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Dannie Peng

When a group of Chinese primary school pupils with a keen interest in astronomy were asked what language the research on China’s Chang’e-6 lunar soil samples should be written in, they stopped smiling.
The pupils of Fangcaodi International School, a state-run primary school in Beijing with an emphasis on science education, have closely followed China’s recent lunar endeavours.
In June, the Chang’e-6 mission returned home with the first ever samples from the far side of the moon. At the time, the scientific community debated what language the historic findings should be written in and where they should be published.
Posed with the same question, one of the young science pupils proposed an answer.
“It should be in English first so that scientists from all over the world can understand the latest results and work together to promote research,” he said.
“But there should be a Chinese version so that the whole population of China is aware of the latest findings.”
It was an idea that the other four pupils readily agreed with. But that is not what happened.
Three months after the lunar mission returned with the samples, the question was settled. In mid-September, China’s first analysis of the material was published in the peer-reviewed National Science Review – an English-language journal – under the auspices of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), with no Chinese translation.
For the young school pupils, it puts the findings out of reach. While they are among the best in their age group, winning astronomy and other science awards, reading academic papers in English is beyond their abilities for now.
But they are eager to know more about the latest research on the lunar soil, particularly the ingredients it contains.
“Some of the minerals may be able to solve humanity’s problems in the future, such as energy and living in space,” they said.


It was not until the 1950s and later that English became the single dominant language in the global scientific community. While it is spoken by only around 18 per cent of the world’s population, it is estimated that up to 98 per cent of global scientific research is published in English.
It has undoubtedly become the lingua franca for international scientific communication and collaborations, but there are growing calls to highlight the value of using mother tongues in science, as evidence mounts that the dominance of English may be subtly stifling innovation and public access to science.
Now, as China emerges as a global scientific powerhouse, leading the world in the production of research papers and home-grown major scientific projects, this question has become more pressing.
In a speech in May 2016, Chinese President Xi Jinping said science and technology “workers must write their papers on the soil of the motherland and apply [scientific and technological] achievements to the great endeavour of modernisation”.
He stressed that scientific research should not only pursue knowledge and truth, but also serve economic and social development and the general public.
The situation is changing, albeit slowly.
When China’s Chang’e-5 mission brought lunar samples from the near side of the moon back to Earth in 2020, the research findings were first published in the US-based Science magazine in October 2021. But this year, the paper following the Chang’e-6 mission was published in a top Chinese journal, though it was still written in English.
The Post tried to contact the paper’s authors – from the Key Laboratory of Lunar and Deep Space Exploration at CAS, the Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Centre, and the Beijing Institute of Spacecraft System Engineering – to ask if they had considered preparing a Chinese version of their study, but has not yet received a response.
A CAS geography researcher surnamed Li, who declined to give his full name, said the English proficiency of the general public in China was low, and many did not have access overseas journals, creating an information barrier to scientific information.
This, he said, was a great pity.
“Scientists are funded by the government to conduct research, but the results are mainly published in overseas journals, and then the Chinese have to pay to access these data resources, which is actually unreasonable,” he said.
In her article published in The Conversation in March, Spanish researcher Elea Gimenez Toledo pointed out that limiting researchers to English profoundly undermined the global academic community’s ability to share knowledge with the public.
Forcing people to communicate in a language other than their native tongue affects how clearly and effectively they interact with others
University of California, Berkeley, interview
“Locally, regionally and nationally relevant research published in languages other than English has an economic, social and cultural impact on its surrounding environment,” she said.
English is now widely regarded as the basic entry ticket to the scientific community, but for many non-English-speaking researchers, language has been a barrier to sharing their work and advancing their academic careers.
That was one of the findings in interviews by the University of California, Berkeley, with a number of students and faculty members.
“Forcing people to communicate in a language other than their native tongue affects how clearly and effectively they interact with others,” an article published on the university’s news website said in 2020, citing the example of a PhD student in molecular and cell biology who felt his mind “ran faster” in his native language.
Last year, an international group of researchers found that those whose first language was not English had to make greater efforts than their counterparts to establish a foothold in academia. The study, which surveyed 908 environmental scientists from eight countries, was published in the journal PLOS Biology in July 2023.
One of the findings was that non-native English speakers were 2½ times more likely than native speakers to report having their papers rejected specifically because of writing problems.
In an interview with Nature, Tatsuya Amano, a researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia and co-author of the study, said that, if anything, their findings probably underestimated the impact of language barriers because it did not take into account people who dropped out of academia because of the challenges.
In 2012, several researchers from the Beijing-based Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China analysed the language of papers written by Nobel laureates in physics before they won the prize and the journals in which they published.
The article, published in the journal Scientometrics, found that publications in the scientists’ home countries were very helpful early in their careers.
“Non-English science journals can encourage young scientists and engineers to publish in their mother tongue, even though the average academic level of non-English science journals is lower than that of English ones,” the authors said, rejecting the idea that there is no need for Chinese-language science journals.




