What Chinese Scientist's Nobel Win Says About Science In China

This week Dr. Tu Youyou became the first Chinese Nobel laureate in natural science, and she is also the first Nobel laureate who received all of her scientific training in China.

During the Cultural Revolution, Dr. Tu lead a secret military program that succeeded in finding a way to treat drug-resistant malaria using traditional Chinese medicine, instead of Western medicine. Yet when she won her Nobel this week, she was not part of China's prestigious academy of sciences.

Denis Simon, an expert on science in China, discusses this with Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson.