impact.”

Barton, 2025, History of science in Aotearoa New Zealand, in: The British Journal for the History of Science. “It seems there is little chance for New Zealanders trained overseas to obtain positions in New Zealand that directly use their expertise. As far as I know, the only position advertised as history of science by a New Zealand university was the position in ‘history of science and technology’ that I was appointed to at the University of Auckland in 1993…To sum up, history of science in New Zealand is not the domain of historians of science. Those few of us formally trained in history or history of science can be grateful that geologists, chemists and astronomers study the history of their disciplines.”

Cardozo, 2022, Coal Is Not the Answer. Renewable Energy for the People NOW!: The Struggle for Climate Justice in the Philippines (University of California, Los Angeles)

Jeffrey Santa Ana, et al. (eds.), 2022, Empire and Environment: Ecological Ruin in the Transpacific

Ahmad Najib Burhani, et al., 2021, The National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN): a new arrangement for research in Indonesia (ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute). “On 28 April 2021, President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) dissolved the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education (Kemenristek-Dikti) and bestowed the authority to oversee research in the country upon the National Research and Innovation Agency (Badan Riset dan Inovasi
Nasional, or BRIN).”

*Yoo, 2020, Innovation in practice: the ‘Technology Drive Policy’ and the 4Mb DRAM R&D Consortium in South Korea in the 1980s and 1990s, in: Technology and Culture (see also “The Dual Division of Labor: American Origins of East Asian Hegemony in the Semiconductor Industry“)

Mendoza, et al., 2018, From megaproject to white elephant: lessons from the Philippines’s Bataan nuclear power plant, in: Philippine Studies: Historical & Ethnographic Viewpoints

Pawson, 2018, The New Biological Economy: How New Zealanders Are Creating
Value from the Land

Choi, 2017, Imported machines in the garden: the kyŏngun’gi (power tiller) and agricultural mechanization in South Korea, in: History and Technology

ASEAN Plan of Action on Science, Technology and Innovation (APASTI) 2016-2025

Robertson, et al., 2016, Ngalak koora koora djinang (Looking back together): a Nyoongar and scientific collaborative history of ancient Nyoongar boodja, in: Australian Aboriginal Studies. “The Synergies of Meaning Research Project, based at Kurongkurl Katitjin, Edith Cowan University, constructs a working relationship between traditional Aboriginal knowledge and Western natural and social scientific knowledge.”

*Glassman and Choi, 2014, The chaebol and the US military–industrial complex: Cold War geopolitical economy and South Korean industrialization, in: Environment and Planning A. “With the exception of [Jung-en] Woo’s early work on South Korean transformation, however, we see in the neo-Weberian literature a deep and sometimes systemic neglect of specific geopolitical and transnational class influences on East Asian development.”

Science, Technology and Innovation in Viet Nam, 2014 (OECD, World Bank)

Lee, 2013, Invention without science: “Korean Edisons” and the changing understanding of technology in colonial Korea, in: Technology and Culture

Royal Government of Cambodia, 2013, Cambodia’s National Science and Technology Master Plan (2014-2020)

Degelsegger and Blasy (eds.), 2011, Spotlight on: Science and Technology Cooperation Between Southeast Asia and Europe: Analyses and Recommendations from the SEA-EU-NET Project (European Commission)

Irabinna Rigney, 2001, A first perspective of Indigenous Australian participation in science: Framing Indigenous research towards Indigenous Australian intellectual sovereignty, in: Kaurna Higher Education Journal

Hefner, 2000, Civil Islam: Muslims and Democratization in Indonesia (B. J. Habibie)

Jomo K.S., et al., 1999, Industrial Technology Development in Malaysia: Industry and Firm Studies

*Galbreath, 1998, DSIR: Making Science Work for New Zealand

Jomo K.S. and Felker (eds.), 1997, Manufacturing Technology Policy in Malaysia

Shiraishi, 1996, Re-wiring the Indonesian State, in: Making Indonesia [B. J. Habibie]

Anuwar Ali, 1992, Malaysian Industrialization: the Quest for Technology

*Jung-en Woo, 1991, Race to the Swift: State and Finance in Korean Industrialization

Chambers, 1991, Does distance tyrannize science? in: International Science and National Scientific Identity [Australia]

Helen Watson and David Wade Chambers, 1989, Singing the Land, Signing the Land: A Portfolio of Exhibits [Australia]

Schedvin, 1987, Shaping Science and Industry: A History of Australia’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research 1926-49

B. J. Habibie, 1983, Some thoughts concerning a strategy for the industrial transformation of a developing country, speech delivered to DLR, West Germany (“The process of industrial transformation in technologically less-developed countries can be conceived as being part of a larger and much more complex process of nation building.”)

Home, 1982, Guest editorial: History of science in Australia, in: Isis

Juhn, 1965, Entrepreneurship in an underdeveloped economy: the case of Korea, 1890-1940 (George Washington University)

Geertz, 1963, Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia

Mellor, 1958, The Role of Science and Industry (Australia in the War of 1939-1945)

China

Lise Meitner Research Group “China in the Global System of Science” (Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte)

*Baark, 2026, Xi Jinping’s discourse on science, technology and innovation: an analysis of ideologies and theoretical contexts, in: Asian Journal of Technology Innovation. “The debate in China on developing a national innovation system has challenged the linear model and gradually moved Xi’s discourse on STI towards a recognition of the importance of complex knowledge flows, associated with the internationally recognised eco-innovation models.”

*Fang, et al., 2025, Decoding China’s Industrial Policies (NBER)

Crean, 2024, The Fear of Chinese Power: an International History (see also: H-Diplo ROUNDTABLE XXVII-3)

Zuoyue Wang, 2022, Practicing Mr. Science: Chinese Scientists and the May Fourth Movement from Zhu Kezhen to Fang Lizhi, in: East Asian Science, Technology and Society

Gabbas, 2022, The origins of Italian Maoism, in: The Global Sixties. “China represented a young, pure revolution that consistently and bravely applied the precepts of Marxism-Leninism, in contrast with the Soviet Union’s revisionist about face, its gentrification, and its policy of appeasement toward the US…Maoism was seen [in Italy] at the time as an Eastern, anti-colonial Marxism as opposed to sclerotized Western Marxism…Thus, Italian Maoists opposing the PCI’s revisionism could claim they were backed by China…[the intellectual, writer, and poet] Fortini argued that one third of humanity could not be ignored, and he called on his readers ‘to know China, to speak China, contest China, demand China’…China and Albania were praised as real socialist countries and victims of unfair Soviet behavior, while Tito was a traitor….Nuova unità’s praise of Chinese policies included a Chinese proposal to destroy all atomic weapons, notwithstanding the fact that China was already an atomic power. Meanwhile, the Chinese policy of mass militarization was presented in positive terms – Manlio Dinucci argued that it was the key to victory over the Japanese and Nationalist forces and an invincible bulwark against US imperialism.”

Baark, 2021, Innovation and China’s Global Emergence

Sun and Cao, 2021, Planning for science: China’s “grand experiment” and global implications, in: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Rereading China: Science Walks on Two Legs, A Critical Edition of an SftP Classic, 2021

Mais, 2021, Maoism, nationalism, and anti-colonialism, in: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism

Naughton, 2020, The Rise of China’s Industrial Policy: 1978 to 2020

Li, 2018, Invisible bodies: Lu Gwei-djen and the specter of translation, in: Asian Medicine

*Per Högselius and Yao Dazhi, 2017, The Hidden Integration of Eurasia: East–West Relations in the History of Technology, in: Acta Baltica Historiae et Philosophiae Scientiarum

Kwan Man Bun, 2017, Patriots’ Game: Yongli Chemical Industries 1917-1953. “‘When thinking about modern China’s chemical industry, forget not Fan Xudong,’ so declared Mao Zedong publicly after 1949. Although Mao might have united front politics in mind when invoking Fan as a paragon of the national bourgeoisie, why would the chairman praise a champion of private enterprise?”

*Phalkey and Wang, 2016, Planning for science and technology in China and India, in: British Journal for the History of Science

Wang Hui, 2016, China’s Twentieth Century: Revolution, Retreat, and the Road to Equality

Ye Liu, 2016, Higher Education, Meritocracy and Inequality in China

Kwan Man Bun, 2014, Janus-faced capitalism: Li Zhuchen and the Jiuda Salt Refinery, 1949–1953, in: The Capitalist Dilemma in China’s Cultural Revolution. “On July 1, 1952, Jiuda-Yongli became a joint public-private enterprise, making it the first major privately held conglomerate in Tianjin to do so. As the largest chemical industrial complex in the country (whether public or private), it controlled the production capacity of half the country’s soda ash, one-sixth of caustic soda, one-seventh in ammonia sulphate, and one-tenth of salt from Changlu Division (Hebei province) in 1949.”

