News on China's scientific and technological development.

Equation said:

That's true in a business and/or trade transaction, but as far as large infrastructure and civil projects, I say it's easier for China to make it a reality than say in the US.

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It's easier because the Chinese government has Vision.

The US has trouble completing large infrastructure projects not because of bureaucrats, but because of politicians. Think about it, when was the last time the US started a large-scale venture that had bipartisan support? The only thing I can think of is the invasion of Iraq. Aside from starting wars, anytime someone says "we should do X", a whole bunch of people pop up from the wood works to say no. HSR? We already have cars and planes, dammit! Paris Accord? Chinese plot to steal our jobs! Universal medicare? Obama is ripping us off! Bomb Libya? Yay!

solarz said:

It's easier because the Chinese government has Vision.

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It's easier because, well, not many around here might know how socialist system works.

If you're an ant - you will get squashed by the party. And doing big business there when you're not backed by the local party offcials might be a pain in the ass when it collides with their ideas or intrests.

But when it comes to great projects like that, backed up by the highest of the highest echelons in the party that can bask in glory of success in the country-wide CCTV news who can decide about someone's life and death (seriously, that's not a speech figure here) there are no obstacles.

In US you would have probably a mid-level official who would oppose such moves (he would point out why by the points) and he would probably resign from his function when something is against his judgement pushed upon him from above (big money or his higher ups from the central government). If he would back up - there would be serious consequences for him. And he could easily gather a group of people (your fellow citizens) who would back him up in a legislative fight. In US you would call such a thing a 'pain in the ass' and I'm sure that's pretty common thing in the top of political and financial worlds.

In PRC - when there are big projects backed up by the tops of political comitee - there are no obstacles! If something's so expensive that the 20th generation of contractor's family could live from those money - pay those money! When there's a small group of citizens opposing this idea - squash them! There's a million ways of punishing them! If there's well known corruption problem - ignore it! You'll advance in the ranks afterwards so there's no problem at all if you're smart and keep yourself in favor of the party!

There are pros and cons of both mindsets. And when your econonomy isn't doing superb the second model will get you to the point of USSR/Russia. This time it could help loads of Chinese citizens in their everyday life. It could even have some input to the overall economy of entire country in the long run! It's great project however you will measure it. But this story makes the headlines. Could you measure how much suffering it brought to the same citizens in the projects(bigger and smaller) that happened over the span of decades and are probably happening now without any way to even speak about it?

And don't try to convince me otherwise - you'll always get you ideas for making money in obscure ways in PRC as long as you have a backing. The higher it is - the better. But the price to pay also increases.

And I'm not saying that US is perfect. It isn't. But at least there are people in the US/West that you can approach and make something meaningful if you have your objectetions. That's something that's forbidden in PRC and will be.

Janiz said:

It's easier because, well, not many around here might know how socialist system works.

If you're an ant - you will get squashed by the party. And doing big business there when you're not backed by the local party offcials might be a pain in the ass when it collides with their ideas or intrests.

But when it comes to great projects like that, backed up by the highest of the highest echelons in the party that can bask in glory of success in the country-wide CCTV news who can decide about someone's life and death (seriously, that's not a speech figure here) there are no obstacles.

In US you would have probably a mid-level official who would oppose such moves (he would point out why by the points) and he would probably resign from his function when something is against his judgement pushed upon him from above (big money or his higher ups from the central government). If he would back up - there would be serious consequences for him. And he could easily gather a group of people (your fellow citizens) who would back him up in a legislative fight. In US you would call such a thing a 'pain in the ass' and I'm sure that's pretty common thing in the top of political and financial worlds.

In PRC - when there are big projects backed up by the tops of political comitee - there are no obstacles! If something's so expensive that the 20th generation of contractor's family could live from those money - pay those money! When there's a small group of citizens opposing this idea - squash them! There's a million ways of punishing them! If there's well known corruption problem - ignore it! You'll advance in the ranks afterwards so there's no problem at all if you're smart and keep yourself in favor of the party!

There are pros and cons of both mindsets. And when your econonomy isn't doing superb the second model will get you to the point of USSR/Russia. This time it could help loads of Chinese citizens in their everyday life. It could even have some input to the overall economy of entire country in the long run! It's great project however you will measure it. But this story makes the headlines. Could you measure how much suffering it brought to the same citizens in the projects(bigger and smaller) that happened over the span of decades and are probably happening now without any way to even speak about it?

And don't try to convince me otherwise - you'll always get you ideas for making money in obscure ways in PRC as long as you have a backing. The higher it is - the better. But the price to pay also increases.

