Are We Losing Our Edge?

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That is especially true in China, where the government has put its muscle behind an all-out effort to transform homegrown science. "Ten years ago in China, it was virtually all derivative stuff," says Chu. "Students would sit and listen and try to capture every word. Now they're asking lots of questions." During a 100th-anniversary celebration for Peking University a few years ago, Chu found himself seated next to China's Minister for Education. "She was asking for my autograph," he says, shaking his head. "It was totally topsy-turvy. Can you imagine in the U.S. the Secretary of Education fawning on a Nobel prizewinner? It just won't happen." In his book Thomas Friedman puts it another way: "In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears--and that is our problem."

Indeed, P. Roy Vagelos, a former CEO and chairman of Merck, traveled last fall to China, where he met a number of U.S.-educated Chinese scientists who had returned to work in their homeland. "The new labs are spectacular," he says. "Unbelievable. The equipment leaves nothing to be desired." The government is doling out generous research grants to academic scientists. In all, it invested nearly 110 billion yuan on science in 2004, up from less than 50 billion yuan in 1999. Chinese scientists also get cash awards that can run into thousands of dollars for getting papers published in scholarly journals.

The beefing up of research labs in China and elsewhere is not just luring natives back to their homeland. It is also retaining promising students who might once have gone to the U.S. to study. That matters because keeping U.S. universities the best in the world depends on luring the very best students. Tougher visa regulations put in place after 9/11 don't help either. Chu has plenty of horror stories. One former student went home to Taiwan for a brief vacation. When he applied for his re-entry visa, he said he was studying atomic physics. Even though that subject had nothing to do with nuclear-weapons work, 18 months passed before he could return. "These stories get passed around," says Chu. "If you're being courted all around the world, if you could go to graduate school anywhere you wanted, why would you come to the U.S.?"

In absolute terms, of course, the U.S. is still the world leader in scientific research. A half-century's worth of momentum is tough to derail. Yet, says Shirley Tilghman, president of Princeton and a molecular biologist, "there's still reason to feel some urgency. The world is not standing still while we take a pause."

For the first time in decades, however, there's hope that the pause may be ending. Given its bipartisan appeal, the Bush Competitiveness Initiative is likely to pass. Funding won't be easy, given the soaring deficit, but the people who dole out the money are enthusiastic. "I am very, very supportive," Representative Frank Wolf, the House Republican in charge of science funding, told TIME, "and I think the President is going to get what he requested." Sometimes, marvels Alexander, "these things sit for years and then suddenly come together in a big way."