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Amy Li

An organisation representing computer academics and experts on the mainland has urged the government to stop interfering in who gets the nation's top science and technology awards.
The China Computer Federation published an open letter on its website saying government officials with no knowledge in the area intervened or even took part in the decision-making process to hand out the academic prizes.
The government and administrators did not have the expertise to make sound judgments about who should win scientific awards, the statement said.
Copies of the letter were sent to the State Council, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Education Ministry and the China Association for Science and Technology.
The letter has since been removed from the federation's website.
It was published days after the Ministry of Science and Technology awarded the State Natural Science award to a team led by Zhang Yaoxue, an academic at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a former official at the Ministry of Education.
Zhang's research was about "transparent computing", but critics have said the theory was identical to "cloud computing" and the work lacked originality and had little academic value. One computer scientist at a university in southwestern China who asked not to be named, said: "There's not much dispute in the academic world that Zhang's research on transparent computing is of very little value."
The worth of a piece of research could often be judged by the number of other academics who cite and refer to the work, the scientist said.
A search in Google Scholar showed Zhang's major paper, "TransOS: A Transparent Computing-based Operating System for the Cloud", has been cited a total of six times since its publication in 2012.
Four of the six authors were from China Central University, where Zhang has presided as head since 2011. The paper was not cited by any foreign scholar.
Zhang Yi, a computing expert based at Google in the United States, agreed Zhang's research was of limited use.
"I would summarise Zhang's theory as a cloud operating system. This has limited value in terms of its application," he said.
The Mainland Computer Federation said that its open letter was not linked to Zhang Yaoxue's award, but referred to general concerns about how prizes were awarded.
A spokesman told the South China Morning Post the decision to remove the open letter from the website had been taken by the federation's leaders, but he did not elaborate.
Zhang Yaoxue could not be reached for comment yesterday.
A retired computer scientist who had worked at Peking University said he had encountered "black box" manipulation of scientific awards in the past.
"Winning a state award can boost a person and his organisation's ability to get more funds and political capital," he said.
The professor, who participated in a review of a state science award in 2003, said he later discovered the prize had been decided in advance.
"I was allowed to talk about it, but my opinions didn't really matter," he said.


Stop meddling in science awards, Chinese computer federation tells government 

Zhang Yaoxue won this year's  State Natural Science Award, prompting a backlash from a top-tier computer science association. Photo: Gov.cn

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Officials accused of political interference in who wins mainland science and technology prizes


An organisation representing computer academics and experts on the mainland has urged the government to stop interfering in who gets the nation's top science and technology awards.
