NO COUNTRY can be a global power without an engineering and scientific base. It's necessary to run modern factories, develop new products, analyse and deal with complex social problems - pollution, food safety, sickness and disease - and (if the country chooses) to build and project military might. China's rise to power once again confirms this truism.

It is a stunning reversal.

During the Cultural Revolution (1966-'76) - Mao Zedong's grisly effort to purify the Communist Party by banishing millions of Chinese to the countryside - China repudiated modern science. It effectively shut many universities. Admission exams were suspended. No new undergraduates entered from 1966 to 1969. The ban on graduate students lasted until 1977.