And I'm not saying that US is perfect. It isn't. But at least there are people in the US/West that you can approach and make something meaningful if you have your objectetions. That's something that's forbidden in PRC and will be.

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You are too stuck on the mantra that all form of communist or socialist government are bad to understand deeply how it works in China to even make a viable argument. This is NOT just some higher ups giving orders without thinking or even studying large projects in depth in every possible view points. How many other country can do what China does as in uplifting 800 million people out of poverty and building the world's largest middle class as well?

Janiz said:

And don't try to convince me otherwise - you'll always get you ideas for making money in obscure ways in PRC as long as you have a backing. The higher it is - the better. But the price to pay also increases.

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Dude, you must have live in a cave in the last twenty years. There are many many protests in China, and there are plenty of netizens that are very anti-government (my uncle included). People can bitch all they like as long as they don't try to organize something

And do read up on the founders of the successful private companies. Most of them are nobodies before they started their companies

China dominates top economies in patent applications
Last year accounted for more applications than US, Europe, Korea and Japan, combined

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The US has a history of its corporations squashing small competitors. Just look at the auto industry. Another case of if the West does something, it's okay. But if any other country does the same exact thing, it's evil rising. There was an article I read yesterday outraged that North Korea's underground nuclear tests were damaging the world's environment. Yeah unlike the US who has not only conducted far more underground nuclear tests but more surface tests many times more than all the tests conducted by North Korea. Look at how a democracy requires a lot of dumb people voting so that the elite can control the system. I wrote that nuclear test fact as a comment and someone replied I should be investigated by the FBI for speaking the truth. Yeah history has to be covered up just like how North Korea does it.

Awesome display of technical prowess wow painted the night sky with luminous, synchronous movement of small drone. Impressive.Of course with implicit warning of not so peaceful application
Sorry for the GIF I take exception here

China shows off drone brigade at Guangzhou Fortune Forum gala
The spectacle of 1,180 smart drones performing last night in Guangzhou is another impressive display of China's drone technologies
By DECEMBER 8, 2017 3:35 PM (UTC+8)

1,180 drones took part in a dazzling show Thursday evening in Guangzhou, part of a welcome gala for dignitaries attending the 2017 Fortune Global Forum being held in the capital city of China’s southern Guangdong province.

The impressive drone brigade, all manufactured in Guangzhou, smashed an earlier Guinness world record also set in the city when 1,000 drones performed in an orchestrated light show, Guangzhou Daily reports.


A time-lapse photo showing the drone performance. Photo: Guangzhou Daily
What required to marshal these 1,180 drones, weighing a total of one ton, is a sheer solo act, accomplished by just one console and one operator, on a system developed by the city’s indigenous tech startup eHang.

A lighting design can be enciphered into respective positioning codes for the 1,180 drones deployed, each capable of adjusting positions simultaneously, and, should a drone lose sync with the rest of the group and is unable to ascend to the programmed height, it will return to the ground without obstructing others, as all drones are smart enough to communicate with one another and coordinate routes and positions.


The drones perform in front of the Canton Tower. They are operated by one engineer on one console. Photo: Guangzhou Daily

Each of the drones are equipped with real time kinematic-grade sensors, a technique for enhancing the precision of position data derived from GPS, relying on a single reference station as well as an interpolated virtual station to provide corrections with up to centimetre-level accuracy. Positioning error of the entire drone battalion is said to be no more than 2 cm in latitude and 1 cm in longitude for each device.

What the operator has to do is no more than inputting the desired pattern, hitting the launch button, sitting back and watching the sci-fi blockbuster-like spectacle as more than a thousand glinting drones take flight at the same time.


The impressive drone flyover of the Guangzhou CBD is the centrepiece of a Fortune Global Forum gala. Photo: Guangzhou Daily
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Former US Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, Alibaba Group chairman Jack Ma and other Fortune 500 executives were among the audience awed by the drone legion performance, against Guangzhou’s glittering skyline and the city’s iconic Canton Tower.

The technologies behind the monumental drone show won’t be limited to performances only.

In June, state-owned China Electronics Technology Group Corp. had already unveiled its drone attack groups, hinting they can take on much larger conventional combat entities like warships and even an aircraft carrier.

Last month the Yunying, a new model of stealth combat drone about the size of a helicopter and developed by Aviation Industry Corp. of China, made its international debut at the Dubai Airshow.