Some researchers, however, dismiss the direct link between language and innovation, seeing it merely as a means of communication in academia. They say that although science has no boundaries, it needs a language that can transcend national borders to communicate, and English does just that.
Jia Hepeng, a professor of science communication at Soochow University, Suzhou, in southern Jiangsu province, acknowledged that the dominance of English “undoubtedly reflects a form of cultural hegemony”.
But he stressed that discoveries needed to be widely shared among peers around the world so that ideas and methods could collide, contributing to the continuous progress of science.
Jia also pointed out the need to look more closely at the issue. In the social sciences, where he worked, he said, theoretical advances needed to be published in English to achieve international dialogue, but practical findings should be in Chinese to generate an impact on domestic peers and policymakers.
“I don’t think the language of scientific research is important, but rather who the academic journals reach,” said Ma Liang, a government affairs professor at Renmin University of China.
“The widespread use of English around the world shows that it is a more appropriate working language in science, which is conducive to international scientific and technological exchange and dissemination.”
Unlike scientific information, which aimed to serve the general public, Ma added, scientific journals were academic platforms for peer-to-peer exchange.
“Research can still be written in English, but the popularisation of science should be in Chinese,” he said.
In China’s education sector, in both primary and higher education, the system of requiring English proficiency has also had some undesirable effects, such as excluding talented students. This has attracted some controversy.
From time to time, examples pop up online of students who, despite their impressive potential in science-related disciplines such as physics and mathematics, are held back in their pursuit of further studies because of their poor English skills.
Last year, for example, a physics student at Sichuan Normal University scored only 37 points in English in the postgraduate entrance exam. It put her out of reach of her desired school – Zhejiang University – even though she had a near-perfect score of 149 points in quantum mechanics.
“Refusing to develop English communication skills is basically saying goodbye to high-quality physics research,” a commenter said China’s Quora-like social media platform Zhihu.
During the annual “two sessions” in March last year, a deputy to the National People’s Congress – China’s top legislature – and the principal of a middle school in Sichuan province suggested that the value of English in the gaokao, the National Higher Education Entrance Examination, should be lowered.
The principal said that placing a higher value on English was not conducive to educational equity, arguing that students from better socio-economic backgrounds were more likely to perform better in learning the language than those from lower socio-economic upbringings and rural areas.




Historically, English has not always been the language of scholarship.
In the past, science was conducted in Latin. But during the 19th century, French, German and English took over as the scientific languages.
During the first three decades of the 20th century, the world’s first language of science was German, with much of the research of British scientists, particularly in physics and chemistry, published in German-language journals, despite the British government’s consistent strategy of suppressing Germany, according to science communication professor Jia.
But gradually, English emerged as the dominant language after significant scientific advances took place in English-speaking countries, particularly in the United States and Britain.
Qian Xuesen, the “father” of Chinese rockets, stopped publishing in overseas journals after returning to China in the 1950s, according to a 2020 article in China Reading Weekly, a magazine published by the state-run newspaper Guangming Daily.
While stressing the value of foreign literature, Qian insisted that Chinese studies should be published in Chinese-language journals and that Chinese researchers should give priority to ensuring that Chinese people could learn about the research and have access to information.
“In the future, when China’s scientific and technological level has greatly improved and entered the world’s top tier, our own papers will naturally become an important part of the world’s scientific and technological literature,” Qian said.
Several decades later, though, his hope has not been realised.
Li, the CAS geography researcher, maintains that Chinese researchers should share more findings in their native language but they face practical obstacles.
“For a long time, our scholarship has not reached the top level internationally, so subconsciously Chinese researchers still think it is more recognised to publish their studies in English journals,” he said. “In fact, China’s current talent evaluation system also guides and encourages us to do this.”
On the other hand, Chinese-language journals are also plagued with problems such as poor quality and long delays between manuscript submission and publication.
“Social sciences paper publication in Chinese is poorly regulated, nepotism is common, and the publication process is very slow, so most of our team’s research is still published in English,” Jia said.
From Latin to German to today’s English, the lingua franca of science has been in flux. Languages such as Russian, Greek and French have also left their traces on scientific vocabulary, seen in the names of chemical elements and other scientific terms.
Whether or not English retains its position as the global scientific standard, what is certain is that China is pushing to increase its influence around the world – and language is playing a key role.
In August 2023, for example, the Saudi Ministry of Education officially announced the inclusion of Chinese language courses in primary and secondary school curricula, recognising Chinese as one of the main languages of instruction.


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