Cultivating scientific and technological talents with international competitiveness
-Interview with Yuan Yaxiang, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, reporter Huimin She
The "14th Five-Year Plan" and the 2035 long-term goal outline propose to train more world-class strategic scientific and technological talents, scientific and technological leaders and innovative teams, and cultivate a reserve army of young scientific and technological talents with international competitiveness.
In order to do a good job in scientific and technological work during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, how should we cultivate, introduce and make good use of scientific and technological talents, especially to stimulate the innovative vitality of young scientific and technological talents?
A reporter from the Economic Daily interviewed Yuan Yaxiang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a vice chairman of the Chinese Association for Science and Technology, and a mathematician.
Reporter: Why should we emphasize "Science and Technology's self-reliance and self-reliance"?
What opportunities does this provide to our country's scientific and technological talents?
Yuan Yaxiang: Some of our past technological developments relied too much on the West, which caused the current "stuck neck" and other problems.
In the future, we must take the core technology in our own hands, which means that we need to make more and more original results.
Adhering to the core position of innovation in the overall situation of my country's modernization construction means that science and technology have been placed on an unprecedented level.
This is a good development opportunity for young scientific and technological personnel.
Because in the process of national science and technology development, young people have always been a new force.
Emphasizing scientific and technological self-reliance means that young scientific and technological personnel will have a larger stage and play a greater role in scientific research and technological development, as well as in national defense, national economic construction, and social development.
Reporter: How to solve the problem to train a reserve army of young scientific and technological talents with international competitiveness?
Yuan Yaxiang: The most critical factor in the development of science and technology is talent.
With regard to cultivating, introducing, and making good use of talents, our current common practice is to give preference to certain policies.
In my opinion, it is more important to follow the law of talent growth, fully consider the particularity of scientific and technological talents, and focus on cultivating the scientific spirit of scientific and technological talents.
The most important point is to formulate training policies in different categories.
Talent policies formulated in many places are often unified templates. In fact, the growth characteristics of talents in different disciplines are different, and the important growth stages and corresponding needs are not consistent.
Therefore, for the cultivation of talents, different policies should be formulated according to the characteristics of different disciplines and fields, and for outstanding young talents at different stages of development, classification and support should be provided, and young scientific research talents should be cultivated in a stepwise manner.
It is necessary to allow grass-roots scientific research units to have more autonomy, provide a suitable growth environment for young talents, and truly mobilize the potential and vitality of young people in scientific research units.
Reporter: What is the current international competitiveness of China's young scientific and technological talents?
Yuan Yaxiang: The scientific research level of China's young scientific and technological talents can be said to be among the first-class in the world.
For example, in the aerospace field and many technical fields, young people are mainly responsible for the country's major tasks.
These young scientific and technological personnel are very good, no less than their international counterparts of the same age.
Our young scientific and technical personnel have many advantages.
First, the Chinese are smart and hardworking.
Second, the vast majority of young Chinese scientific and technological talents have inherited the fine traditions of older generations of scientists, such as patriotism and dedication.
Patriotism and spirit of struggle have always been our strengths.
Of course, compared with outstanding young scientific research talents in the world, many researchers have insufficient curiosity-driven aspects.
Reporter: In order to achieve the goal of cultivating a reserve army of young scientific and technological talents with international competitiveness, in what ways should we deepen reforms?
Yuan Yaxiang: To cultivate scientific and technological talents with international competitiveness, we must first cultivate their scientific spirit, love science, dare to question, carefully verify, dare to ask the roots, seek truth from facts, and dare to confidently extract major scientific issues from practice.
Secondly, to cultivate scientific and technological talents with international competitiveness, it is also necessary to provide a good growth environment for young people.
Let them devote most of their energy to thinking about major scientific problems and solving important technical problems.
In addition, cultivating young scientific and technological talents must also solve the "hat only" problem.
"Only hats" will cause young researchers to learn impetuously and eagerly for quick success.
In recent years, the country has realized the negative impact of "only hats" and has introduced a number of governance measures.
It is hoped that this issue can be further resolved during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period.
Reporter: At present, the development space of domestic "Dr. Tu" is far less than that of "Dr. Foreign." How should this situation be changed?
Yuan Yaxiang: This phenomenon exists in many places.
Returnees are actually "hats". Scientific evaluation should not look at the "hats", but should return to the essence of science, and evaluate by scientific and technological contributions, not by identity.
Therefore, we must abolish all such discriminatory policies, establish a more scientific evaluation mechanism, and give local talents and introduced talents a fair competition opportunity.
What we are emphasizing now is to look at what you can do and what problems you can solve, rather than looking at which overseas prestigious university you have a Ph.D., or which overseas prestigious university you have served as a professor.
This is also the direction of the reform of the scientific and technological system and mechanism advocated in the "14th Five-Year Plan".
It is mentioned in the plan to implement systems such as "revealing the rankings" and "horse racing", improve the classification and evaluation system of free-exploratory and task-oriented science and technology projects, and establish an evaluation mechanism for non-consensus science and technology projects.
All these are to let the evaluation of science and technology return to the science and technology itself, and promote the growth of talents.
——Interview with Yuan Yaxiang, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences