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China Plans to Surpass the U.S. in Nanotech Development
SoyChemist writes "Sociologists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting have reported that China is making major investments in nanotechnology. Their aim is to 'leapfrog' past the United States in technological development by focusing on long-ranging scientific goals. So far, the Chinese government has poured about $400 million into the young field of research. Considering the low cost of equipment and labor over there, that is a very large sum of money, and China's investment is expected to 'rise considerably.'"
I don't know if the equipment is much cheaper. A lot of precision scientific equipment comes from Germany, Japan and America still -- which China does not make (yet).
What scares people about China is not that it is getting ahead but that we're open to their citizens but they are not really open to us (for instance, no foreign companies can have more than 49% ownership in a domestic company over there).
In some ways, other than the cheap doo-dads, it seems like a one sided relationship and that in the long term only China will benefit from it.
In the end, all great countries have declined. This has happened to China as well in the past. From what I see in history, it's usually when a people, as a whole, want to live for today with no thought of tomorrow.
It can be achieved by living off the riches of their past instead of working/producing themselves which got their predecessors to where they were. It's seen in our media companies who can't bear the thought of letting go of old systems or even 80 year old cartoons (Steamboat Willy), songs, etcetera. It's seen in many rich families too - the 1st generation works hard and brings in the billions, the second generation generally doesn't have to work quite as hard but enough to keep the empire afloat, and the 3rd generation tends to squander the luxury they grew up with. You can see the same trend in successful immigrant families as well.
Nationwide -- just look at the deficits being run up this year (3 trillion dollar budget!) -- the politicians are directly mortgaging our and our children's future for some frivolous spending today -- and there will be consequences even though they seem distant -- extremely high taxes or high inflation wiping out the middle class.
America isn't falling behind because of China's size. Switzerland never really looked America enviously and wistfully wondered if only they had our size and population, what great things they could achieve technologically - they are the leaders in many technological areas of the world. And China only surpassed Germany as top exporter recently even though Germany has less than 1/15 the population.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/11/23/wto.germany.role/index.html
It's generally in the attitude of the leaders and people as a whole. Not the size of the country.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/15/AR2008021502901.html
Just because your TV tells you that you're the smartest, doesn't mean it's true.
I've seen two areas in which people's ethical or religious beliefs or aesthetics may affect nanotech research - one is what to do about an actually super-human intelligence, and one is fear about the risks of gray goo (and lower-level contamination.) You're at least as likely to have environmentalists panicking about the gray goo problem, and militarists panicking about the need to be able to destroy any super-human intelligences, and theologians wondering how many angels can dance on the head of a nanobot, and while anything you do is going to get *somebody* ranting about it, the religious arguments that are really going to happen when we start assembling nanotech tools to build enough horsepower to run AI are going to be which flavor of open source license will the new brains be running?, and some of our new nanotech overlords are going to be really annoyed if you insist on upgrading their brains. Also, once some of them start asking for citizenship, it'll get entertaining.
Meanwhile, nanotech's more at the level of self-assembling paint and similar materials science types of problems. China's research investment may advance the state of the art, or it may amount to as little as the Japanese Fifth Generation Computing great leap forward in artificial intelligence did.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This is no different from Japan, the US's chief ally in the region. Why should China let potentially hostile entities own controlling interest in facilities that may have strategic importance for their entire nation? To be honest, it would be really dumb.
Socially, the Chinese are MUCH friendlier and more 'open' to foreigners than are the Japanese. In none of my time in China was I ever made to feel unwelcome, yet it doesn't take long to see through the artificial politeness of the Japanese and start seeing that they are actually thinking "Damn, when will this gaijin get out of my country?".
This is a good point. Honestly, until recently, the US has performed extremely well with innovation in technology. By and large it is still performing well.
However, the culture in the US has been changing for the worse over the decades, as have education standards and national infrastructure. Festering corruption in financial circles and in political leadership is becoming ever more apparent and attempts for even a moderate return to sanity in government are quashed without much subtlety.
Capitalism can be good. Free and fair markets, rather. But the markets in the US are not free anymore. It's who you know and what you know about them, not the quality of your products and efficiency of production that matters now.
In this way the US is about to exchange places with China (if, of course, China manages to rid itself of a sizeable proportion of its endemic corruption).
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
Exactly... this is called QinLaoZhiFu, which means "Industrious Wealth". It is a cultural phrase in China that many parents teach their children. They believe that working very hard is rewarded... and this is a national concept.
[responding to an earlier comment about China's inability to innovate] Interestingly, a Communist society where national values are promoted by the central party has a stronger work-ethic and sense of teamwork than this country walking around the world insisting that everyone must adopt democracy... or else. China has plenty of problems, but it is foolish to assume they cannot innovate simply because Confucianism (which isn't even the majority religion in China) doesn't encourage it.
Buy a plane ticket and visit... don't just ride tour buses and listen to guides... talk to real Chinese... eat lunch with them. They are a remarkable people.
If the Chinese led the world once in innovation, it was a long time ago.
The modern world's scientific achievements are mostly the product of the Western scientific method, and the difference between what China may have accomplished in ancient times and today's science cannot even be compared. Just a reminder that gunpowder, paper, etc. are called inventions of "ancient" China, even by the Chinese themselves.
I agree only to a degree with the original poster. Traditional Chinese culture does indeed stifle innovation, but if you compare overall innovative ability between today's Chinese societies (Mainland China, HK, Taiwan) and those societies heavily influenced by that same culture (Korea, Japan), you'll see a big difference, which for me is largely political. There is and always will be an invisible ceiling on innovation in any restrictive society.
