The rise of a generation that believes that scientific output is not important, even in a technical field like ours, is an indicator that makes me bearish on the future of the American society.
I think you're misinterpreting his comment. I'm fairly sure he's raising issue with "quantity" of research as a useful metric for scientific strength. China produces massive amounts of research, but is positively inundated with fraud, to a much higher degree than the West, and makes the West's publish or perish mindset look positively relaxed.
I know there is fraud going on, but I see it as a (unintended) consequence of the general increase in production. I also know the scientific literature and there is a huge production of real papers from Chinese authors, so yes, this is just another way to badmouth the changes that are happening in China.
You're doing major mental gymnastics to perceive it as "just another way to badmouth" China. People made descriptive comments about absolute quantity of publishing and some observations about how well that correlates with national success. Neither the article nor the commenters here have denied that quality and impactful research is also coming out of China.
I would even go as far to say that quantity in and of itself is negative. If you only get more quantity and no more quality, then you have more noise. More papers to wade through to get something useful. Meaning that the quality papers presented by the well-meaning Chinese researchers will more or less likely not even get read, because they're buried under a pile of horseshit.
This is why I would never hire Indian software engineers. There are a few good ones, like in every country, but they're hard to find among a sea of terrible software engineers that went into software engineering, because everyone does, and that went to a school only teaching with rote memorization.
