信手拈来 之 我不想留下遗憾 “Back for Good”

王晓东说，他回国是为了与志同道合的同事一起将中国学术导向竞争优胜体制。2004年41岁的王晓东因其细胞凋亡机理的研究当选美国国家科学院院士，现在他要回国尽力而为，他说，“我不想留下遗憾”。

中文全文在此

招聘: 两千领军人才给中国注入创新精神

郝炘

具有改革意识的中国科学家希望“千人计划”能引进志同道合的同仁来帮助提高国内的科研水平

五年前成立的北京生命科学研究所为一群挑选出来的科学家提供了一个避开国内资助体系弊端的庇护场所，即让人称道也令人羡慕。七月早些时候官方宣布在美国达拉斯德克萨斯大学西南医学中心工作的霍华德休斯医学研究所研究员王晓东不仅将连任北京生命科学研究所第二届所长，而且将关闭他在美国的实验室全职回国的消息给该所很大的激励。王说，“我已经下了决心”。

王晓东是一个名为“千人计划”的新项目迄今为止最大的收获，该计划旨在5到10年内从国外引进1000到2000位高层次的科学家、企业家、和财经专家。到目前为止，已有96位在大学和研究所工作的“创新人才”和26位领导高技术企业的“创业人才”入选。这个项目由负责任命和评价高级干部的中共中央组织部(中组部)发起，中组部涉足物色高层次人才表明政府认为为了使经济持续发展必须给中国的劳动大军注入更多的创新精神。

一些科学家称赞“千人计划”很及时，它将聚集一批受过海外训练的高级研究人员，这些人数量上的优势将逐渐改革国内的科研体系中腐败、既得利益、权钱交易等弊端。千人计划入选者、去年从美国普林斯顿大学回国的结构生物学家施一公说，“千人计划有两个目标：提高国内的科研水平、改善国内的学术环境”，施一公现在北京的清华大学领导该校的医学院和生命科学院。

但是这个刚启动的项目也受到批评。参与起草和修改项目提案的科学家告诉《科学》“千人计划”最早的方案要求入选者在国内全职工作，然而项目去年12月出台时，最低承诺被出乎意料地改为在国内工作至少3年、每年至少6个月。原来的计划也不仅仅限于海外人才，施一公说，“当初的想法是设立国家教授和国家青年教授席位”吸引国内外有资格的人来申请。

还有一个问题是钱。最初的提案建议给入选者稳定的研究经费支持，但是“千人计划”现在唯一明确的支持是中组部给的100万安家费。教育部和科技部被期待给与入选者工资与研究经费方面的支持，原提案中建议给回国的人海外工资60%的工资，以及根据不同领域的需要给他们5到7年内最高达800万的启动经费。然而，至少第一批入选者的工资和研究经费看来需要聘人单位出。

不足为奇，厦门大学千人计划入选者许华曦说，厦大“又冷了”。许华曦和厦大的另一位千人计划入选者张晓坤都在美国圣迭戈的Burnham医学研究所工作。2003年以来，他们与其他三位厦大海外校友利用业余时间在厦大建立了一个生物医学研究所。许华曦说很多东西都在雾里，从资金到他将在厦大工作的时间。其他千人计划入选者对对该计划表示类似的不确定性，从佛吉尼亚大学回国领导上海交通大学系统生物学研究所的邵志峰说，“我不清楚千人计划将如何发展”。

似曾相见

十几年来，中国政府在吸引海外人才回国上做了不少的努力。教育部1998年启动了长江学者计划，该计划部分地得到香港开发商李嘉诚的资助，给到中国大学教书和做研究的45岁以下入选者以每年100,000的工资补助，这在当时比较高。政府意识到在海外有终身职位的教授并不愿意全职回国后，长江学者计划增加了允许这些高级人才兼职的部分（见《科学》2006年9月22日，第1721页，译文见博客）自2003年起，科技部为在国内工作9个月以上的长江学者提供3年200万的启动经费。也在1998年，中国科学院把其1994年启动的支持年青研究人员的百人计划的重点转移到吸引海归。中科院要求研究所为海外杰出人才提供70万启动经费，入选者全职工作一年后可以申请中科院200万的择优资助，其中包括30万住房补贴。

