Exploring complexity, variety and the necessity of RRI in a developing country: the case of China

ABSTRACT

When considering the spread of RRI globally, especially as the concept moves from developed countries to developing countries, existing frameworks need to be able to adapt, so that they can operate within a country’s technological, social and political context, while at the same time emphasizing the international environment and the global governance of innovations. Here, we focus on China, a quickly developing country in the midst of a complicated transformation, driven in part by the robust development and extensive application of emerging technologies. Drawing on document studies and interviews in China, this article discusses the resonances and conflicts between the idea and operationalization of RRI, as it has been developed in Europe, and the current science and technology governance system in China.

KEYWORDS:

• Responsible research and innovation
• developing country
• China

Introduction

Rip (2016) aptly described Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) as a ‘boundary object’ (Star and Griesemer 1989), even inside Europe, in relation to the ways in which it comes into being, grows and is put into practice. RRI still can be seen as an ‘umbrella concept’, extending its reach across cultures, values and interests from different groups, and being differentially defined by scholars across different fields. If we have a look at the current situation in China from this perspective, it becomes easier for us to understand, in a country that is far removed from the European policy system, what values held by Chinese society are reflected in RRI-related practices. Meanwhile, the investigations on the preceding features will in turn help us reflect on how the dominant goal of RRI– seen as building a transparent, interactive process in which technology becomes embedded in society (Von Schomberg 2012) – can be implemented in a global context. Although some scholars warn of the dangers of value colonization of the RRI concept (Macnaghten et al. 2014), we find it fruitful to discuss how the policy traction possessed by RRI elsewhere can boost developing countries to discuss new development models, and how such development models offer new opportunities to resolve conflicts of interest and ethical issues arising from emerging technologies to resolve them from the perspective of global collaboration.

Vasen proposes an expanded agenda of responsible innovation more useful and relevant to those developing countries whose science, technology and innovation policy is strongly linked to the paradigm of the economics of innovation and the pursuit of competitiveness (Vasen 2017). China’s situation echoes this, not just in the science, technology and innovation (STI) policy paradigm but also in such issues as environmental protection, the safe application of mature technologies, the educational level of the common people, and the country’s status in the global innovation value chain. At the same time, China faces a complicated situation in the midst of rapid transformation, driven not least by the robust development and extensive application of emerging technologies. To address such major issues faced by the country, the Chinese government has proposed a number of policy concepts representing new development models. Do these policy concepts imply that there may be niches in China’s policy system to enter into dialogue with RRI? Or will pre-existing political-economic factors become obstacles for the development of alternative innovation trajectories in China?.

Sketch of entry points for RRI in China

RRI started to draw the attention of Chinese academia from 2011 (Zhao 2011). RRI was introduced as a new turn in the philosophy of technology (Liu, Mei, and Yan 2016; Wang and Yao 2017), as an approach to technological management (Mei and Chen 2014) and as a major innovation governance perspective and practice (Simone et al. 2015; Yan, Liu, and Zhang 2015). There are case studies that have employed RRI as an analytical tool (Yan, Liu, and Zhang 2015), as well as criticisms of the concept of responsibility (Wang and Yao 2017) and the usefulness of RRI as an analytical tool (Liu 2016). However, regarding implementation, although RRI appeared in the 13th Five-Year Plan on Scientific and Technological Innovation (2016–2020) released by the Chinese government in July 2016, this is more like a slogan and lacks implementation details. The real implementation of RRI in China involves integrating it with existing and endogenous needs and concerns. We will here present three entry points for RRI in China.

Government

For the government, there are three points of entry for integrating the concept of RRI in practice, connecting it with ethical regulation, science communication, and sustainable development.

