News on China's scientific and technological development.

Chinese scientists successfully completed a unisexual reproduction of mice.

• Bi-paternal mice reaching adulthood generated via targeted imprinting modifications
• ESCs with imprinting modifications showed twice the developmental ability of control
• Functional bi-paternal placenta created by modifying the Sfmbt2 microRNA cluster
• Mice with 20 loci modifications exhibited higher cloning efficiency

两个鼠爸也能生出一只鼠宝？这并非天方夜谭。

1月29日，正值新春佳节之际，一项发表在《细胞-干细胞》的研究宣布了这一科学成果。中国科学院动物研究所研究员周琪、李伟，副研究员李治琨以及中山大学教授骆观正等合作，利用胚胎干细胞工程技术，成功培育出只有两个鼠爸的小鼠，而且小鼠创纪录地活到了成年。

这项突破性进展一经发布，就引发国际学术界的广泛关注，被认为克服了哺乳动物单性生殖中前所未有的挑战。

Lethe said:

I notice that ASPI's Critical Technology Tracker was updated in August 2024. The ASPI tracker looks at high-impact published research (top 10% of papers by number of citations) across a variety of technologies, as a leading indicator of potential medium- and long-term developments.

Over the period 2019-2023, China is assessed as the leading source of high-impact research in 57 of the 64 categories assessed, with the United States leading in the remaining 7 categories: Quantum computing, vaccines and medical countermeasures, atomic clocks, genetic engineering, small satellites, nuclear medicine and radiotherapy, and natural language processing. Notably, all but quantum computing is at <2:1 US:China ratio of published papers, and NLP is basically a tie. Conversely, China not only leads in many more fields, but has significantly stronger leads in many of those fields, with 24 of the 57 categories that China leads having a >3:1 ratio of published research and 8 or more of the top 10 institutions in that field.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Obviously there are many limitations to this data and nuances in interpreting it. The full report is worth reading in that regard.

Click to expand...

It says China has a 63%-7% lead in "advanced aircraft engines", which I think is misleading given that China's first civilian jet engine is not even in service whereas the likes of GE have been leading the field for decades.

It also says China has a lead in "space launch systems" despite the U.S. having a reusable launch system in the Falcon 9 and now Starship being close, whereas China is still launching mostly hypergolic rockets.

It also claims China leads in "advanced integrated circuit design and fabrication" despite the fact that the U.S. controls EUV lithography and Nvidia GPUs power data centers worldwide. And it claims India is ahead of Taiwan, the Netherlands, South Korea or Japan in this field. Which boggles the mind, at least as of 2025.

Overall, this report may or may not indicate something about the future but I feel is is very little reflective of current reality. Then again, I don't trust anything that comes out of ASPI, especially about China.

gadgetcool5 said:

It says China has a 63%-7% lead in "advanced aircraft engines", which I think is misleading given that China's first civilian jet engine is not even in service whereas the likes of GE have been leading the field for decades.

It also says China has a lead in "space launch systems" despite the U.S. having a reusable launch system in the Falcon 9 and now Starship being close, whereas China is still launching mostly hypergolic rockets.

It also claims China leads in "advanced integrated circuit design and fabrication" despite the fact that the U.S. controls EUV lithography and Nvidia GPUs power data centers worldwide. And it claims India is ahead of Taiwan, the Netherlands, South Korea or Japan in this field. Which boggles the mind, at least as of 2025.

Overall, this report may or may not indicate something about the future but I feel is is very little reflective of current reality. Then again, I don't trust anything that comes out of ASPI, especially about China.

Click to expand...

As noted in the report, it's specifically a measurement of (high-impact) research output. That is to say, "China has a lead in X" actually means "Chinese scientists are publishing more papers about X." Which is in fact exactly what you would expect for areas of strategic significance where Chinese technology lags other countries—lots of R&D, and therefore papers being published, as a direct result of Chinese efforts to close the gap.

There are plenty of problems with ASPI, but this isn't one of them. It's correctly measuring velocity, whereas you are mistakenly assuming it's measuring displacement.

gadgetcool5 said:

It says China has a 63%-7% lead in "advanced aircraft engines", which I think is misleading given that China's first civilian jet engine is not even in service whereas the likes of GE have been leading the field for decades.

It also says China has a lead in "space launch systems" despite the U.S. having a reusable launch system in the Falcon 9 and now Starship being close, whereas China is still launching mostly hypergolic rockets.

It also claims China leads in "advanced integrated circuit design and fabrication" despite the fact that the U.S. controls EUV lithography and Nvidia GPUs power data centers worldwide. And it claims India is ahead of Taiwan, the Netherlands, South Korea or Japan in this field. Which boggles the mind, at least as of 2025.

Overall, this report may or may not indicate something about the future but I feel is is very little reflective of current reality. Then again, I don't trust anything that comes out of ASPI, especially about China.

Click to expand...

