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.'"

Comments

Unfortunately,

[wcpalmer]

I see this being a place where the US will always lag behind due to conservative Christianity and the whole "don't play God" thing.

Not trying to troll, but this sort of research and development is going to happen regardless. Other countries will take up the slack and fill any gap we do not.

Re:Unfortunately,

[taupin]

If the Chinese government actually does put its weight behind this plan, I don't see that there's much the U.S. can do : China has the advantage of much cheaper labor, equipment, and so on and so forth, in addition to an extremely powerful, centralized government that is not at all afraid to use that power.

Re:Unfortunately,

[iNaya]

I wouldn't say that at all. The United States puts more money into nanotechnology investment in the world. Per capita, the leader is Taiwan. This was at least true in 2004, where the federal government invested $1.6 billion, and the private sector about $1.7 billion, more than half of world wide private investment in nano-tech. I'm guessing now: but, I'd say that the funding from both sectors has probably increased significantly since then.

Re:Unfortunately,

[DigiShaman]

Since when does developing nano technology require brute force cheap labor and low tech equipment?

Nano Tech will require bright minds and very highend industrial technology. Currently, the US leads China in both fields.

Re:Unfortunately,

[mochan_s]

I think it's more akin to pouring water into sand to build a pool.

China does not have a research base and trying to "leapfrog" without a base makes no sense. (research base in terms of university research structure and the experts)

NSF gets $6-7 billion a year. What is $400 million spread over 5 years.

Re:Unfortunately,

[rolfwind]

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.

Re:Unfortunately,

[TubeSteak]

Nano Tech will require bright minds and very highend industrial technology. Currently, the US leads China in both fields. First: I don't think I know a single person in the fields of math or science who hasn't had a professor from China. If they're good enough to teach you, in your country, they've probably got a few left over for their own industry at home.

Second: How much high end equipment does the USA import from China?
And you're trying to suggest they don't have industrial technology?

Re:Unfortunately,

[mrbluze]

Currently, the US leads China in both fields. But China needn't fear, as the US is doing everything it can from its side to reverse the situation.

Re:Unfortunately,

[lee1026]

Assuming, of course, that the US simply don't just hire away all of their best and brightest, like it have been for a long time now. How do you think those professors got here in the first place?

Re:Unfortunately,

[kamapuaa]

(for instance, no foreign companies can have more than 49% ownership in a domestic company over there).

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.

Re:Unfortunately,

[Waffle Iron]

Assuming, of course, that the US simply don't just hire away all of their best and brightest, like it have been for a long time now.

We've been able to do that because all the money was over here. However, between trade deficits and government borrowing, we've been working really hard on sending that money over to China lately. So before long it may not make much sense for their best and brightest to come over here when they can get paid with US cash right in their own hometowns.

Re:Unfortunately,

[Capitalist1]

The problem is that they have *everyone else's* advanced technology and manufacturing plants, and those teachers who are so hot in their fields are *here*, not there. China's political system, and at root its culture, is the real barrier to their ability to become an economic powerhouse. Socialism doesn't work in the real world. It just doesn't. They've lived under it for the last 40-50 years, and it will take an equivalent of the Enlightenment for them to overcome the damage that has done to them.

Re:Unfortunately,

[BeanThere]

I presume you're trolling, but Switzerland are actually in some areas leaders in medical research. So joke about chocolate and cuckoo clocks all you want, but when you get sick, there is a chance that some of the medicine that saves you will have been pioneered in Switzerland.

Re:Unfortunately,

[HiThere]

Socialism works just fine in the real world. Communism doesn't scale, but it works "ok" at a local level. (Nobody's been fool enough to try it on a national level.)

China is historically more capitalist than the US has ever been. There was a brief pause after the trauma of the Japanese invasion when Mao took over, but it seems to me that they're heading back to more normal times. (Of course, for China normal times means "We are the only important country. Everyone outside is a barbarian." And it includes a very strong central government. Expect a new Emperor soon (possibly with a different name).

But this "normal China" is profoundly insular, not just ego-centric, but almost autistic. I can't really see the Chinese push into space as harmonious with their long term view. Nano-tech, though... they might do really well in nano-tech. (Remember, China may be insular, but it's also much of humanity. [Don't recall the exact percentages...and it changes from year to year anyway.])

It seems reasonable to expect China will become a dominant technological power in the near future...but possibly not in all fields.

meh

[Sylos]

Last time China tried a great leap forward..didn't work out so well.

Re:meh

[neumayr]

The GP was referring to the Great Leap Forward:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

No, it didn't work out very well.

Re:meh

[Harmonious Botch]

How do you figure? They had massive famines following. Tens of millions died because Mao fucked up their economy so badly with his great leap. They literally could not manage bare subsistance rations for their country. From wikipedia:"The largest famine ever (in absolute terms) was the Chinese famine of 1958-61 that occurred as a result of the Great Leap Forward."

In contradiction to the Summary

[phantomcircuit]

The article says exactly the opposite of the summary.

Still, for all the big talk, the actual government investment is not overwhelming. The researchers estimated that the Chinese government only invested $400 million from 2002 to 2007, although that investment is expected to rise considerably.

Re:In contradiction to the Summary

[mrxak]

Surely you don't expect the submitter to RTFA either, do you?

Standard funding scare & beg

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like somebody wants more funding and is raising the China bogeyman to do it.

Re:Pollution

[B3ryllium]

Okay, great. So instead of Grey Goo, we're going to end up with a Red Goo situation?

totally ignorant

[Quadraginta]

As someone who has actually worked with academics and entrepreneurs in this field, I call bullshit on this. No professional scientist or engineer I've met has spent a moment's thought on what any putative "don't play God" faction thinks, or even thinks he needs to. There's zero evidence that any such faction, should it even exist outside of your imagination, has ever had any significant effect on technological advancement in this country.

Furthermore, my experience suggests that the Chinese have a much more substantial and real cultural barrier to any kind of technological progress (which is, I think, one reason why a society civilized a thousand years before the West, and having had a far larger population for far longer, has nevertheless consistently lagged behind the West in terms of invention and innovation, at least on a per capita basis).

The problem is that the Confucian tradition strongly reinforcea an acceptance of existing heirarchy, and of paying the utmost respect to your elders and those better educated and more experienced than yourself. This is antithetical to innovation and invention. The only way you can invent something new is by doing something that older and wiser heads think is foolish. (If they didn't think it was dumb, they'd have done it themselves already.)

Consequently true innovation happens only in a culture that does not value established wisdom too much, which is willing to take some chances on a young, hot-headed, crazy contrarian way of thinking. China has a long and strong cultural tradition of valuing established wisdom, and I think that is a much more significant cultural barrier to innovation than any silly Chicken-Little faddish fear that evangelicals are going to rise up and smite researchers working on nanoscopic gears and motors because the latter weren't described in the Bible.

USA has no national goals

[EmbeddedJanitor]

USA made great strides during the 1960s because the whole space thing was seen as a national goal with everyone onboard. Getting there was a national priority, above just any individual company's priority. That has ceased to be. Sure there were some Lockheed vs Boeing etc spats, but nothing like the inter-corporate fights of today. Major tech companies now just spend more time body-slamming each other.

USA lacks national technological goals now and no matter how bright the minds, if they don't have a supporting environment then they will not reach their potential.

China is working as a nation whiich means they will get further with what they have.

Money and equipment don't make for winning. Here's the story of the 1996 Americas Cup: The US team had the might of Boeing (Crays etc) and fleets of white coats to do their math modelling etc. The kiwis had a corner in their warehouse with a couple of SGI workstations. The kiwis achieved more with their math modelling because the math guy was onsite and slept on the floor next to his computers. They used what equipment they had with maximum effectiveness.

Re:USA has no national goals

[damienl451]

This article confuses being smart with being culture, which are two widely different things. Knowing lots of trivia about Shakespeare and Milton means you're cultivated (not smart). Knowing a lot about, say, nanotechs (as in: you're making valuable contributions to the field) means you're intelligent/competent in your field of expertise, but doesn't mean that you're cultivated. We can certainly lament that many Americans don't know much about history or geography, but it doesn't follow that they're less intelligent.

I also dislike how she labels everyone who disagrees with her an `anti-rationalist'. There is nothing irrational or anti-rational about claiming that the average American doesn't need to know foreign languages. Why would not knowing a foreign language be `a manifestation of ignorance'? Sure, if you're a businessman, a diplomat or a show-off, being multilingual is beneficial. If you're a mechanic, a bank teller or a steel-mill worker, I don't see the point.

Re:USA has no national goals

[guacamole rocks]

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.

Re:USA has no national goals

[Dr. Hellno]

The only problem I have with this article is the argument that media, not content are to blame. Video games are mentioned as a new development during the course of American intellectual decline, with the obvious implication that they are partially responsible. The author also mentions that she can't prove "hammering away at a Microsoft Xbox" is less beneficial to the young mind than reading, which clearly means that she believes this to be the case.

The problem is, she's right... but the xbox is not to blame.

Anyone who played monkey island and now plays halo knows what I mean. Likewise, anyone who has seen truly great films and now sees "live free or die hard", or worse, "transformers", knows what I mean. The content has become stupider, not the media. This is because people seem to want stupid fare, and that's not a phenomenon I know how to explain.

If I can offer any kind of proof of the innocence of videogames as a medium, it's this: when I was about six, my parents installed some simple games for me on the family computer. The games were educational; with mickey mouse as my avatar, I remember learning the word xylophone. In another game, the concept of opposites was illustrated to me by example. Later, I learned about pioneers in Oregon trail; I learned my sense of humor largely from exposure to lucasfilm games.

This is quickly becoming tl;dr. So, to summarize: this article is bullshit because it blames videogames (among other things) for the crumbling of the American mind; it fails to see that games without intelligent content, and movies of the same nature, are symptoms of modern-day America, not causes.

Re:USA has no national goals

[Anonymous Coward]

I use multiple languages for my work, but I fully agree. Achieving fluency in a foreign language is a noble goal, but for many people there's many other noble goals that should take priority. For many people, it's a luxury with little practical benefit - one that takes a very large amount of time and no small amount of money to master.

Re:USA has no national goals

[Angostura]

Actually, I see a false dichotomy here. Knowing either lots about Shakespear or Nanotech mean that you are educated. That is all. You've been educated in different fields. Intelligence has more to do (in my opinion) with the ability to manipulate this knowledge and extrapolate from it in useful ways. The scope for extrapolation and manipulation is arguably greater with nanotech than Shakespear.

Re:USA has no national goals

[g4b]

Even if I agree with you in certain terms (e.g. less educated or cultivated people not being less intelligent), I still wouldn't dismiss the article's quintessence. My thoughts: and please, since my english isn't quite native, sorry if some sentences may be confusing, just read over and guess what i mean
Preamble: I use intellectual gifted people as extreme example of high intelligence, but that doesn't mean, I only call this certain type of intelligence "more intelligent" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_giftedness First: Being bright and having a great deal of realisation, abstraction, association or analytical benefits (which are many, while not all, aspects of intelligence), doesn't mean, you reach the same goals with it as any other. If you are smart, but grow up in an environment, which doesn't push your skill in being smart, you don't get smarter, since your gifts are not attended to. This means, cultivation and education has something to do with increasing odds to create broad-horizoned and educated people, but it doesn't guarantee you more (as in quantity) intelligent people.

Being intelligent can also give you a great deal of trouble; intellectually gifted persons tend to solve problems by explanation rather than confrontation. Imagine intelligent people amongst cavemen, where strength is primary goal in life.
Being intelligent and having the wrong surroundings (no benefit from being educated, different goals when you grow up, less education oriented paradigms) leaves you as intelligent person like a burning candle without air. Also, you need social attendance, since you are a "thinker", and with this, your social skills have to be developed by "loring you out of your thinktank".
Without this, you waste computational power to daily problems - and start getting quite depressed.

From my point of view you can't separate intelligence and rate it on an "as is" basis. Very intelligent people can be less cultivated, but with cultivation, they may use their potential in a greater aspect. And with cultivation I mean knowing things about the world not certainly bound to one topic, like, who was W. Shakespeare and speak other languages.
Also, a cultivated surrounding challenges the people to develop their intellectual skills, just as money can make your life easier.

Second: intelligence doesn't make you a good scientist. Learning and Working does. Intellectually gifted persons e.g. can be often misunderstood as slow learners, because they don't focus their attention to one subject so easily. But in the end, they might make better scientists, because they try to extend the theories they are working on by own ideas, pushing creativity.

To the topic: if you try to create nanotechnology, and you have a lot of people with intellectual potential to actually go into this subject, and have bright ideas, you need a sophisticated education system, which guarantees you:
a) education in specialization (e.g. computer science, nanotechnology...)
b) cultivation (to broaden your horizon)
c) educated teachers who can judge your intellectual structure and attend to it like you need it (otherwise you only push people who can learn a lot, not think a lot)

Especially learning other languages affects your thinking patterns a lot. I can tell that from experience, no matter what studies may say (luckily they don't contradict me), since I speak Hungarian and German, and a little bit of English and French.

Final note: I doubt being China more successful atm. in nanotechnology. They might have the intellectual power, but are they more cultivated? Do they have the same educational benefits? I don't think so, but honestly, I lack education about this topic.
But I don't doubt, that the mentioned article doesn't show us, that the States could do better in education, to leverage their inspirational force and leap forward in technology faster; sooner or later, China may catch up and m

Re:USA has no national goals

[david_thornley]

In Europe, knowing more than one language is beneficial, because (unless you live deep in Russia) you don't have far to go to find a place where people speak another language. There are, indeed, fairly small countries (like Belgium and Switzerland) that are multilingual.