A Yunying combat drone on display at the Dubai Airshow. Photo: People’s Daily
With normal takeoff weight rumored to be 3 tons, all Yunying drones can ascend higher and beyond the reach of most surface-to-air missiles thanks to powerful, turbo engines, and may coordinate with each other in combat through data links to enable others, including the reconnaissance attack version, to attack the targets they find.

Promo video of Guangzhou, Guangdong province the power house of China. Modern and old at the same time. the site of Fortune global forum
Ancestral home of many overseas Chinese. Look what a beautiful low slung temple typical of southern architecture modest and humble

now I read
China turns space debris into in-orbit Internet of Things

2017-12-08 19:00 GMT+8

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You might call it space recycling.

Chinese scientists have turned the final stage of a launch rocket, which is discarded in space after sending a satellite into orbit, into a smart application platform by fitting it with intelligent chips.

A program carried out by Shanghai-based Fudan University installed several intelligent chips on the final stage of the Long March 4C rocket, which sent the Fengyun-3D satellite into orbit in November.

Fudan University's Zheng Lirong, the chief scientist of the program, said discarded rocket sections during space launches constitute the largest percentage of space debris. By installing multiple chip systems on the rocket, the team has established the initial stage of a space-based Internet of Things.

Zheng explained that the launch rocket will jettison a section when it runs out of propellant in order to decrease the mass, and the final stage of the rocket is delivered to the orbit along with the payload.

"With these intelligent chips attached, space debris can be transformed into a low-cost science experiment and communication platform," he said.

Zheng's team has taken two years to develop the functional modules and hardware to make the "nanosatellites," with each set of the functional modules weighing less than 30 grams.

The team has named the intelligent chip system "Xinyun," meaning the cloud of chips.

Internet of Things solutions are already widely employed in daily life, ranging from wearable smart gadgets, driverless vehicles to GPS-tracked grazing.

Zheng said current applications experience common problems such as data congestion and slow transmission speeds, especially in remote and underserved regions. With the development of the space-based network, these areas could be better served.

"The system can connect space, air, ground and oceans at a low cost," said Jin Yaqiu, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and supervisor of the program. "It can also be seen as a useful trial in tackling the unresolved problem of dealing with space debris."

Zheng said scientists are still testing the system's functions and analyzing the track of orbiting debris.

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China gets big boost in semiconductor equipment localization

Jean Chu, Taipei; Willis Ke, DIGITIMES [Friday 8 December 2017]
China has taken a big stride forward in the localization of semiconductor equipment needed to support domestic chip production, as some major equipment makers have achieved technological breakthroughs and successfully developed key equipment such as vertical oxidation furnaces and chemical-mechanical polishing equipment, according to industry sources.

The sources said that Beijing-based Naura Technology Group has recently installed a set of vertical oxidation furnace,THEORISO302, developed by its wholly-owned subsidiary North Microelectronics, at the 3D NAND flash chips production line of Yantze Memory Technologies (YMTC) under the Tsinghua Unigroup.

The THEORISO302 furnaces have also been adopted on the production lines of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) and Shanghai Huali Microelectronics, with the equipment's processing applications covering logic, DRAM and NAND chips, the sources said.

So far, Naura Technology has successfully tapped into the mainstream semiconductor production lines in China with a spate of equipment including etching machines, PVD (physical vapor deposition), vertical oxidation furnaces, cleaning machines, LPVCD (low pressure chemical vapor deposition) and gas quality and flow controllers, among others. The company expects to have 40 more products verify by first-tier customers in China in 2018.

Meanwhile, another China maker CETC Electronics Equipment Group has come out with its newly developed 8-inch chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) equipment that can perform polishing, cleaning and wafer transmission functions and is designed based on international standards to meet a variety of processing requirements for different semiconductor materials such as silicon, copper, tungsten, aluminum, oxide, nitride, tantalum, and polymer.

The 8-inch CMP equipment is pending accreditation by SMIC's 8-inch wafer fab in Tianjian, marking the first time that China-made CMP equipment will enter the IC volume production line, industry sources said.

On another front, China-based semiconductor equipment makers are facing challenges from international competitors with regard to patent issues. For instance, US-based MOCVD (metal-organic chemical vapor deposition) equipment supplier Veeco Instruments has filed a request with a local court in New York asking it to issue an injunction against sales of graphite plates designed and manufactured by Germany-based SGL Carbon Group to China's Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment (AMEC) for production of MOCVD equipment, alleging that SGL Garbon infringe Veeco's patented technology.

Veeco also petitioned to China's State Intellectual Property Office (SIPC) to declare AMEC's patented MOCVD-used graphite plate invalid, but the petition was vetoed by the SIPC.