Nature March 8, 2024 At its annual meeting this week, China’s legislative body, the National People’s Congress, promised to increase government funding for science by 10% in 2024. It’s the largest boost to funding in five years. The increase comes as the Chinese economy struggles to meet growth targets and is locked in a race for technological supremacy with the United States. “To win this game, China has to invest in science and technology, especially in basic research,” says Marina Zhang, who studies innovation with a focus on China… read more.
Tag Archives: S&T policy – China
China Sky Eye, the world’s largest single-dish radio telescope, is now fully operational
Phys.org September 9, 2019 China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, known as FAST is the world’s most sensitive listening device. The single-dish radio telescope is made of 4,450 individual panels that scan the sky to explore the universe. It’s cradled in a natural Earth depression the size of 30 soccer fields. It has more than twice the collecting area of the world’s previous largest radio telescope, the 305-meter dish in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. With construction completed in 2016, FAST has undergone rigorous testing and has one more hurdle before it’s considered fully operational. While solely funded by the Chinese government, […]
China has started a grand experiment in AI education. It could reshape how the world learns.
MIT Technology Review August 2, 2019 According to one estimate, China led the way investing over $1 billion globally last year in AI education. Tech giants, startups, and education incumbents have all jumped in. Tens of millions of students now use some form of AI to learn. Three things have fueled China’s AI education boom. The first is tax breaks and other incentives for AI ventures, academic competition in China is fierce and Chinese entrepreneurs have masses of data at their disposal to train and refine their algorithms. Squirrel, one of the largest AI education companies in China, also opened […]
China steps up threat to deprive US of rare earths
Phys.org June 29, 2019 As a counter-strike in the trade war, according to state-owned newspapers, advise the US to not underestimate China’s ability to safeguard its own development rights and interests. If the US increasingly suppresses the development of China, sooner or later, China will use rare earths as a weapon and rare-earth resources should serve domestic needs first, but China is also willing to meet the legitimate needs of countries around the world…read more.
What you may not understand about China’s AI scene
MIT Technology Review April , 2019 Most Chinese researchers can read English, and nearly all major research developments in the Western world are immediately translated into Chinese, but the reverse is not true. Therefore, the Chinese research community has a much deeper understanding than the English-speaking one of what’s happening on both sides of the aisle. As China’s AI industry continues to grow, this could prove a major disadvantage for people in the West. Westerners have a hyped-up view of China’s AI capabilities. Westerners also lack a genuine understanding of the technical skills and capacity of Chinese companies. A few […]
The giant Chinese companies shaping the world’s industries
Phys.org February 10,019 The merger by Alstom and Siemens was vetoed by the EU on Thursday, but concerns about the overwhelming power of vast, often state-backed Chinese companies is not limited to the rail industry. Here are some of areas in which Chinese companies control a large piece of the global market – Agrichemicals, Energy, Aviation, Food, Drones, Smartphones, Home appliances, Batteries, Freight…read more.
China is racing ahead in 5G. Here’s what that means.
MIT Technology Review December 18, 2018 In its 13th Five-Year Plan the government describes 5G as a “strategic emerging industry” and “new area of growth,” and in its Made in China 2025 plan, which outlines its goal of becoming a global manufacturing leader, it vows to “make breakthroughs in fifth-generation mobile communication. To make this happen the Chinese government is committed to giving Chinese operators large chunks of spectrum for 5G. Unlike in the US, Chinese carriers will mostly use a spectrum band similar to what they used for 3G and 4G. Under government direction, Chinese companies began conducting research […]
The land that failed to fail: How China caught up with the West
The Star November 21, 2018 China’s communist leaders have defied expectations again and again. They embraced capitalism even as they continued to call themselves Marxists. They used repression to maintain power but without stifling entrepreneurship or innovation. And they presided over 40 years of uninterrupted growth, often with unorthodox policies the textbooks said would fail. China is not the only country that has squared the demands of authoritarian rule with the needs of free markets. But it has done so for longer, at greater scale and with more convincing results than any other…read more.
China Wants More Nuclear-Armed Submarines. Should Everyone Be Worried?
Carnegie-Tsinghua October 22, 2018 According to open-source research , China currently has fewer than 300 nuclear warheads and feels that the credibility of its existing nuclear deterrent is not strong enough. China’s main goal is not to significantly increase its number of nuclear weapons. Instead, arm certain submarines with nuclear warheads. The plan is to diversify the structure of its nuclear force and to make sure that each category of nuclear weapons would be as survivable as possible… read more. Related article: Tides of Change: China’s Nuclear Ballistic Missile Submarines and Strategic Stability
China unveils blueprint for huge underground ‘Higgs factory’
Physics World September 6, 2018 Scientists in China have released details for a huge particle collider that will produce over a million Higgs bosons in a seven-year period. This report outlines the technical details of the accelerator. A second volume, featuring details of the CEPC detectors, is due to be released soon. The conceptual design report for the China Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) calls for a 100 km underground tunnel that would smash together electrons and positrons at energies of 240 GeV… read more.