长江学者与百人计划这两个仍在进行的项目截至2008年共吸引了近2000名全职回国工作的科学家，他们中的多数回国前刚刚获得博士学位或者结束博士后训练。这两个项还吸引了上百名在海外有终身职位的副教授或正教授每年回国工作2到3个月。（见图表）

“千人计划”是第一个由中央直接管理的项目，除了学术人才还针对创业人才，这也是第一次。“千人计划”是中组部部长李源潮的主意，吸引人才是他工作重点之一，李源潮敦促大学、科学院、和工业界的领导们—这些人大多数是中共党员—更大胆、更快地引进人才。

去年12月通知发出后，各个单位从已经在国内兼职的同事中迫切寻找“千人计划”候选者。清华大学推荐了4位兼职人员，包括美国亚特兰大市埃默里大学的生物医学成像专家胡小平，他已经在帮助清华大学建立一个神经科学成像中心。胡小平正在考虑他的选择，他说“政府希望我们很快做出决定，但是许多政策还不明了”。去年大学、科学院、以及国家实验室分别向教育部和科技部推荐“千人计划”候选人，这两个部分别组织了由院士和学术官员组成的评选委员会，邀请候选人到北京每人做一个20分钟的报告。

虽然中组部还没有公布所有入选者的名单，但一些大学已经宣布了他们的“千人计划”入选者，大多数是已经入选过以前人才计划的人。北京大学3位入选者中有2位这样的。美国加州大学洛杉矶分校的应用数学家佘振苏是第一批长江学者之一，(见《科学》2000年1月21日，第417页)。去年，他终于放弃了加州大学洛杉矶分校的终身职位，全时回到北大工作。另一位同时也是长江学者的“千人计划”入选者是佘振苏的上司，北大工学院院长陈十一。近10年往返于太平洋两岸的陈另一只脚仍将继续留在美国，在约翰霍普金斯大学工学院，该工学院负责学术事务的副院长Andrew Douglas说，陈十一“部分离职，这样他能在中国每年工作6个月”。陈十一谢绝采访，佘振苏没有回复采访请求。

承诺过多

在国内外同时具有固定职位对陈十一这样的理论研究者来说也许能够对付，但是对做实验的人来说比较难，尝试这样做的人会发现，“会很累，而且长久下去两边都顾不上”，胡小平说。王晓东认为美国的大学不会允许有终身职位的试验科学家长期半时工作，他说“千人计划6个月的要求不可行，会造成承诺冲突”。

据《科学》获得的材料，一位“千人计划”入选者、碳水化合物研究者王鹏正面临其所在大学对他与国内大学关系的审查。王鹏从2003年起是美国哥伦布市俄亥俄州立大学的俄亥俄著名学者。同年早些时候，山东大学聘任王鹏担任每年9个月的长江学者特聘教授，王鹏告诉《科学》他接受长江学者提名时“不知道是怎么回事”，在5年任期内每年在山大花的时间不多。长江学者任期过后，王鹏的名字仍列在山东大学博士生导师的名单上。王鹏说他本周早些时候辞掉了山东大学的职位。

2007年，王鹏受聘南开大学的为其建立新的药学院并出任第一任院长。南开去年提名他入选“千人计划”。今年3月，俄亥俄州立大学接到对王鹏与国内大学关系的投诉，该校生物科学学院以及物理数学学院的临时院长Matthew Platz说，学校在审查这个问题。王鹏在2008年4月写给生物化学系主任的信中解释说，他在南开的活动“属于咨询范围”，院长的名称是“象征性的”，他在南开工作的时间，在俄亥俄州立大学付给他工资的9月中不超过美国工作时间的20%，在不从俄亥俄州立大学或联邦研究经费中拿工资的暑期为2到3个月。至于“千人计划”的奖励，王鹏说他还没有决定怎么办，南开大学还没有正式通知他。

