Tigers in the Lab

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The scientists returning to Asia bring more than just a Westernized preference for cappuccino over tea. They also carry with them a penchant for challenging the status quo. Until recently, Asian funding agencies still doled out research money according to traditional egalitarian formulas, with little regard for quality. Now they are being pressured to establish peer-review panels staffed by scientific experts to gauge the merit of competing proposals. Automatic promotions, still typical at many academic institutions, are also coming under attack, and some brave souls have even mounted an assault on the Confucian ethos -- particularly its stultifying worship of professors and its reluctance to question authority. Wen Chang, a young researcher at Academia Sinica, politely but firmly objects to being addressed as Teacher Chang. "I tell students that there is no authority in science," she says. "Everything can be overthrown the very next day."

While the Tigers' forays into R. and D. have begun to produce some first- rate scientific papers, they have yet to generate the trailblazing innovations that have streamed out of American laboratories. But the energy and exuberance alone of the Asians make them worth watching. Not tomorrow, perhaps, but a few decades from now, the U.S. may rue the policy drift that is eroding its research infrastructure as slowly and as surely as water rusts the steel girders of a bridge. For if political leaders in such places as Taiwan and Hong Kong are sufficiently patient and nurture the seedling research efforts they have planted, the scientific breakthroughs of the 21st century -- and the market opportunities that follow -- may be born on the Pacific Rim.