JAPAN鈥檚 international competitiveness is being undermined by a lack of govemment investment in research, say some of the nation鈥檚 most eminent scientists.
While private spending on research and development remains high, the government has imposed a freeze on funding for new public research facilities and is merging existing ones. Last week the Science Council of Japan issued a strongly worded statement condemning the policy.
Masao Ito, the council鈥檚 chairman, says the government needs to put Japan in the forefront of 鈥渟trategic鈥� research, which he defines as being somewhere between the basic research carried out by academic institutions and the purely commercial research undertaken in the private sector. Ito says the government鈥檚 policy of cutting back is 鈥渉ostile鈥� to science.
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The council points out that Japan spends only 0.54 per cent of its GNP on publicly funded research, while the US spends 1.07 per cent and France spends 1.1 per cent.