与大学不同，中科院要求“千人计划”入选者在国内全时工作，中科院人事教育局局长李和风说。首批122位“千人计划”入选者中，有16位隶属中科院，其中包括合肥中国科技大学的5位入选者。中科院为每位“创新人才”提供200万人才专项经费，并要求入选者所在的研究出配套经费。人员费不能超过人才专项经费的50%，其余是科研间接费用。李和风说，过去得到过百人计划资助的“千人计划”入选者不再给200万人才专项经费。

六位在大学工作的“千人计划”入选者告诉《科学》他们将全时在国内工作，其中包括在上海交大工作的机械工程师Robert Parker, 去年9月他出任密西根大学 –上海交通大学联合学院负责学术事务的副院长。Parker说他不是因为“千人计划”来中国的，他来中国是应接从无到有建立一个学院的挑战，他说我们的目的是“创建一个达到美国主要工程学院的质量和水平的工学院”。

其他已经在国内全时工作、后来被授予“千人计划”奖励的科学家也有这种共鸣。王晓东说，他回国是为了与志同道合的同事一起将中国学术导向竞争优胜体制。2004年41岁的王晓东因其细胞凋亡机理的研究当选美国国家科学院院士，现在他要回国尽力而为，他说，“我不想留下遗憾”。看来中国吸引优秀科学家的努力已经开始奏效。

*李娇协助报道

附2008年度“千人计划”入选者名单的补充（不全）

已经见报的部分入选者名单见李虎军的《财经》报道：
http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=235956

中国科学院(共19名)
除科大5名和西安炬光科技有限公司1名创业人才外，已公布的还有：
北京凝聚态国家实验室丁洪（美国波士顿学院物理系教授）
北京动物所林鑫华（美国辛辛那提儿童医院医学中心副教授）
北京蛋白质国家实验室许瑞明（美国纽约大学医学中心教授）
沈阳材料科学国家实验室苏党生（德国马普学会Fritz Haber研究所）
上海生命科学研究院健康所时玉舫（美国新泽西医学与牙科大学教授）

厦门大学
洪永淼（美国康乃尔大学经济系教授）
张晓坤（美国Burnham医学研究所教授）
许华曦（美国Burnham医学研究所教授）
李宁（美国罗斯阿拉莫斯国家实验室研究员）

中山大学
松阳洲（美国贝勒医学院生物化学与分子生物学讲席教授）
许跃生（美国锡拉丘兹大学数学系教授）
汤子康（香港科技大学物理系教授）

北京大学
陈十一（美国约翰霍普金斯大学工程学院讲席教授）
佘振苏（美国加州大学洛杉矶分校数学系教授）
陈松蹊（美国密西根大学教授）

四川大学
康裕建（美国路易斯维尔大学教授）
肖智雄（美国波士顿大学医学院教授）

南开大学
王鹏（美国俄亥俄州大学俄亥俄知名学者讲席教授）

成都电子科技大学
葛树志（新加坡国立大学教授）

上海财经大学
田国强（美国得克萨斯阿A&M大学经济系教授）

中国石油大学（北京）
李向阳（英国地质勘查局爱丁堡各向异性研究室主任）

English version is here

Science 31 July 2009:
Vol. 325. no. 5940, pp. 534 – 535
DOI: 10.1126/science.325_534
News Focus

China:
Help Wanted: 2000 Leading Lights To Inject a Spirit of Innovation
Hao Xin*

Reform-minded Chinese scientists hope a new program, Qianren Jihua, will reel in the sort of comrades who can help raise the nation’s scientific game.

Created just 5 years ago, the National Institute of Biological Sciences (NIBS) in Beijing is hailed—and envied—as a sanctuary where a select group of scientists is sheltered from China’s patronage-driven funding system. So it was a major boost when officials announced earlier this month that biochemist Wang Xiaodong, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, not only would stay on for a second term at the helm of NIBS but also will close his lab in the United States and return to China for good. “There is no turning back,” Wang says.

Wang is the biggest catch of a new program called Qianren Jihua, or Thousand-Person Plan, that aims to recruit up to 2000 top-notch scientists, entrepreneurs, and financial experts from abroad over the next 5 to 10 years. So far, Qianren status has been conferred on 96 “innovative talents,” who will work at universities and institutes, and 26 “entrepreneurial talents,” who will lead high-tech companies. The program was initiated by the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (Zhongzubu), which appoints and evaluates high-level cadres. Zhongzubu’s foray into headhunting underlines Beijing’s belief that China must instill a more innovative spirit into its work force to sustain economic development.

