News on China's scientific and technological development.

Hendrik_2000 said:

Right they haven't finish it yet The one that is done is the eastern and middle section of the 3 canal But the western part will take another 50 years maybe It will be momentous undertaking with far reaching effect Imagine blooming Xinjiang

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antiterror13 said:

I have no doubt that China will produce the most of display screen in 2019 ... but South Korea will still dominating in the high-end market, at least for sometime after 2019

China is still lagging (by wide margin) of high-end chips manufacturing capability ... at the moment the best China has is 28nm technology by SMIC ..... two generations behind

But SMIC will have 14nm tech in 2020,in cooperation with Huawei .. basically skipping 22nm tech

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and it seems now 14nm will be ready in 2018

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• Jian-Liang Wang
• Jiang-Xuan Feng
• Yongmei Bentley
• Lian-Yong Feng
• Hui Qu

1. School of Business AdministrationChina University of PetroleumBeijingChina
2. 2.University of Bedfordshire Business SchoolLutonUK
3. 3.Petroleum Industry Press, CNPC, Beijing, China

China's submersible breaks benthic sampling record
(

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) 09:59, October 09, 2017

China's Haima unmanned submersible has collected 330 kilograms of cobalt-rich crust samples from the Yap Seamount sea area during its Pacific scientific investigation mission, according to the China Geological Survey Bureau under the Ministry of Land and Resources.

Haima, or Hippocampus, is a vessel designed by China on its own. It can dive to a depth of 4,500 meters with remote control. It was carried by its mother ship Haiyang-6 this time. It completed six dives, collecting 330 kg of samples at a depth of 2,000 kilometers. The biggest sample weighs 62 kg. Haima has also made a breakthrough in making a drilling machine to reach deeper.

"We used the drilling machine carried by the deep-water robot to drill into the cobalt crust to take samples. The drilling machine reached 80 cm into the crust, thus acquiring cobalt-rich crust samples," said Wang Hongbin, deputy chief engineer with the Guangzhou Marine Geological Survey under the China Geological Survey Bureau.

In the next step, Haiyang-6 will start the deep-sea geological survey.

"First, we will continue our rare earth resources investigation in the Western Pacific on the basis of our preliminary work and expand the prospective resources of rare earth resources. We will also conduct a comprehensive research on deep sea environment and research on the impact of the global climate change," said Xu Zhenqiang, director with the Marine Geology Division of the Basic Department of China Geological Survey Bureau.

Haiyang-6 is expected to return to Guangzhou in south China's Guangdong Province in February next year.

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China to build world’s first high-temperature gas-cooled reactor power plant
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) 16:36, October 09, 2017

The world’s first high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTRG) demonstration power plant is currently under construction in Shidao Bay, Shandong province, and is expected to be operating by the end of 2017.

The demonstration power plant, which is an updated version of the country’s 10 MW HTRG Test Module designed by Tsinghua University, kicked off its construction work in 2012. According to statistics from the test module in 2004, the reactors can keep safe from any major accident without any human or machine interference, as well as releasing extra thermal power.

According to Economic Information Daily, two reactor pressure vessels have been installed at the HTR unit in 2016, while a 200,000 kW HTR nuclear power unit is expected to be built soon.

The demonstration project’s pressure vessels, primary helium circulators, and evaporators are all designed and produced by Chinese companies, which makes the new nuclear technology a name card of China, Mao Wei, chief manager of Huaneng Shandong Shidao Bay Nuclear Power Co., Ltd., told the Economic Information Daily.

“The HTRG project features the security of fourth-generation nuclear technology, helping China to become a vital player in the world’s nuclear energy competition,” said Mao.

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Fast work from China’s giant radio telescope helps scientists make early discoveries

Senior researchers say discovery of pulsars thousands of light years from earth makes for a ‘truly encouraging’ beginning for project


PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 10 October, 2017, 3:57pm

(SCMP) The world’s largest single-dish radio telescope has found two pulsars after one year of trial operations, state news agency Xinhua reported on Tuesday.

The pulsars were discovered on August 22 and 25 by researchers from the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC), according to chief scientist Li Di.

Named J1859-01 and J1931-01, the pulsars are 16,000 light years and 4,100 light years from Earth respectively.

The discoveries were confirmed by Australia’s Parkes radio telescope last month, the report said.

Pulsars are spinning collapsed stars larger than the sun, which emit flickering beams of radiation across the universe that can only be detected by sensitive telescopes.

Completed in September last year, the telescope is named Fast (the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope) and covers an area roughly the size of 30 soccer pitches, making it the world’s biggest radio telescope.

“It is truly encouraging to have achieved such results within just one year,” Peng Bo, deputy director of Fast, was quoted as saying.

The telescope is a third of the way through its three-year initial testing phase.

It is situated in a large natural sinkhole in Pingtang county in southwest China’s Guizhou province.

The telescope’s mission is to “listen” for pulsars and other interstellar radio signals which might give clues about how the universe first formed, as well as finding possible signs of extraterrestrial life.

