Chinese Economics Thread

[Franklin]

We should be careful to make a blanket statement that China cannot innovate because China is actually doing quite well in terms of production and consumer innovation. China's engineering innovation is more spotty and the science based innovation is very weak. This is due to the lack of both maturity and deep knowledge on the part of her industries rather than the lack of creativity on the part of her people. China cannot innovate (create a new) yet because she is still in a catching up phase and is working hard to get the basics right in many industries. And the mere fact that China is doing well in the consumer and production departments shows you that the argument of the lack of creativity is just wrong.

Every education system of any country has it strength and weaknesses and the products of these education systems all have to make due in later life. Rather they are in China or elsewhere in the world is the same. China's education system is not much different than that of other Asian countries like that of South Korea or Japan. And those are quite innovative countries.

 

[camelbird]

... even the idea of of the newest champion Sunway TaihuLight is something Intel explored 9 years ago with their

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(prototype unveiled 2007 - is an experimental 80-core chip) which eventually evolves into commercially available The Knight's Landing (many-multicore) ...

That 80-core processor did not evolve into Knights Landing. (It's not Knight's Landing. Knights Landing is a place in California. Internal product codenames at Intel use names of actual places.) I cannot tell you exactly how Knights Landing in its current form came about, but it most certainly did not come from that 80-core processor. In fact, say this within Intel and many people will be very very angry.

There is no such thing as "many-multicore". "Many-core" is a specific term first used by Intel. A simple search would reveal enough material from Intel alone.

And saying that the "idea" of the Sunway system is the same as that of the 80-core prototype is stretching things a lot, to put it very mildly.

I don't care about opinions, but things that are factually untrue need to be pointed out.

 

[Quickie]

...... The chips runs on RISC, based on the DEC Alpha, then memory and network architectures are all nothing new, .....

A lot of the so-called facts in the comment section are just repeated hearsay without any basis and the above claim is just one of them.

According to the Taihulight report by Jack Dongarra, the Shenwei-64 chip has its own Shenwei-64 Architecture and Instruction Set unrelated to the DEC Alpha.

 

[Engineer]

Scientific progress is proportional (maybe not directly proportional, but it is proportional) to the investment you put in, be it talent, manpower, or financial investment. China is investing heavily, but it doesn't seem to have any seismic shift outcome. So it all comes down to the "quality" of the manpower. Graduating millions of rigid thinking copycats aren't going to make China go ahead. China needs creative problem solvers.

And about supercomputers, let me ask you, did China invented any of the fundamental technology in their supercomputers? The chips runs on RISC, based on the DEC Alpha, then memory and network architectures are all nothing new, even the idea of of the newest champion Sunway TaihuLight is something Intel explored 9 years ago with their

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(prototype unveiled 2007 - is an experimental 80-core chip) which eventually evolves into commercially available The Knight's Landing (many-multicore). China made some incremental improvements by combining many of the existing technology into the current champion - Sunway TaihuLight.

On the other hand, the US is already investing heavily on the next generation supercomputing, namely the Quantum computing.

In almost every area of science and technology, China is STILL playing the catchup, not as technology leader.

There doesn't seem to be any outcome in China for you because you have a perverted definition of "outcome".

By your skewed definition, nothing is ever innovative: automobile and train use wheels, fundamentally no different to horse drawn buggy, so not innovative; boat floats on water, fundamentally no different to earliest canoe which is just a hollowed out tree trunk, so not innovative; skyscraper is built from the ground up, same as pyramid, so not innovative; etc.

Inventing a "fundamental technology" is not a prerequisite to innovation. Innovation is an evolutionary process, not a revolutionary one. Innovation is about building on the shoulders of others. Digital computing, which you imply in "fundamental technology in supercomputer", evolved from analogue computing. Analogue computing in turn evolved from mechanical computing. There is no such thing as "fundamental technology".

 

[taxiya]

The "what is innovation" sounds like another example of "I innovate because I like it".

We all remember that iPhone introducing "copy/paste" functionality? The initial iOS did not have it, no apple fans complained. When it was introduced in a later upgrade, apple touted it as a big deal and fans celebrated. While copy/paste was in the Symbian and windows mobile phones before iPhone, nobody made a farce about it.

What does it tell us? Some people make their conclusion based on their likings, not on concrete facts, then build their concept and criteria of what qualifies as an innovation. The very same thing may or may not be innovation depending on their personal likings.

 

[Ultra]

Do you have no understanding of the world at all? The difference in technology in China between 1985 and 2016 is something that you would not consider a seismic shift? It is faster and larger than anywhere in the world at any time. The only way you could be so mistaken is if you thought that technology is freely shared and that Chinese scientists are given equal resources and knowledge base as their western counterparts and that that has not resulted in any seismic advance ON TOP of the best of Western technology. I shouldn't have to tell you this, but it's not true; most technology is heavily guarded. When the Chinese were working on the J-10, no one even knew how to perform computer coding for electronic flight controls while America was already developing the F-22. They did not start at the same starting line, Ultra! That the Chinese are rivals/peers/near peers/superior to Americans in any area today means that the Chinese advanced monstrously faster in the same time.

These "rigid thinking copycats" have factually taken Chinese technology beyond western technology in certain areas from a gap that was once perceived insurmountable. You calling them more names to imply that they can't innovate will simply not stand up to the fact that they already have because that fact is supported by the evidence of them being number one. Quantum computing is not at all being ignored in China; China launched the world's first quantum satellite earlier this year. I'm betting China's quantum computer is online before anyone else's. That something similar to Taihu Light may have been previously explored by Intel does nothing to change the fact that China's supercomputer is 5 times faster than its nearest peer in America, at half the size and 5 times the power efficiency. How hard is it for you to understand? There's no weaseling out of this. That's a hard fact and evidence that Chinese scientists are innovating. I don't know if you understand this, but you cannot copy an inferior machine and end up with a superior one. You can't copy your way to number 1 and China is number one in supercomputing right now, undisputed. There is no one for it to catch up to. But even if we make the false assumption that the US is invested in quantum computing and China is not, you still cannot conclude any US superiority in this area because they have not actually produced working results yet and there's no guarantee they ever will.