With regard to ethical regulation, although China has rarely lacked rules and regulations, how they are implemented in practice is far from perfect. For example, in the biotechnological and medical research field, although China has established ethical rules and technical standards for bio-medical research, after more than three decades of development, the country still lacks the capacity of aligning different interests and coping with contingent situations. This is not least because those applying the regulations often attach greater importance to the quick appeasement of criticisms than toward shaping underpinning research norms (Zhang 2017). Arguably, the fragmented institutional system coupled with conflicting and poorly aligned rationales and interests, have already become essential factors that are restraining China’s capacity to govern science and the introduction of emerging technology. The policy mindset in risk management practice needs to transform from one focusing on passive ex-post emergency responses to one emphasizing active ex-ante forecasting and prevention.

Science communication, more commonly named as science popularization in the Chinese context, is becoming more and more important in China’s science and technology policy ecosystem. Xi Jinping emphatically pointed out that science innovation and science popularization are two wings（一体两翼） to achieve innovation and development, calling for science popularization to be considered just as important as that of scientific and technological innovation (Xi 2016). Over recent years, science popularization has become a basket filled with an assortment of issues, including the responsibilities of scientists, public engagement and science education. Despite the fact that current models of science popularization are dominated by deficit models associated with the popularization of scientific knowledge, attempts are being made concurrently to build new models of communication and public engagement. Therefore, the rise of science communication/popularization is not only a positive policy window, but also provides opportunities for related RRI research.

The third point of entry relates to growing concerns about sustainable development or so called ‘Ecological Civilization’, especially as reflected in the latest tendency of official discourse. In the recent proposed Five Great Development Concepts, Green Development, emphasizing the protection of ecology and environment, is included as one of the five. Ecological Civilization has even been written in the Constitution. And more practically, in the latest state institutional reform plan, China will establish a Ministry of Ecology and Environment, and a new Ministry of Natural Resources, merging functions of eight existing ministries and administrations. Propelled by this level of concern, the planning and supervision of scientific and technological innovation will focus more considerably on its responsibilities to the environment and to ecological systems.

Enterprises

At the moment, the emphasis by companies on corporate social responsibility, social prestige, and social participation can be an entry point for RRI. For traditional enterprises, a key concern is how to better serve the needs of the nation and society. For emerging companies (such as the information and communications industry), due to their deep integration with social life, they have begun to incorporate considerations of the potential impact of new technologies on ethics, culture, and lifestyle into the innovation process.

In traditional industries, Chinese enterprises focus their responsibilities of innovation on meeting the development needs of society and the state. According to participants of a stakeholder workshop on RRI¹, traditional Chinese enterprises are not familiar with RRI, perhaps not surprisingly, since they viewed the concept as having grown out of highly developed societies which have a different level and understanding of development. However, they also agreed that this concept should be introduced into China as there is a strong social need for it. Nevertheless, the challenges of responsibility were seen as differentially configured in China. For the representatives of the Chinese enterprises, the responsibility component needed to focus more on the public interest. According to some workshop participants, the goal of inclusive development should include the need to reduce the cost of monopolized technology products as a key social responsibility of corporations in China.

In emerging industries such as artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese enterprises are actively involved in shaping corporate values. Tencent, a leading provider of Internet value added services in China, emphasizes that, unlike traditional industries, in which governance comes after development, regulations in the AI industry should be formulated in advance of development (Si 2017). Tencent has been very active in participating in the development of laws, standards, and policies related to the protection of personal information and data monitoring. This engagement provides inspiration for the company's new product development and promotion culture and practice, enabling products and services to be better accepted by society.

Scientific community

As most of the scientific research in China is invested by public funding, the concern from the Chinese scientific community on social responsibility exists both at institutional and individual levels. The entry point is how concerns can be translated into institutional change, into novel policies, and into new practices.

