Can Science and Technology save China?

Susan Greenhalgh is the John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Research Professor of Chinese Society in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, and the co-editor of the recently published volume, Can Science and Technology Save China? (Cornell University Press, 2020). Her two most recent books are Fat-Talk Nation: The Human Costs of America’s War on Fat (2017) and Cultivating Global Citizens: Population in the Rise of China (2010). In this podcast, she discusses how in China, “state-market-science/[and] technology are tangled tightly together to form a knot of governing logics, practices, and institutions.” She discusses China’s scientism, and why people continue to have faith in science even though it has not lived up to the promise. She explains what she means with the statement that “science is contextual,” and gives examples of how “Chinese science is distinctly Chinese.” She also has some interesting thoughts on the recent concern in the US press over the competition with China in science and technology.