I seriously doubt this has changed any of your ideas. It's been drilled into your head too hard that "Chinese scientists can't innovate because communism oppresses free thought." You're simply too rigid-thinking to consider the obvious evidence and reason yourself out of the narrative that was lectured onto you by those who would never admit Chinese success no matter. You can only repeat/regurgitate (copy) what western media has told you. It's ironic really, that you would make such a criticism of anyone, much less someone who can innovate his country to the top.

Blah blah blah, "China came a long way", "China went from stone age to modern age in under 40 years", "China is almost caught up"....

That's not seismic shift in science. We are talking about GLOBAL science seismic shift here.
That's just shows how backward China is, and how quickly China is able to catch up by copying the the proven paths that others have done before them.

This is liken to the same argument of "Did China contributed to the nuclear weapon design in the world by bringing something new" and you answer with "China went from fission device to hydrogen bomb in under 3 years! Quickest in human history!". Both are facts but you are not answering the question. China KNEW nuclear weapon is a reality, so they went searching for the answer and found it, that's drastically different when not even knowing if it is possible (like US did) and to make it reality.

My point is, China is still at this stage not able to invest in the unknown - it is still adverse to the risk of not following the unbeaten path. The culture and generations of "go to good school, go to good university, go get good job" is drilled into the chinese psychic meaning majority of chinese are risk adverse, and will stay within the confine of safe, proven path of research.

Sooner or later, when China starts to get upended by other countries that brings disruptive technologies to the field, you will understand what I mean.

 

[AssassinsMace]

Risk adverse? You mean like how the West was declaring China was doomed to collapse building HSR that no one was going to ride because Chinese people couldn't afford the tickets?

 

[solarz]

Blah blah blah, "China came a long way", "China went from stone age to modern age in under 40 years", "China is almost caught up"....

That's not seismic shift in science. We are talking about GLOBAL science seismic shift here.
That's just shows how backward China is, and how quickly China is able to catch up by copying the the proven paths that others have done before them.

This is liken to the same argument of "Did China contributed to the nuclear weapon design in the world by bringing something new" and you answer with "China went from fission device to hydrogen bomb in under 3 years! Quickest in human history!". Both are facts but you are not answering the question. China KNEW nuclear weapon is a reality, so they went searching for the answer and found it, that's drastically different when not even knowing if it is possible (like US did) and to make it reality.

My point is, China is still at this stage not able to invest in the unknown - it is still adverse to the risk of not following the unbeaten path. The culture and generations of "go to good school, go to good university, go get good job" is drilled into the chinese psychic meaning majority of chinese are risk adverse, and will stay within the confine of safe, proven path of research.

Sooner or later, when China starts to get upended by other countries that brings disruptive technologies to the field, you will understand what I mean.

Instead of appealing to the future, can you name any "disruptive" technology in the last decade that has "upended" China?

 

[AssassinsMace]

Over at the ballistic missile thread, Ultra says India is following China's path and yet has great optimism despite how in here he says what China is doing spells failure.

 

[Ultra]

Poetry is one of the greatest creative problems known to mankind. Everyone can write words, but only poets can arrange them in a way that is both elegant and expressive.

No its not. Even computer can write poetry now

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You are judging kids in China based on Chinese kids abroad. Overseas Chinese are limited in their career choices because they do not have the kind of network or connections needed for a career in arts or business management.

In China, they are not limited in such ways. Plenty of parents encourage their kids to go into arts. Ever heard of Lang Lang?

Lang Lang is one out of a billion. Majority of Chinese parents still push their kids to major in STEMS or professional degrees.

Sounds like you're unable to recognize creativity even when shown.

First, you might want to look up the difference between fusion and cold fusion. Fusion is what happens in stars. Cold fusion is a theoretical concept of fusion at room temperature. The former is science, the latter is science fiction, at least for now.

As for supercomputers, you only think it's an incremental improvement because you don't understand what is involved is creating the next generation of supercomputers. It's not just making CPUs go faster, it's about coming up with solutions to existing problems in miniaturization, heat management, and parallelization. Supercomputers are as much an incremental improvement as the F-22 is an incremental improvement over the bi-plane.

Show me where China actually invented cold fusion. Seriously I want to know.
And did it work? If China indeed make sustainable confusion work, that would be ground breaking and I would have heard about it here wouldn't I? Even the idea of Cold Fusion is not originated from China.


Now about the supercomputer, sounds like you don't understand what supercomputers are nowadays. They are massive parallel computing nodes, and China just happen know invest a lot by putting more chips into them. They will soon approach the level that's uneconomical for China to break past that barrier.

Let's see who reach the the Exa-scale computing first. If China use their "proven method" of going large and wide, they are going to fail, or it will be the most expensive supercomputer in history of mankind. The current champ Sunway TaihuLight is already at 10 million cores , to go Exa-scale will potentially require 10 to 15 times that, which willl require 100 to 150 million cores. The power consumption for Sunway TaihuLight is currently 15 megawatt and IF power consumption is scaled linearly (which it surely wouldn't) then it would require 150 -200 megawatt for China to build the next Exa-scale supercomputer. That would require a medium size nuclear power station just to power that up which will add to the tremendous cost.