Some scientists applaud Qianren as a timely effort to muster a critical mass of Western-trained researchers who, through strength in numbers, will gradually reform a scientific system rife with corruption, vested interests, and influence-peddling. “The plan aims to achieve two goals: to raise the level of research and to improve the academic environment,” says Qianren recipient Shi Yigong, a structural biologist who left Princeton University last year to lead the schools of medicine and of life sciences at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

But the nascent program is under fire. Scientists who drafted and refined Qianren Jihua told Science the plan originally required recipients to work full-time in China; they were surprised, when the program rolled out last December, to see a minimum commitment set at 6 months a year for 3 years. Nor was the original plan limited to expats. “The idea was to establish government-endowed senior and junior faculty chair positions” to attract applications from qualified scholars from China or abroad, says Shi.

Another bone of contention is money. The original plan called for steady research support for successful candidates, but Qianren offers recipients only a one-time $146,000 relocation subsidy from Zhongzubu. The education and science ministries had been expected to foot salaries—suggested by the proposal to be about 60% of what expats receive overseas—and start-up funds of up to $1.2 million over 5 to 7 years, depending on the field. Instead, universities have had to pony up salaries and start-up packages, at least for the first batch of recipients.

Not surprisingly, says Qianren awardee Xu Huaxi, Xiamen University, which nominated him, “has become less enthusiastic.” Since 2003, Xu and fellow recipient Zhang Xiao-kun, both at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in San Diego, California, have been volunteering to establish a biomedical research institute at the university along with three other overseas Xiamen alums. Xu says everything is still up in the air, from funding to how much time he will spend in Xiamen. Other Qianren recipients express similar uncertainty. “I am not sure how this will develop,” says Shao Zhifeng, who returned from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville last year to Shanghai Jiao Tong University to head its Institute of Systems Biology.

Déjà vu

For more than a decade, China has made a concerted effort to woo talented expats to return home. In 1998, the education ministry launched the Changjiang Scholars Program, partly sponsored by Hong Kong real estate tycoon Li Ka-shing to provide incentives—$14,600 supplemental salaries, high by standards then—to lure talent under age 45 to teach and do research at Chinese universities. When officials realized that most overseas tenured professors did not want to return full-time, the program expanded to accommodate senior part-timers (Science, 22 September 2006, p. 1721). Since 2003, the science ministry has also provided Changjiang Scholars who commit to 9 months a year in China with start-up funding of $293,000 over 3 years. Also in 1998, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) shifted the focus of its Bairen (Hundred-Person) Plan—launched in 1994 to support young researchers trained locally or abroad—to attract expats. CAS requires institutes that recruit Bairen awardees to provide $100,000 in start-up funds. After 1 year of full-time work, awardees are evaluated for merit grants of $253,000 over 3 years and a $40,000 housing subsidy from CAS.

Together, the two ongoing programs have recruited some 2000 scientists to return full time, most of them newly minted Ph.D.s and postdocs (see graph, p. 535). The programs have also enticed several hundred associate or full professors with tenure overseas to spend up to 3 months a year in China.

Qianren Jihua is the first such program administered by the central government and the first to target entrepreneurs as well as academics. It is the brainchild of Zhongzubu chief Li Yuanchao, who has made recruiting talented people a priority. Li has been pushing leaders at universities, CAS, and industry—almost all of whom are Party cadres—to be more daring and reel in talent faster.

After notice went out last December, organizations scrambled to find Qianren candidates, mostly by going after colleagues already moonlighting in China. Tsinghua signed up four part-timers as candidates, including Hu Xiaoping, a biomedical imaging expert at Emory University in Atlanta who has been helping Tsinghua establish a neuroscience imaging center. Hu is weighing his options: “The government wants us to decide quickly, but many policies are not clear,” he says. Universities, CAS institutes, and national labs nominated candidates to either the education or science ministries. Both ministries appointed review panels, composed of academicians and science mandarins, which invited candidates to Beijing to give 20-minute presentations.

