China Extends Dominance Over US in Critical Technology Race (aspi.org.au)
- Reference: 0175579213
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/12/02/1417252/china-extends-dominance-over-us-in-critical-technology-race
- Source link: https://www.aspi.org.au/opinion/critical-technology-tracker-two-decades-data-show-rewards-long-term-research-investment
China has made significant gains in quantum sensors, high-performance computing, and semiconductor chip manufacturing. The U.S. maintains its edge in quantum computing, vaccines, and natural language processing. The report identified 24 technologies at "high risk" of Chinese monopoly, including radar, advanced aircraft engines, and drone technology - nearly double from last year's assessment. India has also emerged as a rising power, ranking among the top five countries in 45 technologies and displacing the U.S. for second place in biological manufacturing and distributed ledgers.
[1] https://www.aspi.org.au/opinion/critical-technology-tracker-two-decades-data-show-rewards-long-term-research-investment
Education system (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's all good because we'll teach "Creationism" in US schools and force 'em to post the 10 Commandments!
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, and will get far worse next year. But at least the children in my state will get the "good jobs". Where I live, here they still value science and real education. No matter what the US Federal Gov. does, this State will still fight for their kids.
China may or may not have overtaken the US yet, but it will in the next 4 years when the GOP undoes everything Biden got passed and slaps on their tariffs. But hey, the billionaires will get their nice cushy tax cut. Who cares about the deficit anyway.
Honest question (Score:3, Interesting)
China has been known for publishing tens of thousands of fake research papers, and I wonder if this technological leap is actually real and not something fabricated as well. I'm well aware of their high-speed rail network, which is indeed something to be proud of, but what about the other tech/science fields?
Re: (Score:1)
> China has been known for publishing tens of thousands of fake research papers...
Recognisable, no doubt, by their complete lack of citations or supporting evidence.
By the way, where is yours?
Re:Honest question (Score:5, Informative)
[1]https://www.economist.com/chin... [economist.com]
[2]https://qz.com/978037/china-pu... [qz.com]
[3]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1... [nytimes.com]
[4]https://www.ft.com/content/324... [ft.com]
[5]https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
[1] https://www.economist.com/china/2024/02/22/why-fake-research-is-rampant-in-china
[2] https://qz.com/978037/china-publishes-more-science-research-with-fabricated-peer-review-than-everyone-else-put-together
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china-science-fraud-scandals.html
[4] https://www.ft.com/content/32440f74-7804-4637-a662-6cdc8f3fba86
[5] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00733-5
Re:Honest question (Score:4, Insightful)
> China has been known for publishing tens of thousands of fake research papers, and I wonder if this technological leap is actually real and not something fabricated as well.
While there is indeed a problem with fake research papers coming out of China [ [1]ref [economist.com]], it's nevertheless true that there is also a lot of leading-edge research going on in China. The bottom-tier research institutions may be producing low-quality work, but the top-tier research institutions are not. With a population over four times that of the U.S., a culture that pushes children to excel in science, and a government that is very strongly funding science programs in the universities and technology research in both universities and industry, yes, they are indeed establishing a dominant record in technology.
Pay attention to recent research results. The Chinese push is very evident.
[1] https://www.economist.com/china/2024/02/22/why-fake-research-is-rampant-in-china
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that they have this technology, which is ahead of ours so can't be stolen unless they also have a time machine, and are pushing out products that use it is all the proof you need.
This is the result of theft for generations (Score:3, Insightful)
China has systematically stolen R&D work product and IP from US and Western research, industrial, and academic institutions for over a half century, enabling it to leapfrog and skip decades of painstaking and meticulous R&D, and hundreds of billions of dollars of work, resulting in the greatest transfer of wealth in human history by any measure.
This doesn't mean China can't innovate รข" it's simply the truth. What's worse, US and Western academics have often seen these collaborations as beneficial and for the "good of humanity". Even if individual Chinese researchers saw the collaborations the same way, the Chinese government and the CCP saw them through a different lens.
And now we see the results: China being able to cherry-pick the most successful research outcomes from US and Western work and expenditures, and now continue build on those, now even leading in many areas because they didn't have to explore countless dead ends and endure untold research failures on the path to success and discovery.
They just stole it, built on the best and most successful research, and here we are.
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Ah yes, that is the problem! China is way ahead in technology because it steals other people's. Er...
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
> Ah yes, that is the problem! China is way ahead in technology because it steals other people's. Er...
Steals it, adds to it, commercializes it, and sells it.
In the west, " [1]not invented here [hypeinnovation.com]" syndrome is a barrier to innovation. In China, it's an opportunity.
[1] https://www.hypeinnovation.com/blog/what-is-not-invented-here-syndrome
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Read my comment again. They were behind until recently, and used five decades of theft as a foundation. They skipped literally generations of R&D, and saved hundreds of billions -- indeed, likely trillions -- of dollars by stealing R&D and IP, primarily from the US. And now yes, they are innovating on top of that theft, by being able to take only the most successful and proven technologies and research, because we already did the work of lifetimes of researchers showing which things worked and which
Same as always through history (Score:2)
Theft happens everywhere at all levels of all societies. China has no monopoly on that one. There will be heaps of examples of historically innovations that have been "moved" to bigger manufacturing hubs and claimed as their own just simply because of outspending.
Patents are meant to regulate this concern but big money always wins for itself. Again, China has no monopoly on this mechanic. Just it's now getting good at it is all.
Re: (Score:2)
And as the article is pointing out, eventually the big spending begets its own innovations.
Re: This is the result of theft for generations (Score:2)
You think western (and other) countries didn't "steal" IP while they were developing? Think again. The USA was guilty, for one.
China has now largely moved out of that phase of development...look out.