In the US, knowing Spanish might be useful in the South, and possibly French in the Northeast, but other than that English is all you need. While there are good things about knowing a second language, it isn't nearly as useful as in other places. Or in other languages - English is a very good language to know, in general, but the US already speaks that.

Moreover, it's relatively hard to find people to practice a language with, and if you don't use it periodically you're going to start forgetting it.

Knowing only English while living in the US is not the same as knowing only one language while living in Europe.

Re:USA has no national goals

[dwater]

most Americans need to know just the one foreign language - English.

Kneejerk anti-religious trolling

[billstewart]

Look, if you're going to do knee-jerk anti-religious trolling, at least do it when it's vaguely on-topic, like stem-cell research, bootstrapping the Eschaton, or building AIs with off-switches. Otherwise it's in as bad taste as saying that we can't do it because too many of our scientists are Jews, or that they can't do it because not enough of their scientists are gay.

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.

talk about bs...

[djupedal]

"has nevertheless consistently lagged behind the West in terms of invention and innovation

Let's see - China had the sundial, sextant, gunpowder and circumnavigation of the planet under their belt long before the west stopped playing with dolls and you make a claim like that?

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. They will leapfrog the industrial revolution and plow headlong directly into the technological revolution while the rest of the world sits and watches.

Re:talk about bs...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:talk about bs...

[microbox]

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.

National Chauvinism?

[Geezle2]

Since when does developing nano technology require brute force cheap labor and low tech equipment?

Nano Tech will require bright minds and very highend industrial technology. Currently, the US leads China in both fields.

The problem with the "bright minds" that the US leads with is that America doesn't really produce them domestically any more. The US imports most of its bright minds nowadays and from where is it getting a lot of them? China.

Sure, some of those bright minds stay in America after they are sharpened in American universities and steeled in American corporations. . .but quite a few go home too. Think about it. . .you are a smart Chinese engineer with a great idea. Do you stay in America to develop your idea; hiring expensive, dumb-assed, lazy, and worthless trailer park punks to staff your fledgling company or do you go back to China to get the ball rolling? Tough decision, isn't it? Not!

Now, about that high end industrial technology. How far behind the US do you really think China is? (Keep in mind that most of the high tech goodies that Americans like to consume are produced in China). Do you think they are 25 to 30 years behind America? Wrong! Try 3 to 5 years behind - at the best! With a population way over a billion and a university system that is growing at warp speed, China is whittling that lead down fast.

Your national chauvinism likely blinds you to the fact, but China has, so far, reached all of the major technological milestones that they have set for themselves. Your comment about "low tech equipment" also suggests that you have not been there lately. Sure, there are still some places in the hinterlands where farmers continue to use water buffalo to prepare their rice fields, but the same is true for Japan. This is actually a good thing and means that China still has an opportunity to preserve some of their cultural heritage before it fades into history by turning some of these communities into domestic tourist destinations. The rest of China, however, is well into the process of becoming a 21st century megapower. You don't have to like that fact, but it is healthier to come to grips with it.

Re:National Chauvinism?

[malkavian]

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.

Re:I plan ...

[martin-boundary]

Uh, this is slashdot. Some of us don't think that "ass fuck" is a grammatically correct way of placing the direct object after the verb.

Open to foreigners?

[Geezle2]

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).

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?".

talk about revising history.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Let's see - China had the sundial, sextant, gunpowder and circumnavigation of the planet under their belt long before the west stopped playing with dolls and you make a claim like that? "

Islam had the astrolab

Islam had sundials.

Islam was circumnavigating the world.

Islam had explosive gunpowder.

Re:talk about revising history.

[mrbluze]

That settles it. I'm moving my business to Islam. Is the weather good there? How are the schools and will my wife enjoy the shopping?

Re:talk about revising history.

[dpilot]

Islam was taken over by its own fundamentalists, too.

We're following steps they have trod, about a thousand years later, with our Christian Fundamentalists.

But I still don't see China stepping into the leadership role, the way they're planning. Look at my .sig, China wants the trappings of science, the technology. To really have the science, you need freedom of thought. The real question about China is whether they will grant sufficient freedom of thought for scientific leadership, and then find that they can't cram the genie back into the bottle.

