China: the New Advanced Technology Research Hotbed

securitas writes "The New York Times' Chris Buckley reports that China is the new hotbed of advanced technology research and development for hundreds of global technology companies. The list includes household names like Oracle (which 'opened a lab in Beijing to tailor its Linux operating software to suit its Asian customers'), Motorola, Siemens, IBM, Intel, General Electric, Nokia and others. Microsoft Research Asia hopes Google-surpassing technology comes from a group of '10 researchers ... working on new ways to drill deep into the Internet and select and organize the information found there.' Growth of the R&D sector in China is so rapid that 'within five years China could overtake Britain, Germany and Japan as a base for corporate research, leaving it second only to the United States.'"

Comments

But they can't even form acronyms!

[YetAnotherName]

Western languages like English use alphabetical glyphs which are combined to form words, which can recursively combine to form acronyms and abbreviations.

By in China, Mandarin, Cantonese and other dialects are all written using ideographs, where one glyph represents a single word. As a result, it is impossible to form acronyms. And as a result, technological progress is impossible.

Now, where's my company acronym dictionary again?

One reason: scarcity of women.

[Anonymous Coward]

The "one child policy" coupled with the practice of killing females newborns and fetuses has created a scarcity of women to distract the males. With no women to be chasing, there's nothing to do but work.

You didn't listen to Arnold.

[asoap]

You are obviously wrong here. If you had listened to Arnold at the Republican convention you would already know that this is not a possibility, because... well.. because the Governator said so! If you don't like then your just being an economic girlie man!!!!

Personally, I agree with you, I just don't think Arnie will though.

-Derek