Opinion worth less than soggy used toilet paper. (Score:2)
An opinion written by a paid think-tank, from a nation that even the most casual of google lookups would reveal is too busy snogging and groping China.
Australia is tying their wagon to the Chinese horse, and what they don't know is the Chinese wheedle and cheat every partner they enter relations with.
We already got a taste of it, now we need more of the world to figure out what rats the Chinese gov't is, and shun them accordingly.
Don't people consider the source of an utterance before believing at as gospel
What the US needs to do (Score:2)
US dominance in technology started largely due to World War II and its aftermath. The US got a massive influx of brilliant scientists and mathematicians. First, those who were Jewish fleeing the Nazis, and then later refugees from all over Europe. In order to hang on, the US needs to be open to letting those bright immigrants come here and thrive. Unfortunately, the trend the last few years has been the exact opposite, and with another incoming Trump administration, it is likely going to be even harder. The
Think of it from an immigrant's view (Score:2)
> US dominance in technology started largely due to World War II and its aftermath. The US got a massive influx of brilliant scientists and mathematicians. First, those who were Jewish fleeing the Nazis, and then later refugees from all over Europe. In order to hang on, the US needs to be open to letting those bright immigrants come here and thrive. Unfortunately, the trend the last few years has been the exact opposite, and with another incoming Trump administration, it is likely going to be even harder. The US is shooting itself in the foot.
You're absolutely correct, but consider that even Trump isn't going to do much to hurt his new tech friends. That anti-immigrant rhetoric is reserved for the poor immigrants, not the engineers. Secondly, OK, you're a brilliant software engineer. Where do you want to live? The choice is typically the USA or home.
So yeah, China is providing more opportunities for the Chinese-born minds, but say you're born in Croatia, picking a random country. You probably speak some English from school. Where are you
Who exactly is this source? (Score:2)
Never heard of them until now, but suddenly they're making grandiose policy pronouncements? And why are we being asked to take them seriously?
Gee, a think tank paper pushing a political agenda (Score:5, Insightful)
Who'd-a thunk.
Every word should be taken with a grain of salt. Listening to the low-grade PhDs talk about the transparent attempts to influence political discourse at their desk was very disheartening. The process is - money is paid to think tank, documents like this are generated, they are used to lobby legislators for something or other, and this provides the 'intellectual heft' to justify the policy. A few years later, it's demonstrated to be horseshit. Rinse and repeat, while the PhDs go off to do something else less soul-crushing with the rest of their careers.
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I hope you enjoy your trip up the Nile. But watch out for Chinese crocodiles!
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> I hope you enjoy your trip up the Nile. But watch out for Chinese crocodiles!
I sympathize with your position, and my initial thoughts were in line with yours. But I think GP has a valid point. The truth probably contains elements of China's tech ascent, America's tech descent, and self-serving propaganda designed to take advantage of both.
Australian think tank [Re:Gee, a think tank pa...] (Score:4, Insightful)
An Australian think tank, no less.
The Australians pay a lot more attention to China than the U.S. or Europe, because they're a lot closer.
Re: Australian think tank [Re:Gee, a think tank pa (Score:1)
Not if you include all those military bases spread along China's coast.
There's also Guam, and Alaska...surely they're significantly closer than Australia?
Re:Gee, a think tank paper pushing a political age (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't a lot of it quite obvious to anyone paying attention though?
DJI is dominating the drone market. All the good 3D printers are Chinese. Hikvision is a powerhouse in the CCTV market. Huawei still sells plenty of phones and tablets, despite the sanctions, and are leading with wireless comms R&D and enterprise hardware.
China clearly has the best EV batteries and drivetrains, as evidenced by everyone else buying them. Teslas are made in the US and China, and the Chinese ones are just better. Batteries are more robust, charge faster, go further, and the quality of the overall car is higher. Ditto for Chinese brands, they now rival German luxury quality.
On renewables China dominates the solar market, both for panels and inverters. For wind the only reason anyone else gets much of a look-in is because they can't meet domestic demand before really pushing exports. Grid scale batteries we have already covered.
They have the best rail in the world, the fastest trains, and will probably overtake Japan for maglev too. Nobody comes close to them when it comes to digging tunnels either.
China has competitive supercomputers. It has its own domestic CPUs and GPUs that are rapidly advancing and already good enough for a lot of purposes. They have high end flash memory production, and RAM.
There are people on YouTube who detail buying Chinese construction equipment, from power tools to excavators. To an extent you get what you pay for, but there are some genuinely good products there and for very reasonable prices even after you ship them. Not really surprising, given how much construction China does.
Audiophiles are finding that their HiFi gear is competitive now. About 15 years ago I got some Yuin PK1 earbuds and I've yet to hear anything better.
This year Chinese scientists cured type 2 diabetes in some patients. You probably think they were lying, but they are going to have that commercialized and exported in the next few years so we shall see.
Chinese aircraft are getting good, fast, as are the engines. It's pretty clear that in a few more years Airbus and Boeing will have stiff competition, as will RR and other engine manufacturers. It's another classic "oh but they are just copying, once they catch up they won't be able to overtake on their own", followed by "we need sanctions because of communism/slave labour/cooties" when what they really mean is "we need sanctions because they overtook us, again!"
Re: Gee, a think tank paper pushing a political ag (Score:1)
I'd be surprised if you find anyone (else) to agree with you here on this cesspit of irrational sinophobia that is slashdot.
Nice to see someone is paying attention.
Yes, it is obvious, if you have your eyes (and brain) open. Not too many do, though.
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The frustrating part is it feels like that movie about the asteroid where some people are trying to warn everyone, but they'd rather find some excuse to ignore it than step up to the challenge.