Back before the Iraq war, I suggested that Saddam had "his most loyal scientists" working feverishly on WMD. Had he had "his best scientists" working on them, they might have achieved something. I see something of the same quandary for China, as long as the Party insists on retaining absolute political power.

Re:But Americans are still worse, right?

[mrbluze]

But capitalism and Americans are still worse right?

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).

Corrections

[kahei]

Sextants are derived from quadrants and astrolables, both Arab inventions.
Sundials were used by the ancient Egyptians and it's rather unlikely they got them from China -- it's probably something that's been invented many times in many places.
'Circumnavigation' appears to be an idea from Gavin Menzies' book and has little scholarly support (probably lots of *political* support) even in China and nothing resembling actual evidence, although like the Da Vinci Code it's probably going to be remembered as real history by hordes of idiots.

Manchu China was technologically and politically stagnant for a LONG time before the Japanese arrived, and Ming China had been technologically and politically stagnant for an even longer time before that, which is how the Manchurians were able to conquer China in the first place.

HTH

Re:But Americans are still worse, right?

[krou]

"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.

the physics nerd vs. lit. nerd

[emj]

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?

Open? I don't think so

[querist]

Quoth the poster "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"

I must disagree. I've been to China, and I'm going back soon. It was _very_ easy to obtain a visa as an American citizen.

I have a very dear friend in China who wanted to come here. She could not obtain a visa - a tourist visa - to visit the USA. The requirements and the questions asked are amazingly intrusive. It is very difficult for a citizen of the PRC to obtain a tourist visa to come to the USA.

article well-balanced

[atamagabakkaomae]

Hmm, there have been so many replies already, but I do not really see anyone reporting too much of an inside view.
I have been living/working in China for some time (in a Chinese tech company) and my girlfriend works in one of the few larger Chinese multimedia content provider companies. The development (regarding the complete scientific devlopment, but Nanotech in particular) I see is:

1. The goverment invests a lot in new technologies, but mostly trying to spark corporate investments (they keep their money rather for the Olympic games / military equipment / other means of keeping control of that huge country). So basically I think, the Chinese government could spend a lot more money if they wanted. It is doing the big "blabla" to, one the one hand make their own people happy (kinda propaganda), and on the other hand to fire this wonderful sense of competition the other countries have with the 'Red Giant'.

2. There are a lot of ingenious scientists in China. There is vast number of universities in the country and if a person is really smart, then the chances that he/she will raise to the top are very good. Regardless of the average level of the universities, selection is made and the best people do go to the top universities (Tsing Hua / Beijing Da Xue / maybe Fudan) It is undeniable that there is a huge amount of interlectual potential in the country.

3. On the other hand is the difference in niveau between one of the top universities and one of the average universities severe. The purpose of average universities in China is not to breed excellence but good standard techicians for the factories. So, in contrast to a not so numerous elite, there are a lot of average graduates, who are quite unlikely to make huge discoveries in Nanotechnology etc.

What I want to say with 2. and 3. is, that the scientific progress in China should neither be overrated nor underrated. There is no need to panic because of a future invasion of millions of brilliant scientists from China, nor is there zero potential. This goes for Nanotechnology as well: of course Chinese scientists are also researching the field with sponsorship from the goverment, but for sure they will not come out with THE huge new development like Jack in the box.

Regarding the 'Zi Zhu Chuang Xin': this is not the Chinese way of overstating their potential to the world. If one has ever checked on Chinese names for shops etc. in Shanghai or Beijing you might find a lot of "Zhu's wonderful shoeshop - the best shoeshop in the world". This is just a tradition in giving names, nothing more. Actually some Americans might be quite familiar with this kind of thing..

4. The older generation in China (40 upwards) has lived parts of their lifes in a very limited, sometimes very poor, sometimes very oppressed environment (one child policy only one example): now that the country is opening up this has several consequences (which do have direct impact on the Nanotech debate, I dont wanna be off-topic): People have a tremendous strive to use their new freedom to become as rich as the people they see evryday on tv or cruising their Beamer through Shanghai. This makes them strong and this gives them this energy that the west is so affraid about. This gives them interest in exploring and exploiting new technologies.

5. People grow reckless. Their cultural education was anihilated and forbidden during the cultural revolution. Now, for many people, the only ideal they have is money. It is wrong to think that the Chinese as such stand for their nation and want to exploit the other countries. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most people are fed up with their country. They will act with an ellbow-mentality not only to foreign people but also amongst themselves.

So also for 4. and 5.: People are very strong and forward thinking, but not without their (given the circumstances) quite natural flaws. It is true that many of the average Chinese people will outrun an average westerner in drive to become wealthy and successful. But also