Although Zhongzubu has not released recipients’ names, a dozen or so universities have publicized their Qianren awardees. The majority of them had been recruited by previous incentive programs. Two of Beijing University’s (Beida’s) three recipients have been recruited home before this. She Zhensu, an applied mathematician at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), was one of the first Changjiang scholars in 1999 (Science, 21 January 2000, p. 417). Last year, he finally gave up his tenured appointment at UCLA to work full-time at Beida. Another recipient and former Changjiang scholar is She’s boss, Chen Shiyi, Beida’s engineering dean. Chen continues to keep one foot in the United States—at Johns Hopkins University’s engineering school—after nearly a decade of shuttling across the Pacific Ocean. According to Andrew Douglas, associate dean of academic affairs at the engineering school, Chen is on “partial leave, [which] would allow him to work 6 months of the year in China.” Chen declined and She did not respond to interview requests.

Overcommitted

Holding down simultaneous appointments in China and overseas might be manageable for theoreticians such as Chen, but it is hard for experimentalists to run labs on two continents. Those who try may discover that “it will be very tiring, and in the end both labs will suffer,” says Hu. Wang Xiaodong thinks most U.S. universities would not allow tenured principal investigators in experimental sciences to work parttime for extended periods. “Qianren Jihua’s 6-month requirement is not workable; it will create conflicts of commitment,” he says.

One Qianren awardee, Wang Peng, a carbohydrate researcher, is facing a review over his relationships with Chinese universities, according to documents obtained by Science. Wang has been an Ohio Eminent Scholar at the Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus since 2003. Earlier that year, Shandong University in Jinan recruited Wang as a Changjiang-Scholar professor with a 9-month-per-year contract. Wang told Science that he “did not know what he was getting into” by accepting the Changjiang award; during his 5-year appointment, he says, he only spent short periods in Shandong. After the scholarship ended, Wang’s name remained on the Shandong faculty roster as a Ph.D adviser. Wang says he resigned earlier this week from the Shandong position.

In 2007, Wang accepted an offer from Nankai University in Tianjin to set up a new school of pharmacy there and be its first dean. Nankai later nominated Wang for a Qianren award. Last March, Ohio State received a complaint about Wang’s relationships with Chinese universities. Matthew Platz, interim dean of the colleges of biological sciences and of physical and mathematical sciences, says the matter is under review. In an April 2008 letter to OSU’s biochemistry department chair, Wang explained that his activities at Nankai “are in the scope of consulting,” the title of dean is “symbolic,” and he would spend no more than 20% of the 9 months he is paid by OSU and 2 or 3 months in the summer when he is not paid by OSU or federal grants to consult at Nankai. As for his Qianren award, Wang says he has not decided what to do as Nankai has not made him an offer.

Unlike universities, CAS requires its Qianren recruits to work full-time in China, says Li Hefeng, director of CAS’s Bureau for Human Resources and Education. Of the first batch of 122 Qianren recipients, 19 are affiliated with CAS, including five at the academy’s University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei. CAS is providing $293,000 to each “innovative talent” and asks the recruiting institute to match the amount. No more than half of that sum may be used for salaries and fringe benefits for the recipient and lab members; the rest is for research overhead costs. A CAS Qianren recipient who previously received Bairen support will not get the $293,000, Li says.

A half-dozen university recruits told Science they will work full-time in China. Among them is mechanical engineer Robert Parker, who last September became associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute in Shanghai. Parker says it wasn’t the Qianren award that brought him to China but the challenge of building an institute from the ground up. “The goal,” he says, “is to create a school of engineering which in quality and scope reaches the level of a major engineering school in the United States.”

Other scientists who committed to working full-time in China—and who subsequently were given Qianren awards—echo that sentiment. Wang Xiaodong says he is returning to help like-minded colleagues steer Chinese academia toward a merit-based system. Wang, who was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2004 at age 41 for his research on mechanisms of cell death, says he is coming home to give it his all: “I do not want to leave any regrets.” China’s push to recruit good scientists, it seems, is already paying off.

* With reporting by Li Jiao, a writer in Beijing.