At the institutional level, we can take the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), the largest and leading scientific research institution in China, as an example. The European RRI research project JERRI found that CAS claims it is performing societal responsibility (JERRI 2017, 25), partly on the basis that, from the organizational perspective, a ‘Scientific Ethics Committee’ and a ‘Science Popularization and Education Committee’ have been established. In addition, CAS released several policy documents such as the Declaration on the Idea of Science (2007), the Code of Conduct for Responsible Development of Transgenic Technology (2013), and How to Conduct Responsible Scientific Research (2015). CAS has further developed initiatives in Open Access to Science through a program supported by the National Science Library and Computer Network Information Center. In 2016, CAS participated in organizing the International Summit on Human Genome Editing, in which the organization clarified China’s attitude and position in the field of genome editing of human embryos, actively taking part in the development of an international code of ethics.

How do scientists see their social responsibilities? In our interviews with individual scientists, we found that their views and responses are directly associated with their respective research areas, their academic positions, their research experience and their personal ambitions. According to those working in the Institute of Microbiology of CAS, the responsibilities of scientists included expanding the boundaries of knowledge, disseminating knowledge, resolving practical problems, serving economic development and liberating the minds of mankind. Nevertheless, those scientists that take part in science communication activities were found to elicit a stronger sense of social responsibility, and were more likely than their peers to think about scientific research activities from the viewpoint of the public. It was also found that when scientists had more contact with Western researchers, for example, having had experience of studying in Western countries, or working in international projects, they tended to be more alert to the problem of social responsibility and the need for public engagement. As illustration of the growing concern, in February 2018, the Young Scientists Alliance of Social Responsibilities of China was established for the purposes of improving the science literacy of the entire population and boosting the in-depth integration of science with society (Yu and He 2018).

Conclusion

Our motivation for examining the range of practices in Chinese society that are aligned with RRI at different levels is not to prove that RRI also exists in China. Rather, our goal is to see how RRI can be aligned with extant developments in Chinese society, to help better evaluate and clarify problems and opportunities that exist in current practices, and thus to evaluate how RRI can help technological innovation to develop with and for society in a coordinated way in the Chinese context. As we have shown, entry points for RRI can be identified across broad domains of Chinese society, where quite a number of promising practices are emerging. However, there lacks an institutional mechanism for dialogue and for exchanges to take place across different levels. For different kinds of stakeholders interviewed by our project, responsibility to broader society is not their primary responsibility, compared to catching up with their international peers through innovations.

Notwithstanding, different stakeholders bearing their responsibilities respectively does not necessarily mean that they will jointly take up their collective responsibilities. The objective of RRI is to facilitate a process in which different parties involved in the process of innovation take joint responsibilities for the fruits of innovations. This suggests a deliberative democratic value, in which deliberation is central to decision-making, rather than a liberal democratic value (Wong 2016) lies in the core idea of RRI.

How RRI is implemented in China and how the interests and demands of different actors can be integrated will become a pivotal element of China’s science and technology governance going forward. An entrenched system always has inertia and relies on existing approaches, and any reform will affect existing interests. China's National Innovation-Driven Development Strategy Outline proposes ‘two-wheel drive": one is scientific and technological innovation, while the other is institutional innovation. The latter will, in turn, test the intelligence, foresight and creativity of policy researchers and policy makers.

Acknowledgement

This work is supported by Responsible Research and Innovation in Practice (RRI-Practice), funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 Science-with-and-for-Society program (grant no 709 637).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Lu GAO is an Associate Professor at Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences where she is researching responsible innovation from perspective of the governance of emerging biotechnology and history of science.

Miao LIAO is the deputy director of Institute of Science, Technology and Social Development in Changsha University of Science and Technology (China). Her research interests are open science, responsible research and innovation, engineering ethics education, and digital labor.

Yandong ZHAO is professor of Sociology at Renmin University of China, and the researcher of Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development. His research focus on RRI in China and open science.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by H2020 Science with and for Society: [Grant Number 709 637].

Notes

1 In February 2017, the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development organized a workshop as part of the EU framework project Responsible Research and Innovation in Practice, attended by a range of stakeholders. For details, see https://www.rri-practice.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/China_National_Workshop_Report_FINAL.pdf