Wei and Brock, 2013, Mr. Science and Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution: Science and Technology in Modern China

Yang and Welch, 2012, A world-class university in China? The case of Tsinghua, in: Higher Education. “Higher education, an integral part of China’s nation-building project, is a critical element in China’s strategic policy initiative of building national strength through science and education. One way to achieve this goal is to develop a higher education system of international stature. Perhaps more than any other country, through national programs such as 211 and 985, China has been explicit in selecting its best universities for intensive investment, with the expressed aim of making them world-class within coming decades, and contributing more to overall R&D and scientific development.”

Bray, 2010, ‘How Blind Is Love? Simon Winchester’s ‘The Man Who Loved China’, in: Technology and Culture

Wolin, 2010, The Wind from the East. Review by Feyzi Ismail, 2012, in: Counterfire.

Andreas, 2009, Rise of the Red Engineers: The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China’s New Class

Zuoyue Wang, 2009, STS 179 Science and Society in Modern China, Harvey Mudd College (online course)

Burns, 2008, East meets West: how China almost cured malaria, in: Endeavour

In Our Time: The Needham Question, 2006, BBC Radio 4

Julia Lovell, 2006, The Politics of Cultural Capital: China’s Quest for a Nobel Prize in Literature

Evelyn Goh, 2005, Constructing the U.S. rapprochement with China, 1961–1974, in: Red
Menace” to “Tacit Ally”

Taylor, 2005, Chinese Medicine in Early Communist China, 1945-63: a Medicine of Revolution

Kwan Man Bun, 2005, Market and network capitalism: Yongli Chemical Co., Ltd. and Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd., 1917-1937, in: Journal of the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica

Rogaski, 2002, Nature, annihilation, and modernity: China’s Korean War germ-warfare experience reconsidered, in: Journal of Asian Studies

T. C. Tso, et al. (eds.), 1998, Science and technology, in: Agriculture in China 1949-2030, chapters 4.10-4.13

Beyond Joseph Needham: Science, Technology, and Medicine in East and Southeast Asia, Osiris, 1998

*Patrick Brodie, 1990, Crescent over Cathay: China and ICI 1898-1956 [Imperial Chemical Industries]

Saich, 1989, China’s Science Policy in the 80s

Simon and Goldman (eds.), 1988, Science and Technology in Post-Mao China

Chambers, 1984, Red and Expert: A Case Study of Chinese Science in the Cultural Revolution

Croizier, 1968, Traditional Medicine in Modern China: Science, Nationalism, and the Tensions of Cultural Change

Needham, 1960, The past in China’s present: a cultural, social, and philosophical background for contemporary China, in: The Centennial Review of Arts & Science. “The conception of the ‘chosen people’, God’s elect, which Europeans and Americans have transferred to themselves from ancient Israel by way of the link between puritanism and capitalism in the early phases of Western technological development, is still working great evil in the world…One may say, broadly speaking, that Chinese science and technology were very much more advanced than those of Europe (apart from the Hellenistic wave of brilliant theoretical formulation) between the -3rd and the +15th centuries, but after that, Renaissance Europe began to take the lead. Indeed, in Galileo’s time the technique of scientific discovery may be said to have been itself discovered, with the result that the unified world of modern science came into being, common to all men and liberated from the ethnic stamp which had qualified all forms of medieval science and technology. As I have said elsewhere, one must understand clearly that Renaissance Europe did not give rise to ‘European science’, but to universally valid modern science, in which men and women of all cultures can freely participate. The fact that this break-through took place in Europe and in Europe only is not proof of any specially privileged quality of the ‘Faustian soul’, as the Germanic mystagogues used to maintain, nor is it an argument for conferring upon European civilization a superior rank as the ‘culture of the universal’ as certain writers today still like to maintain. For until it has been demonstrated that the concrete historical development of Europe, the form of its feudalism, the needs of its growing mercantilism and industrialization, the prior impulsion and facilitation of its intellectual history from the pre-Socratic Greeks onward, and other similar factors, will not explain in an adequate manner the ‘miracle of Galileo’, we have no right to appeal to mysterious predestination or gifts of the European spirit as the explanation of the origin and growth of modern science. And, in view of the great achievement of non-European peoples on which this modern science was built, we have every reason for not doing this.”

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