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China's Secret Scientific Megaprojects
An anonymous reader writes "The Diplomat reports on the 2006 National Medium to Long-term Plan (MLP) for the Development of Science and Technology, China's most ambitious national science and technology plan to date. The MLP consists of sixteen megaprojects — both civilian and military — that serve as 'S&T vanguard programs designed to transform China's science & technology capabilities in areas such as electronics, semiconductors, [and] telecommunications.' Thirteen of the megaprojects are listed in the MLP, while three are classified for national security reasons. The three classified megaprojects are likely the military components of the Shenguang Laser Project (used for thermonuclear weapons), the Beidou 2 Satellite Navigation System, and the Hypersonic Vehicle Technology Project."
They haven't started on the project framework factory project.
When that one completes, the Eschaton shall surely be immanentized.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Are they sure they translated everything properly, and China isn't actually going to weaponize My Little Pony?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The article refers to it as Shenguang Laser Project for Inertial Confinement Fusion, which may give a clue about what it's primarily for. It's apparently the Chinese equivalent of USA's National Ignition Facility.
Since WW2, the US has had a huge lead in science and tech, in part due to the lack of competition from countries that were severely damaged by the war. China is the second largest economy in the world and is the first "command economy" to actually offer competition in innovation to the US. US companies have long argued that the free market was the best way to produce cutting edge innovation. Aside from the defense arena, that is how most tech has been developed.... without an overarching central plan. Now US tech faces a concerted, planned, and nationally funded challenge from China. If the MLP innitiatives are successful in moving China ahead of the US in the targeted areas of research, it will be the end of the hands-off approach of the US government.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
All that great technology and wealth is meaningless if you live in a toxic environment.
You so funny. Let's jot down a quick list of things that will likely cripple China within the next 20 years.
- Slowing economy
- Massive population
- The food shortage of the century
- Fresh water
- Municipal incompetence
- Gross amounts of industrial pollution
And those are just broad points. China's government is so corrupt that it's highly unlikely it will actually serve the people in any measurable manner.
Is the solution to one group thinking it can "crush" the others having another group "crush" the first, or everybody learning to work with each other, regardless of which plot of land they happened to be born on?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Is what happens if china funds and develops fusion technology in the next two decades, and using it's plethora of foreign owned companies, patents/trade secrets the technology, thus giving them 30 years of control over cheap ubiquitous energy, while the rest of us fight over the ever dwindling scraps of fossil fuel?
Hell, they might be able to keep it all in-country and just provide energy services from their borders at just cheap enough to bankrupt the competition rates.
The Chinese have already succeeded in their main mega-project: Chinese restaurants. While mostly salt, fat, and MSG, Americans gobble it down and feel they are eating healthy because there is a piece of broccoli in there somewhere.
After having a read, it looks like here in the UK we are actually doing stuff; but crap at showing off about it. No change there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus
China does not really need to invent anything to clean up its air. They need to absorb technology and regulation from the west.
Scrubbing exhaust from all coal fired plants and enforcing that all cars must have functioning catalytic converters would probably solve a lot of the air quality problems that they have.
Soneone's been reading his Tom Clancy, hasn't he....
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The NIF is 95% a weapons project, and likely this is as well.
The complex parts of high-technology nuclear weapons are not nuclear physics, that part is firmly established. The complexity is in the radiative transfer, fluid mechanics and equations of state in extreme conditions.
These kinds of fusion projects (NIF) simulate the multi-stage (indirect drive) radiation driven compression of nuclear fuel. The goal is to get clean calibration data for the simulation software used to make weapons without full nuclear testing, which is banned by treaty.
There isn't much energy generation possibility in these.
But while Western governments twiddle their thumbs in their respective senates or congress figuring out how to recover from a devastating decline in the economy with a mounting ecological deficit and can't do anything without gauging public opinion from the largely idiot masses when it comes to any kind of "super-project", China will most likely solve most of the world's problems in energy and climate change.
Surprisingly the country with past human right violations may actually save humanity, while countries that promote the idea they protect human rights sit and let the world rot while their ineffective politicians quibble in their grand ballrooms of democracy.
Of course if China's economy collapses under the weight and pressure of these super-projects, the world is fucked.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
24% of China's population will be over 60 in 20 years while just 17% of the US. The US has both a higher birth rate and immigration rate than most other developed or semi-developed countries. Each "only child" in China may be supporting two living parents and up to four living grandparents.
The 13 published Megaprojects.
Core electronic components, high-end general use chips and basic software products
Large-scale integrated circuit manufacturing equipment and techniques
New generation broadband wireless mobile communication networks
Advanced numeric-controlled machinery and basic manufacturing technology
Large-scale oil and gas exploration
Large advanced nuclear reactors
Water pollution control and treatment
Breeding new varieties of genetically modified organisms
Pharmaceutical innovation and development
Control and treatment of AIDS, hepatitis, and other major diseases
Large aircraft
High-definition earth observation system
Manned spaceflight and lunar probe programs
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