I will be honest with you QKD is a solution in search of a problem. Long list of issues that I won't go into details. Post Quantum Cryptography is a much better idea.
News on China's scientific and technological development.
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Facts. I work in a different field and it is a similar story. China has strong practical and incremental research but rarely makes the paradigm changing breakthroughs. Even in the most recent AI boom, neither LLMs nor diffusion models nor attention transformers were invented by Chinese, though Chinese researchers did make an important intermediate contribution in ResNet. The West is still the overwhelming source of the most ground breaking research.
But this isn’t a problem limited to China. East Asia as a whole has under performed including the Japanese who have been at Western living standards for decades. It really makes one wonder why Westerners are so proficient at basic research. Although I think my theory of it being the result of Western financial supremacy (hence being able to throw money at moon shots while East Asians focus on practical value) is still reasonable, there are indications there’s a cultural element to it as well, which would better explain why they were also the first to modernize and industrialize.
Most breakthrough (Nobel Prize) papers weren't published in Nature and Science though. However, I do agree that most scientific breakthroughs come from the US and Europe.
Some of you may disagree with me, but I believe that traditional Chinese culture pushes people to be more risk-averse than Westerners. I've noticed that people from mainland China are more similar to Westerners than people from Taiwan in the sense that mainland Chinese people are more willing to take risks. That's one of the reasons why I'm so confident in the future of China.
they use the spoils of imperialism, took the early low hanging fruit already, and most of all get to define what is a breakthrough through their monopoly on the media including science media.
The most important point you have missed here ..
China missed first and second industrial Revolution. started work from 3rd industrial Revolution alongside working on first and second simultaneously. a hell of load on Chinese people, they have to cover 200 years time period in couple of decades.. and China did it.
there is difference between innovation and fundamental invention .. China being the latecomer in the party so majority of the tech were already invented when China begun their journey..
4th industrial revolution, this is where China is now equal to Western world. you can say this only USA.. coz Europe is almost non-existent in this race..
who is setting Tech standards in 5G/5.5G ?? its China
who is setting Tech standards in Battery tech/Solar and other Green energy ?? its China
who is setting Tech standards in EV ?? its China..
in EV supply chain, there are other plenty of revolutionary tech like Lidar , Smart driving etc etc.. who is in charge ???? its China
we are also taking different route in Ai, being implemented in industry and manufacturing.. we also have our own tech standard in Quantum technology ..
so please don't compare us with Japan/Korea.. we just started to invest huge in Basic research also took different approach and path.. you will see in near future
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where was Europe in 3rd industrial Revolution ??
where is Europe in 4th industrial Revolution ??
its only USA.. especially in 4th one.. its two horse race now. USA vs China
True, in science as in anything else, selling your ideas is critical. The entire AI field has pivoted towards architectures invented in the West/US and this isn’t necessarily because those architectures are the only possible solutions but because there is an implicit assumption that the West invents and the Rest follow. Not much attempt is even given to exploring different architectures and people are just building on top of Western precedence; that does give them an advantage in securing breakthroughs.
It’s a common problem in East Asian cultures that they just don’t sell themselves effectively. Hence why more Indians become CEOs in the West than East Asians.
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don't sell effectively, or is nobody buying?
East Asians are viewed with suspicion from day 1, how do you sell? You have to have like 500 fucking documented proofs of every little thing to even be grudgingly acknowledged when everyone else can just say "trust me bro" or "believe women!" or “why don't you believe the lived experience of ______ (minority)"
I will respond to the earlier quoted responses in some time. One thought occured to me recently.
I was just reading on the casualties by the recent typhoons in China. Yagi caused < 5 deaths, while Bebinga (which hit Shanghai) caused zero deaths in at least Shanghai.
Damage by Yagi. (Remember, Yagi was the strongest when it made landfall in Hainan, it got substantially weaker when it reached Vietnam, even more so in Myanmar)
Damage by Babenca, which directly hit Shanghai, was 2 deaths in Kunshan (not Shanghai, which was the worse affected)
Damage by Pulasan:
Philippines was not even hit directly! Despite this storm hitting Shanghai, no deaths.
While even one death is one too many, I must say that China's disaster response is getting pretty good, specially in richer areas. Long gone are the old days of 2000s, when any small disaster would cause 1000s of deaths.
This had indeed to do with technology, because a lot of tech is required to predict, monitor, forecast, and then manage the disaster response. It also has to do with quality of infra, which has made exceptional progress since 2000s. But it also has to do with state capacity. Though admittedly there's a gap. The richer regions (Shanghai) had essentially zero deaths, Kunshan (despite suffering weaker winds) had 2, Hainan 4. If it were to hit inland provinces like Hunan or Sichuan, the damage would have been more severe.
Another interesting thing, look at the damage cost. A lot of infra damaged, because of the storm. The capital damage/ deaths ratio is much higher for China (even higher than gross deaths) compared to Asean countries, almost at a level of developed countries. (Which is kind of true, since the affected portions were all rich provinces with nominal GDP/capita ~ 25000, and a much higher PPP figure)
I was just reading on the casualties by the recent typhoons in China. Yagi caused < 5 deaths, while Bebinga (which hit Shanghai) caused zero deaths in at least Shanghai.
Damage by Yagi. (Remember, Yagi was the strongest when it made landfall in Hainan, it got substantially weaker when it reached Vietnam, even more so in Myanmar)
Damage by Babenca, which directly hit Shanghai, was 2 deaths in Kunshan (not Shanghai, which was the worse affected)
Damage by Pulasan:
Philippines was not even hit directly! Despite this storm hitting Shanghai, no deaths.
While even one death is one too many, I must say that China's disaster response is getting pretty good, specially in richer areas. Long gone are the old days of 2000s, when any small disaster would cause 1000s of deaths.
This had indeed to do with technology, because a lot of tech is required to predict, monitor, forecast, and then manage the disaster response. It also has to do with quality of infra, which has made exceptional progress since 2000s. But it also has to do with state capacity. Though admittedly there's a gap. The richer regions (Shanghai) had essentially zero deaths, Kunshan (despite suffering weaker winds) had 2, Hainan 4. If it were to hit inland provinces like Hunan or Sichuan, the damage would have been more severe.
Another interesting thing, look at the damage cost. A lot of infra damaged, because of the storm. The capital damage/ deaths ratio is much higher for China (even higher than gross deaths) compared to Asean countries, almost at a level of developed countries. (Which is kind of true, since the affected portions were all rich provinces with nominal GDP/capita ~ 25000, and a much higher PPP figure)
To expand this morbidly, the statistic can be used to argue that in case of armed reunification against TW. No amount of TW missiles lobbed to mainland can do much damage. Bet that UKR will do much more damage to RUS than TW against mainland.