Your interpretation is totally wrong. These are 'leading' indicators. You are using a 'trailing' indicator example. It takes on an average 15 years for research results to be commercialized. Was China very behind in research output in 2010? You bet. That led to the China's engine situation today. These numbers suggest China will dominate commercial aerospace by 2040. If China manages that, would you be surprised? No one would. You are thinking strictly applied engineering, not longer-term basic scientific research.

gadgetcool5 said:

Overall, this report may or may not indicate something about the future but I feel is is very little reflective of current reality. Then again, I don't trust anything that comes out of ASPI, especially about China.

Click to expand...

The report does not pretend to have anything to say about the present state of technology deployment. The road from research papers to operational capabilities (commercial or otherwise) is necessarily a lengthy, convoluted and contingent one. The full text of the report acknowledges many of these limitations and nuances, which is why I linked it and suggested folks read it.

That China's high-impact published research into advanced aircraft engines over the 2019-2023 period outweighs that of the United States by 9:1, with all of the top ten publishing institutions in this field being Chinese, does not suggest that China's current engine technology matches that of the United States. It does not even suggest that its engine technology will match or exceed that of the United States in the forseeable future. What it does suggest, even allowing for the likelihood that a greater proportion of relevant US research goes unpublished, is that there is a very high-level of research activity in this field within China, and that we can reasonably expect China's operationalised capabilities to at least close the gap over time relative to those of the United States. There is no straight line from the number of high-impact research papers to world-leading capabilities, but it is also wildly implausible to imagine that there is no real-world correlation or future implications to be drawn from the transition over the past two decades from an almost entirely US-led spectrum of research (US led in 60 of 64 categories over the period 2003-2007) to today's largely China-led spectrum of research.

As ASPI , the CTT implies that, far from seeing DeepSeek as some ahistorical Black Swan phenomenon that could not reasonably have been anticipated, the trends noted here suggest that we should expect China to increasingly approach, and in some cases exceed, the global state of the art across various technology domains -- to deliver more DeepSeek and J-36 moments going forward. ASPI mostly functions as a mouthpiece for the American empire, but that doesn't mean they don't occasionally produce useful material.

We should also be mindful of the fact that the US unlike China has a distributed system of R&D that leverages an ecosystem of allies/vassals in Europe and Asia who generally are expected to share their research capabilities with the US. When you compete against the US you are competing against the whole empire, not just its imperial core; hence the need to compare against the US + EU + Australia + Canada + UK + Japan + South Korea and more.

It needs to be understood that the US is the heir of the British Empire and that its true capabilities are measured across all the countries hosting its 800+ global garrisons.

USA is the global leader in Turbofan Engine technology alongside UK when it comes to commercial machines. and General Electrics manufacture the most advanced High bypass Engines in the world.

in 2007 General Electrics bought British company ''Smiths Aerospace'' this company is specialized in Engine components.
in 2013 General Electrics bought 117 years old Italian ''Avio'' Turbofan company.
in 2016 General Electrics acquired Swedish ''Arcam AB'' for next generation manufacturing techniques called ''Additive manufacturing''. now they started to use this process in GE9X engine.

GE also closely cooperate with German MTU and Japanese IHI..
GE has also the 50/50 partnership company with Safran called ''CFM''

now you see the Pattern ..

USA works in alliance and have access to all core research and also bought many top Engine firms in Europe.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


as per WIPO in 2023, China accounts more than 40 percent Patents grants in ''Engine , Pumps, Turbine'' category globally.

so China is not competing with USA alone.. China is basically competing with Entire western World+Japan in this highly sophisticated industry in R&D.. this core research will be fruitful in coming decade.

Scientists from Fujian University published a paper on Cell for having identified the ACE2 protein as an antiviral target and developed the dual-functional antiviral for prevention and treatment of coronavirus infections.

Early fusion intermediate of ACE2-using coronavirus spike acting as an antiviral target​

Coronavirus fusion with and entry into the host cell depends on viral spike, which acts as a crucial component of viral infection. However, the lack of receptor-activated spike intermediate conformation has hindered a comprehensive understanding of spike-induced membrane fusion. Here, we captured an angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2)-induced early fusion intermediate conformation (E-FIC) of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike in which heptad repeat 1 (HR1) in S2 has ejected while S1 remains attached. This E-FIC can transition to the late FIC after S2′ cleavage. Leveraging this discovery, we designed an E-FIC-targeted dual-functional antiviral protein, AL5E. AL5E effectively inactivated ACE2-using coronaviruses and inhibited their infection, outperforming a mono-functional antiviral in protecting animals against these coronaviruses. This study has identified the E-FIC and used it as a target for the development of a dual-functional antiviral for the prevention and treatment of ACE2-using coronavirus infection.


