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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.'"
I suspect that Microsoft's definition of "better" in search engine terms looks a lot more like the Chinese government's than Google's does. Just a thought ...
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
China knows that it is way behind in technology, so it is establishiing technology enclaves where its people can learn and train up to catch up fast. This is opposed to the US where biotech is being squahed by the right wingers, and info tech is being restricted by the copyright holders and the US goverment. The US is also pushing all its high tech manufacturing industries offshore, China is offering really good terms for moving those industries into China. Project 20 years from now, all our weapons systems are dependent on hardware and software from China. Our millionaires will be running to China for longetivity treatments etc..
Over a decade back China placed great emphasis on education in technology, now with a large pool of talent to draw from the country is in a great position to harness it's own technology future, as well as that of other countries.
Meanwhile in the US, students care about being cool, having the latest toys and what others think. Only nerds actually study.
Perhaps chinese youth will catch up to the slovenly and egocentric ways of the west. Some chinese diplomat, back in the 1800's said something to the effect of 'China already has everything and needs nothing, what can Europe offer to China?' Well, the answer was Opium. Maybe the next opium craze in china will be western fashion, television and SUV's.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
China isn't only pushing for software research, though. The country has a huge drive being pushed for involving tech research of all kinds. Back when I worked at Rockwell-Collins, we sometimes read papers about the sort of radio and radar research being worked on in China... pretty impressive stuff, really. One that really stood out to me was a type of radar which broadcasts very broad-spectrum, relatively low-energy, "noise" of the same frequency distribution as background noise, and does a statistical analysis on received background noise to look for unnatural shifts in distrubtion that would represent a reflected signal.
The country has been pushing heavily for all kinds of tech development; if you'll recall, the US and china had a rift a while ago over China trying to force hardware to release proprietary fabrication and design information if they wanted to have access to China's markets. China wants to take the US and Japan's places as the leading international tech powerhouses. It's probably a good strategy, too - they have a large, well educated (at least in urban areas) population. I think they can pull it off.
And, as unpopular as this statement might be... I think their largely totalitarian government - so long as they don't infringe enough on their people so as to reduce their work ethic, their national pride, and the ability for businesses to compete with each other - will actually help them in competition with the US, due to the greater degree of strategic control they can have over their markets. The US would have a lot more trouble trying to do things like force foreign companies to disclose their tech secrets, apart from outright spying.
I was watching this thing on TV about some guy named Hitler. Someone should stop him!
I find the whole thing terrifying.
Of course the Chinese government is behind and it is a plan. It the high tech version of what they've been doing to manufacturing for a few years now. Undercut manufacturing in the rest of the world especially through low labor costs, the rest of the world gives up and moves all their machine tools, manufacturing capibility and technology to China, the rest of the world becomes completely dependent on China for manufacturing and they can so start to jack up their prices because they no will soon have no competition worth mentioning.
The end result is one giant American or European company after another is transfering the crown jewels of their intellectual property in to a country that has complete disdain for intellectual property rights and enforcement. Once its all transfered and Chinese nationals are the ones doing all the new development the foreign devil companies are going to be completely expendable and expended.
Its a great strategy for catapulting yourself from a technology backwater where you are mostly reverse engineering and soldering to global technological dominion.
The stupidity of American politicians and business leaders is truly amazing especially when they are blinded by greed.
@de_machina
One of the major problems is that we don't have enough people who are willing to pursue basic research, or who are intellectually up to the task. Someone has to step up and explain to students that science and engineering aren't dead end career paths! Not everyone can be a lawyer or investment banker, and almost no one can be a rock star or sports hero. Unfortunately for us, China still has central planning, and can dump everything into a project that it can (see the Great Leap Forward for an example.) Communist countries are well-known for forced industrialization efforts. The government could let the peasants starve for a few years and become the number one science power on the planet if they wanted to.
China .vs. US .vs. $10.98T .vs. 3.1% .vs. 2.1% .vs. $37,500 .vs. 186M .vs. 140M .vs. 159M .vs. 115,311,958 .vs. 1500+ .vs. 2.9M .57% .vs. .92%
GDP $6.449T
GDP Growth 9.1%
Inflation 1.2%
PerCap Income $5000
Phones (LL) 214M
CellPhones 240M
Internet Users 59M
Internet Hosts 156,53
TV Stations 3240
Population 1.2B
Pop. Growth
Interesting numbers (from another post I saw here). Maybe the most telling is how the average person makes $5000 (US Equiv), but how many more cellphone there are. Does this mean there is a higher willingness to adopt new technology in China? Or do they just like cellphones more than 'we' do? Maybe they don't have to put up with Sprint....
I recall a TIME special magazine 1995 which was devoted to China as a whole: it says Gunpowder, Rockets, Dams, Silk, Tea, Finance, Strategies for War, Papyrus, Writing, Commerce, Printing, Banking was invented by China long before Europeans came down from trees, and long before US of A existed.
Don't show your ignorance of the world by mimicking Dubya. You are neither the President, nor his Lackey.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
And, as unpopular as this statement might be... I think their largely totalitarian government - so long as they don't infringe enough on their people so as to reduce their work ethic, their national pride, and the ability for businesses to compete with each other - will actually help them in competition with the US, due to the greater degree of strategic control they can have over their markets.
No, you seem to have a VERY limited knowledge of Chinese history, both recent and ancient. Look up things like the cultural revolution and the great leap forward. There is control of markets in action! China has always managed to grow at an astounding pace to only fall into ruin, moreso than most other civilizations of the world. Things are going pretty well now, but that is way too small a timeline to say that China's government is so wonderful. China will hit a bust, and with their government, the bust will be as loud as the boom.
Monstar L
...this baby boomer hippie was the second in my circle of friends and aquantainces to own a computer, the first with a lot of transceivers, and the first with alternate energy, I got solar PV panels and a wind genny.
I know it's fun to generalise, but "alternative culture" also lends itself to innovation, dreaming, rejection of the staid status quo, etc. It's not just drugs and losers. Way back, when we shifted from being called "beatniks" to "hippies" WE were the ones to point out ridiculous illegal wars and draft slavery. We were the first ones to say "wait a minnit, why are all these global international corporations running our nation?" WE marched and took the gas on behalf of non priveleged minorites and in support of equal gender rights. We'd say stuff like "Hey, what do you mean we don't have full property rights, we want to build a yurt instead of a boring square stick frame box you insensitive clod!" And so on and so forth. Poison free food? Certainly wasn't the suits pushing that. Medical care that WORKS and don't cost an arm and a leg and don't all go to enrich global medical monopolies? Check who was a big part of that movement. And now to get to normal slashdotisms, who's pushing open source the most?
So, how about a little credit along with the deserved dissin, every generation and culture got good and bad to it.