According to Xinhua, the telescope cost 1.2 billion yuan, or US$180 million, and took five years to build.

The project displaced 8,000 people living nearby to create the 5km radius of silence needed for the telescope to work properly.

When fully operational, the sheer scale and complexity of the telescope could potentially lead to major discoveries in astronomy.

The large state investment involved in the project, which is 22 years in the making, highlights China’s clear ambition to become a global science and technology powerhouse.

China is ranked second only to the United States in terms of scientific investment and the number of scientific research papers published, according to the BBC.

The second-largest radio telescope on Earth, at 305 metres wide, is at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

It is most famous for sending out a radio signal “message” in 1974 containing basic information about humanity and Earth, in the hope that extraterrestrials will receive it.

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Hendrik_2000 said:

This is interesting article showing the reason why the US and Japanese loosing the dominance in consumer tech.
At one time Japan with their Sony, sharp, Toshiba were dominant in consumer tech. Walkman, Video tape recorder VHS,TV, Stereo But they all disappear now. Japan has not had blockbuster product since 1990. They missed the personal computer era then they missed the smart phone era

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Competitive advantage not God-given – as US and Japan know
Technologist and author Henry Kressel reflects on the reasons for nations losing their industrial dominance. The story of electronics, he says, shows that innovation, driven by corporations but supported by governments, is key to competitive longevity
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JULY 12, 2017 2:13 PM (UTC+8)

Sony employee Suzuyo Suzuki displays the MD Walkman MZ-E55 (left) and a mini-disc at the company's headquaters in Tokyo, on September 7, 1998. Photo: AFP / Toru Yamanaka
I spent the first 20 years of my career in the research and development laboratories of the RCA Corporation, then one of the leading electronics companies in the world and led, for many years, by a great visionary in David Sarnoff.

....

This competitive advantage was fleeting and leadership in consumer electronics now lies elsewhere. The Japanese leadership in memory chips and consumer electronics is gone and no Japanese companies even factor in the smartphone business, the biggest current consumer electronics business. Why?

There is a great deal of debate regarding the causes of stalled growth in the Japanese economy. In terms of the electronic businesses that I am familiar with, I would place the major blame on the lagging ability of big Japanese companies to truly innovate. With a domestic market largely shielded from competition, any imperative for product innovation by the big companies favored by government planners was lacking. As a result, investment lagged in radically new products and related technologies. For example, leadership in memory chips moved to Samsung in South Korea (which now has 40% of the world market). Leadership in flat panels also moved to Samsung, with the latest technology, OLEDs, being produced there. Sharp, the early leader in the sector, is not only out of the business but was acquired by a Taiwanese company. Sic transit Gloria mundi.

Governments play a key role in building innovative industries by supporting infrastructure and capital investment as well as funding research and development, but competitive advantageinelectronics is not bestowed as a gift by governments or the gods but by business leaders managing innovation and investing capital and human resources in a timely way. The US gave up its leadership because of strategic decisions by many corporate leaders; then it was the turn of the Japanese. Who is next?

Well the question should be who is the king of hill of consumer tech now

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sanblvd said:

The West route also can slow down the water flow into India, in case they tried something stupid like another Dotlam.

What China need is also build many water reservoir along the path on the Western Routs so it can fill them up as strategic water reserve, as well as places to store water in case they want to reduce water flow into India.

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taxiya said:

The picture is just a shocking memory/reminder. The subject has many perspectives and angels to examine. Henry K is right in pointing out the role of government in assisting the companies. There are other things less related to that role.

One thing that remains a question to me even today and I have partially answered it was that companies who were at their peak dominating the market had been overly confident in their position to lead, but maybe also believed that they can crash any new tech that does not comply to their choice. I was in a difficult choice of mini-disc over mp3 player back then, I eventually gave up mini-disc for its complexity of transferring music files while mp3 had the advantage, I did not by a mp3 immediately because its compression was too high (commonly 128kbps) and all devices then was no match to Sony's craftsmanship. I eventually bought the iPod few years later for it being able to store lossless music and video (lossy).

Had Sony choose to move to mp3 (computer world), it would have been the lead, probably Apple's iPod would not be born. I think Sony was overly confident in defeating the new and cruel tech mp3, overly confident in customer loyalty. That is a mistake made by most of the past glorious giants.

This kind of behavior is similar to the rabbit in the "rabbit and turtle racing story".

By this example, I think "Japan's protected domestic market" has nothing to do with their failure in lead. Most of these companies were competing on the global market (although mostly against each other) which is open to everyone. They were defeated by mp3 and the like (computer based world), here Apple is a winner (American), and the South Koreans who embraced LCD whole-heartily because of their lagging in CRT. I would repeat an old saying "a gift can be a curse sometimes" as the main reason behind the downfall of these companies. The only way to avoid that is constantly reflect, review oneself's strength and weakness, for that to truly work, one MUST be humble (to be willing to admit own shortfalls) at all time.

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Hendrik_2000 said:

I also think the downfall of Japanese supremacy in consumer tech is due to their style of management and structure of Japanese company.

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