Hot Issues, Green Challenges: Correspondent Richard Stone on China's Science Revolution

On a recent assignment in remote northeastern China, not far from the North Korean border, correspondent Richard Stone arrived at the Changbaishan Nature Reserve to find a long red banner printed in white Chinese characters and underscored with an English translation: "Welcome, News Editor of Science to Our Institute."

Western journalists arriving for an interview usually aren't greeted with such enthusiasm. But for Stone, the welcome from the Changbaishan researchers says much about the excitement and optimism in China's research community and the hopeful prospects for the Science bureau that opened in Beijing last month. Science is the first Western publication of its kind to have a news bureau in the Chinese capital, and journal editors believe it will give them—and readers—a remarkable vantage on an S&T revolution that already is having worldwide repercussions.

In an interview, Stone ranged across the breadth of Chinese science and technology—from the booming biomedical fields to the nation's profound environmental challenges to the gradually increasing freedom of Chinese science journalists.

Read the full story, including a Q&A with Science Asia Editor Richard Stone.