复旦学者在《细胞》（Cell）刊发最新研究成果，陆路、孙蕾、姜世勃团队发现防治冠状病毒的新靶点，并设计出高效双功能抗病毒药物。

2025年1月30日，复旦大学上海医学院陆路研究员、孙蕾研究员、姜世勃教授团队合作在《细胞》杂志以Research Article的形式在线发表了题为“Early fusion intermediate of ACE2-using coronavirus spike acting as antiviral target”的研究论文。该研究发现了ACE2受体诱导的冠状病毒刺突蛋白早期融合中间态构象（E-FIC），并针对该中间态构象设计了高效、广谱、兼具失活病毒和抑制病毒感染的双功能抗冠状病毒候选药物。

Chinese scientists identified two genes in crops that can enhance tolerance of thermal-alkali stress and increase yield.


Soil alkalinization and global warming are predicted to pose major challenges to agriculture in the future, as they continue to accelerate, markedly reducing global arable land and crop yields,. Therefore, strategies for future agriculture are needed to further improve globally cultivated, relatively high-yielding Green Revolution varieties (GRVs) derived from the SEMIDWARF 1 (SD1) gene,. Here we propose that precise regulation of the phytohormone gibberellin (GA) to optimal levels is the key to not only confer alkali–thermal tolerance to GRVs, but also to further enhance their yield. Endogenous modulation of ALKALI-THERMAL TOLERANCE 1/2 (ATT1/2), quantitative trait loci encoding GA20-oxidases or exogenous application of GA minimized rice yield loss affected by sodic soils. Mechanistically, high GA concentrations induce reactive oxygen species over-accumulation, whereas low GA concentrations repress the expression of stress-tolerance genes by means of DELLA–NGR5-mediated H3K27me3 methylation. We further showed that ATT1 induces large fluctuations in GA levels, whereas ATT2 is the ideal candidate for fine-tuning GA concentrations to appropriate levels to balance reactive oxygen species and H3K27me3 methylation to improve alkali–thermal tolerance and yield. Thus, ATT2 is expected to be a potential new post-Green Revolution gene that could be harnessed to develop and use marginal lands for sustainable agriculture in the future.


通过对3万多株水稻遗传材料进行大规模交换个体筛选和耐碱、耐热表型鉴定，中国科学家最终定位克隆到两个水稻耐碱-热QTLs基因——ATT1和ATT2，其中，ATT2有望成为一个潜在的“后绿色革命”基因。

据上海交通大学1月31日消息，北京时间2025年1月30日凌晨，上海交通大学林尤舜研究团队与中国科学院分子植物科学卓越创新中心林鸿宣研究团队合作在国际顶级学术期刊《自然》(Nature)上发表题为“Fine-tuning gibberellin improves rice alkali-thermal tolerance and yield”的研究论文。

该成果创新性地提出了一个新概念，即精准调控赤霉素到最佳中等水平是同时提高水稻碱-热胁迫耐受性和产量的关键；并发现一个有望成为潜在的“后绿色革命”基因ATT2，它可以微调赤霉素到最佳中等水平，从而进一步同时提高半矮秆绿色革命水稻品种的碱-热耐受性和产量。研究团队介绍，这些新发现为应对全球气候变化引发的粮食安全问题提供了新的策略，对于盐碱地的开发利用和未来农业的可持续发展具有重要的意义。

此次，研究团队成功分离克隆了水稻碱-热抗性新基因ATT1/2 (ALKALI-THEROMAL TOLERANCE 1/2)，阐明了它们调控耐盐碱、耐热性的新机制，并且为突破半矮秆绿色革命主栽品种的抗逆性与产量互相拮抗的瓶颈问题提出了新的解决方案。这也是该合作研究团队继成功挖掘出耐热TT3分子遗传模块（Science，2022年）之后，在作物抵抗非生物胁迫研究领域取得的又一项重大进展。

在正常大田环境下，维持体内中等浓度活性赤霉素，相比于高浓度和低浓度活性赤霉素，水稻表现出较高的产量，小区产量分别增加29.8%、15.4%；在半矮秆绿色革命水稻品种中，提高ATT2的表达量，可以适量增加活性赤霉素含量，与对照品种相比，水稻表现出小区产量增加18.8%-20.3%。在碱性土壤种植条件下，在半矮秆绿色革命水稻品种中提高ATT2的表达量，会明显增加水稻在碱胁迫下的产量，与对照品种相比，小区产量增加77.9%-100.9%；由于碱胁迫抑制活性赤霉素合成，使高秆水稻材料的活性赤霉素含量由高浓度转变成中等浓度，也表现出增加小区产量；通过对在碱胁迫下的半矮秆绿色革命水稻品种体外施加适量的赤霉素，能够弥补碱胁迫带来的产量损失。在田间高温环境下，相比于高浓度和低浓度活性赤霉素的水稻株系，中等浓度活性赤霉素的水稻株系会表现出显著提高小区产量，分别增产84.7%、23.6%。

kentchang said:

You are thinking strictly applied engineering, not longer-term basic scientific research.

Click to expand...

Even thinking stricktly technically, China does not intent to compete a 50 y.o. jet engine. Is trying to produce cutting edge modern engines. Pretty much like EMALS catapults. China with zero experience to any catapults, now is leading at this field even though GE and Westinghouse have decades of experience on.