And speaking as an ethnic Chinese, I think there's a big insecurity factor for a lot of Chinese people whenever you bring this subject up. They see any kind of remark similar to what the original poster wrote as some kind of racial degradation, even when there obviously isn't any. This in fact may be the biggest hindrance to Chinese innovation: they are too busy trying to prove to the world they are not racially inferior.
"Worse"? Both capitalism and communism can be, and often are, terrible.
For example, economist Amartya Sen, who won a Noble Prize, did a comparison of India's democratic capitalist experiment with that of the Chinese famine, and the Chinese communist experiment. His work "Hunger and Public Action" estimated the deaths caused by the famines in China to be around 16.5 to 29.5 million. Most estimates regarding the total deaths from the Chinese communist experiment are said to be around 100 million.
Although India didn't have a famine similar to China, Sen notes that "as far as morbidity, mortality and longevity are concerned, China has a large and decisive lead over India", and that "India seems to manage to fill its cupboard with more skeletons every eight years than China put there in its years of shame".
In other words, the democratic capitalist experiment in India from 1947 resulted in more deaths that the entire Communist track record since 1917. By 1979, there were an estimated 100 million deaths in India already.
And before we forget, the Russian capitalist experiment that was prescribed by advisers such as the IMF and World Bank resulted in approximately 3.4 million Russian deaths until about 1998, while others put the figure up to about 15 million premature deaths, with a projected decline of 30% in the population over the coming decades.
The fact is, both systems have had terrible track records.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
This is not true. Foreign companies may own 100% of Chinese companies. Foreigners may operate businesses in China. In industries considered vital to the nation, foreign ownership is limited - for instance banking, oil, transportation, telecommunication. The US, which has the world's most liberal policies in terms of foreign ownership, has similar limits in place, and in the case of banking, China's policy is more liberal.
In the end, all great countries have declined. This has happened to China as well in the past. From what I see in history, it's usually when a people, as a whole, want to live for today with no thought of tomorrow.
This is a very Judaic/Christian look at history - a nation being punished for its decadence! It doesn't have much to do with reality though. "Barbarians," "disease," and "war" are much better answers, but really aren't as thematically interesting. It's seen in our media companies who can't bear the thought of letting go of old systems or even 80 year old cartoons (Steamboat Willy), songs, etcetera
Oh get off it. Tying copyright to the downfall of a nation is just too Slashdot. Try reading a newspaper or a real source of news.
Switzerland never really looked America enviously - they are the leaders in many technological areas of the world
No they aren't.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I speak two languages fluently, at the price of $500.
And that included two two week vacations that were both fun and great practice.
They were tossed back to the stone age during world war two, courtesy the Japanese, and basically left to rot by the West - they are just now regaining technical traction. The Chinese used to lead the planet in terms of innovation and they want that honor back.
Exactly why Europe became what it did is an interesting thing. There is no reason, on the surface, why Europe over any other major culture, and Europe was backwards in many ways.
I believe it had to do with the free exchange of ideas, that challenged the status-quo. We introduced trial by jury, and reduced violence in society by placing vengence in the hands of judges.
There was an economic, social and scientific revolution as well. Holland become independent of Spain, but couldn't use its ports, so they created a vast fleet with which to explore and trade. They brought back ideas and money, and common folk became comparatively wealthy. The society was forward thinking and became full of painters, artists and scientists. They invented the microsope which became a popular curiosity. The motions of the planets were described, and the microscopic zoo was discovered. Something fundemental had happened. They saw past themselves to the book of nature, and began to read it.
While the Ming dynasty sent great junks to explore the world, they also stagnated. A comparatively tiny country - Holland - became a super-power much like Venice once was. The Chinese had invented all sorts of things, but their fundemental direction did not lead them to free thinking.
Of the eastern powers, only Japan successfully made the transition to an industrial society before WWII. I'm sure the reasons are very complex. The west didn't "throw" china away. They economically exploited it - yes. The British left a legacy of good government in many places in the world, and also let their empire go. This does not right the wrongs of the past, that is impossible. But it does allow the situation to move forward.
They will leapfrog the industrial revolution and plow headlong directly into the technological revolution while the rest of the world sits and watches.
I wonder where China will end up. Politically they are as arrogant and close-minded as the US. Taiwan is mine. Tibet is mine. You cannot critize us for how you treat what is mine. When the british cast free their empire, they acknowledged that how they treat their own and each other is a fundemental expression of who they are.
China's pride - and lust for economic prosperity - has exposed the worst qualities of our industrial age. The rest of the world is watching with facination and horror at China's economic miricle.
Sometime in the future we're going to be talking about sustainable development like it's the most important thing in the world. But between now and then, there will be a lot of conflict over who gets what. I wonder where China will end up.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Wrong. Ever been to China? I was there last year.. And I'll say something, the amount of money that's going into commerce and construction is astounding. I've never seen anything like it in the West.
Lots of venture capital is pointed at China, simply because the cost to start something up is about 20% of setting it up in the US (and without a lot of the legal constraint as well, as an added bonus). Given that you see projects of bright ideas, some of which fail, some of which make millions.. Given a set budget, would you prefer to place bets on 10 of these, or 50 (given that the success is about even wherever the startup is performed, due to global nature of the project).
I'll bet on the 50 please. Five times the likely payoff, and the failures don't really hurt that much, as you don't gamble an awful lot out there.
VC is incredibly easy to find out in China.
If you just know "everything" about nanotech, or everything about shakespear you won't know much. But if you, as you say, also know physics, math and chemistry then sure you will be usefull. There are people who know more than just everything about Shakespeare, they might know linguistics, drama, phsycology and perhaps everything about all pop lit authors today.
Are you saying one nerd is better than another?