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China vs U.S. in an 'Internet Race'
avatar4d writes to mention an article on CIO about a new 'space race' on the internet between China and the U.S.. China is currently hard at work at what is being called the 'Chinese Next Generation Internet' (CNGI). With plans to unveil the project at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the network is part of a plan to leap ahead of the United States in innovation and technology. From the article: "The strategy, outlined in China's latest five-year plan, calls for the country to transition its economy from one based almost entirely on manufacturing to one that produces its own scientific and technological breakthroughs — using a new and improved version of today's dominant innovation platform, the Internet. 'CNGI is the culmination of this revolutionary plan' to turn China into the world's innovation capital, says Wu Hequan, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the chairman of the CNGI Expert Committee, the group overseeing the project. 'We will use it as a way to break through and be competitive in the global economic market.'"
Where are they going to get all these expert scientists and researchers for this? IMO, you can't just instantly (4 years, for a country to change its entire economy is essentially instantaneous for that kind of thing) change your entire economy to become a bunch of super duper experts..
Censorship is obscene. Patriotism is bigotry. Faith is a vice. Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
WHAT? China's greatest minds put together a launch and re-entry vehicle, and "officials" load it with almost 500 pounds of seeds so that they will magically become superplants?
This coming from the people led by a government that believes that they can block freedom of speech and information while stimulating science sharing via their "new" Internet.
I can't say I'm at all surprised.
Right now, the Asian tech industries excel at not innovation but copying and improving upon existing designs which typically originate elsewhere. This is not just a Chinese thing -- look at the Japanese auto industry or Korean flat panel fabs, for example. It's quite a jump to magically switch your entire economy's sweet spot to one that's based on innovation -- in five years, no less -- but I think the biggest thing that the Chinese are missing out on is the *reason* for that innovation. Here in the States, tech isn't government-mandated and government-controlled, we don't fix our currency rate, and, above all else, it's possible to become very, very, VERY rich if you're successful in tech. Let's be honest -- our tech industry takes advantage of human greed (for better and for worse), something that runs contrary to communism at its core. The negative is that we let failing companies fail, jobs are lost, etc., but the positive is that there's actually a real INCENTIVE to innovate.
then get off your butt, turn off the TV and get inventing.
The only way to succeed is to build success yourself.
The whole idea of "race" and needing decades of experience to get in front is very archaic. You don't need to follow the full technological evolution to get there.
Besides.... China has an amazing history of technological superiority over the last couple of thousand years or so, with only the last 100 or so years (a mere 5%) being a "glitch".
Engineering is the art of compromise.
So, China wants a large population of smart people, trained and able to ask fundamental questions, who won't question Party Orthodoxy.
Good luck.
One of two things will happen: Another cultural revolution, or the overthrow of the regime.
Given that the PRC is a mature fascist state, I know where my money is.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
...I always figured that today's dominant innovation platform was "getting rich off the stuff you create".
Nerd Rock In Progress
I wouldn't be too quick to judge China's scientific community based on a translation of a one-line project synopsis by a buearocrat.
Underestimating a competitor is never a smart move. Remember that the U.S. auto industry was laughing at the first japanese cars to reach our continent. The japanese eventually gave them a good run for their money.
As opposed to the government that claims it has freedom of speech and information while blocking science that disagrees with their corporate views.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
China and the USA are behind in the broadband race; each have to catch up with Sweden.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Innovation doesn't come from having a magic tech bullet like the Internet 2.0. Magic tech bullets come by the hundreds from having a free and open exchange of ideas, talent, motivation, and capital.
China has lost before its even out of the starting gate.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
The whole world knows that China is the real innovator and the next world superpower, when will Americans realize this ?
Innovator in what, near slave labor? Oppression of it's people? While the US isn't perfect in the way it behaves and treats it's people, it is still FAR better than most countries and Far FAR better than China.
What China has is cheap labor with lots of foreign inventment because of that cheap labor. That's it. Everything else pretty much sucks. The people that are not in the elite class hate and fear their government.
But you were just trolling I'm sure...
It's nice to know that people's view of China haven't changed in 50 years. US Education system is doing it's normal bang up job.
Before you laugh too heavily about China's "space seeds," you might want to remember that most American believe:
1. The earth was created in 7 days
2. That god created people "as is"
3. Evolution is a myth
You see America can trump China in ignorance everytime.
But let's not also forget:
1. all the capital investment going into China - China leads the world in foreign investment.
2. the trade deficit - the US imports more goods from China then we export.
3. China has HUGE cash reserves, meanwhile the US is running a 6 trillion dollar deficit which will only get larger thanks to medicare and social security benefits, the war in iraq.
4. almost all electronics and manufacturing is done in china.
5. china's population - a sellers wet dream. the us' market dominance is fading as more and more chinese have disposable income.
Kudos to the morons who aren't paying attention.
Sorry, but China's growth rate is a prime example of the catch-up effect. In short, China's growth rate is double-digits (or near there) because they were using their labor so inefficiently until recently that they only have one direction to go. Besides, if GDP growth was proof of a country's greatness, perhaps China better look in their rear-view mirror, because Azerbaijan is catching up fast.
As for China being the next world superpower, call me when they get a navy. Sure, they can nuke us, but they can't even get past Chile's navy to hold the nuked territory, much less our own, and it's not like we don't have a few nukes to play with. Heck, the US has 2/3 of the quantitative aircraft carrier fleet in the world, and 4/5 of the deck space.
relatively uneducated communists take over and purge the educated.
