We are already one of the world's largest economies. We have sent people into the space. We have hosted a spectacular Olympics. We are the world's fifth most prolific producer of academic theses on science and technology.

Still, we are yet to win a Nobel Prize.

With British-American Chinese Charles Kao becoming the eighth ethnic Chinese to win a Nobel, that very same old embarrassing question is being raised: How far are we from a Nobel Prize?

Outsiders may find this nation's infatuation with the Nobel Prize perplexing. Obviously it is not about the money. The prize amount of $1.4 million is no longer as tantalizing as it used to be for some well-to-do Chinese scientists. It is the acknowledgement that matters. Nothing is more important for a nation hungry as ours for outsider endorsement.

The other day, one of our vice-ministers of education ranked Chinese institutions of higher learning as the world's fifth strongest in terms of capabilities for academic research. Yet that was only his, or his ministry's, perspective. A Nobel prize would be quite different.

So everybody seems to be counting the days before one of us Chinese citizens is awarded one of those coveted prizes.

Earlier this year, the venerated American Chinese Chen-Ning Franklin Yang, one of the first ethnic Chinese to win a Nobel, assured his anxious compatriots that they may get one in 20 years. The more optimistic say we are only "a step away" after Kao became a Nobel laureate, seeing fresh evidence that "we Chinese are fully capable."

No one ever said we are incapable. We have not heard of accusations that Nobel prizes are racially biased. So it is not about whether we are smart enough. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards original research, not high intelligence quotient. What this country lacks is original research.

We doubt the fairness of the radical claim that 90 per cent of theses produced by our institutions of higher learning are "academic garbage." We just cannot afford that being even close to the truth. But the average citation rate of theses by Chinese authors published between 1997 and 2007 reportedly ranked the 117th in 145 countries. Which does not appear to agree with the education official's evaluation of our academic strength.

Yang's inspiring remarks based in part on the Nobel Prize's recent preference for applied research. Given that not many Chinese scientists bother to concentrate on basic sciencies these days, that indeed is a change in our favor. Yet even in the applied sciences, they share a worrisome lack of originality. People are too addicted to instant gains to carry out authentic research meriting a Nobel Prize.

It sounds cruel to a people so desperate for a Nobel, yet some did say that we may never get one if the current pattern persists.