China increases science funding by 8%

Richard Stone reports in Science that science won a big boost in spending at this year’s meetings of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference , or Liang Hui as the conferences tackled everything from budgets to carbon emissions.

Central government spending on science and technology is slated to rise 8% to $24 billion in 2010, of which $4 billion is basic R&D.

Little progress was made at the conferences on some of the most fundamental questions regarding China, for example, what exactly is the “real” GDP of the country (as outside observers believe its running higher than the official state figures, for example, the World Bank had to revise upwards China’s official GDP figure in January) and how much pollution , such as heavy metals, carbon dioxide etc.. does China produce ? Some new satellites developed by NASA , the European space agency and used by the Chinese may help answer some of these questions in the near future. The data will become particularly important as China races to become the biggest spender in low carbon emission energy sources, such as wind and solar power.