But it really depends when you look. When China had "junks", the West didn't really have anything similar. Same for silk and porcelain. China was making developments towards steel hundreds of years Before Common Era, that wouldn't be matched in the West until medieval times.
Now, they're considered backwards, for good reason, and probably will be for many decades to come. It takes awhile to recover from such a devastating and calculated blow to civilization, especially when the cause of such devastation manages to hold onto power.
When you look at the four thousand years of Chinese history, it can't help but scream one clear message, and that is the message of repeated lost opportunities due to their obsession with preserving the established order at all cost. That is why they are trying to create their own, closed "internet" and that is also why the US is so obsessed with controlling what is really a global resource as well. I think that this obsession with control will profoundly hurt bith nations, although since China's obsession is so much more total and clueless, I think that the damage done to China's future in the long run will be greater, if it is expressed as a percentage of "what might have been". However, I don't think that we in the US should deceive ourselves, in both cases, the result is tragic. Corporations (and their desire to make a quick and easy buck at the expense of the American consumer and real innovation), control US Internet policy almost as profoundly as the China's obsession with preventing any kind of real change controls theirs. Are the two really that different? I don't think that they are... they are two sides of the same coin.. "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever" George Orwell --from Nineteen Eighty-Four
They didn't innovate, they copied.
That doesn't seem to have hurt Microsoft at all... Starting first doesn't mean you'll win the race; think of it as intellectual slipstreaming.
And if you think the american economy is crappy... well you don't live here and you have no idea. I can't complain...
If you get out of your little tunnel and open your eyes, you'll find that the economy is not so great. Real wages have been going down since the 70's (following the start of the outsourcing trend), and many of our fellow americans have been financing the difference. In the last couple of years, this means Adjustable Rate Mortgages to afford payments on a house, 0% auto loans, growing credit card debts, growing trade deficits, growing federal budget deficits.
America has a problem with debt.
gas is cheap again and I take home more than it costs me to live...
I believe that the two oil guys in the whitehouse talked with their buddies in the industry to get a little help on election day.
See Canary in the coal mine for more on the coming super-recession, and plan accordingly.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Makes sense to me.
The way I see it, there's a world of difference between telling scientists to dissent from the government on their own time, and telling scientists not to dissent from the government at all.
Wake me up when approximately half the Chinese population is openly and vehemently opposed to their government, and we'll talk about U.S.-China moral equivalence.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Since when does technological innovation have it's roots in "beating the other guy". It's for advancement of society, for curiousity, for problem solving. Just because China does some research doesn't mean it's trying to win a "race". Sure they might have wanted in the past to play catch up in technological progress, but why are we so quick to assume it's a race? Why not just assume they're doing it for the betterment of society?
Where does all this xenophobia come from? The average Chinese citizen doesn't feel this way towards Americans, but for some reason, we are so paranoid about them. Perhaps the reason is that Chinese people consume a lot of American media, while here in America, we are less open towards foreign entertainment.
China won't get away unscathed. U.S. consumers pretty much financed China's economic growth over the past decade. When the gravy train derails, expect China to be smacked against the bulkhead too. You want to talk about real-estate bubbles? Chinese costal cities are as bubblicious as they come, with housing prices rivaling that of California. Pretty soon, there will be a series of giant popping sounds circling the globe.
Maybe to see if the seeds are still viable after exposure to the radiation in space.
and why would you want to send people to 'hold' the big pile of radioactive debri?
Superpower wars aren't about military force anymore(if they ever were). It's about economic force.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is true, and, in fact, is where China is even further behind.
China's GDP was $7.2 trillion in 2001, compared to the USA, which clocked in at $11.75 trillion in 2001. Plus, thanks to China's 'free' government and its 'honesty and trustworthiness', there's no guarantee China's numbers are even that high, nor that they've been growing that fast.
Assuming these numbers, which are supposed to be newer, are correct, the USA single-handedly beats out the European Union and is a solid $3.5 trillion ahead of China. Considering how the USA has about 2/3 the population of the EU and less than 1/4 of China's population, that's pretty impressive.
Excellent analysis. I've just one little point that I'd like to reply to:
You americans are spending your capital, and taken to it's extreme it means that you will no longer own your economy.
'We [poor] americans' are simply playing along in an economy that's rigged to benefit bankers and globalists, mostly because we don't know any better, and partially because it's hard to break out of the trap when 'everyone else' doesn't realize that there's a problem.
The banker/populace tension really goes back to the revolutionary war, according to Misdirection Conspiracy (link in this post. When word that the british had surrendered spread to New York City, people went skipping through the streets, chanting how the colony had kicked the mother country out... But the banking class, who enjoyed a certain degree of privledge under british rule, muttered under their breath: "but we like the british...", and starting plotting America's return to the British Empire. War of 1812, Rhodes Scholarships (Bill Clinton), Bilderberg, etc.
One objective has always been to establish a national bank. I'm a little sketchy on ups and downs of the national bank, but the Federal Reserve bank is the current incarnation thereof. It's supposedly "public", but the congress only gets to appoint the board as figureheads, and the bankers choose acceptable candidates anyways, so the "congressional oversight" is meaningless.
This is a long-term process, so don't get all disappointed when the economy doesn't assplode next year.
It's taken a very long time to get to where we are today (most of a century), and I'm sure the end of the present economic order is very near - certainly within 6 months. Then again, we might see a 1929-style "black thursday" in October, what with the way housing & everything else is breaking down. The media (owned by the banking class) try to hide the signals that recession is imminent, but independent analysis online is getting the word out to people that seek. See Mish's blog, the Daily Reckoning, etc.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
actually, it's living with debt that sucks