News on China's scientific and technological development.

taxiya said:

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According to the head of 6th institute of CASC, the R&D work of engineering prototype of 500t class LOX/Kerosene engine will be concluded within 2018. Not sure if the prototype engine could be built in 2018, or just the design work. Anyway, it is a big step.

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taxiya said:

I read the other day an article that China decided NOT to go "hybrid E vehicle", but only FULL E vehicle. The article was about recent Geely acquisition of shares in Daimler, then it mentions that Geely was "mistakenly" invested a lot in hybrid through Volvo, now it is trying to catch up with full E cars in the face of strong competition of BYD and others.

I am not surprised nor do I think Geely made a mistake (in hybrid), but quite interested in China's decision of go straight to embrace full E car. That seems that the strategy is go pure new energy (wind, solar, nuclear converted electricity). On another note, it seems the traditional European car makers (BBA and Volvo) were right in skipping hybrid (compared to Japan) and embrace full E cars. Of course, Tesla made that choice too, but I would not count it because it is purely focusing on the Luxury sector (rich boys' toy).

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The scale and pace of China's urbanization continues at an unprecedented rate. If current trends hold, China's urban population will hit the one billion mark by 2030. In 20 years, China's cities will have added 350 million people more than the entire population of the United States today. By 2025, China will have 221 cities with one million–plus inhabitants—compared with 35 cities of this size in Europe today—and 23 cities with more than five million. For companies in China and around the world, the scale of China’s urbanization promises substantial new markets and investment opportunities.

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Chinese project offers a brighter farming future
A massive, decade-long experiment involving millions of Chinese farmers demonstrates an evidence-based approach to sustainability.
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The results speak for themselves: maize (corn), rice and wheat output grew by some 11% over that decade, whereas the use of damaging and expensive fertilizers decreased by between 15% and 18%, depending on the crop. Farmers spent less money on their land and earned more from it — and they continue to do so.

The results offer hope in the search for a more sustainable future on a crowded planet. After all, some 2.5 billion smallholders together farm 60% of the world’s arable land. Beyond that, the project provides many lessons. First, that a scientific approach can increase agricultural productivity and cut damage to the environment. Second, that such success requires investment in what economists call the intangibles — the creation of networks to spread information and give scientists access to essential data. The scale of the research network created is impressive: 1,200 scientists, 65,000 local officials, 140,000 industry representatives and 21 million farmers across 37.7 million hectares.

Maintaining the people in those networks — in this case, the technicians and bureaucrats in local government offices — is a must. The study shows how these posts can produce benefit, both economic and environmental, far beyond what they cost. Unfortunately, in many countries, such jobs and the networks that depend on them are being cut back, often, paradoxically, in the name of efficiency.

The third lesson is that the same methods could, in principle, be used to boost agricultural efficiency elsewhere. But that will not be easy. China has well-developed regional infrastructure and relatively efficient central control, both of which allowed this project to operate on such a large scale. India and Africa — two regions that could benefit from a similar approach — do not. That makes it difficult, although not impossible, to translate the study and the results beyond China.

Fourth, the programme must be monitored and updated. Its recommendations were fine-tuned to the needs of farmers in specific regions, but these can change, especially as the climate alters. To consolidate their success, the farmers and scientists involved should continue to adapt the recommended methods.

China must now build on this project. Some 200 million smallholdings are not yet plugged into the information networks set up and so are not applying the recommendations. There is scope for easy wins here. For example, researchers could piggyback on existing but separate networks. One is the Science and Technology Backyard platforms, which operate in 21 provinces and cover a wide range of crops. They bring agricultural scientists to live in villages, and use demonstrations to show farmers better techniques. Such projects could ensure that farmers continue to learn. They could also be expanded to investigate the best use of other agricultural options, such as pest management and the use of legumes as alternatives to fertilizers.

Perhaps the most important lesson is that better use of existing technology can help to produce more food in a sustainable way. None of the recommendations given to China’s farmers would have surprised agronomists. Still, the scientists involved deserve great credit for having the vision and the wherewithal to make the project happen.

There is a thrill in finding that expectations hold up over so grand a scale. And, ultimately, it was that scale that made the difference. It allowed the project to go where even the best smaller studies (and Mao Zedong) could not: persuading often intractable rural farmers to change their practices, and so improve efficiency and productivity.

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hkbc said:

Looks like the Chinese have been busy in the material sciences field,

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Should make for more 'it's all hype', followed by 'they stole it from someone else' and finally 'end of the world as we know it' headlines

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U.S. multinational tech leader Microsoft said Tuesday that it has agreed to extend its partnership with a Chinese Internet data center service provider to offer world-class public cloud services to Chinese customers.

Microsoft's global technological leadership combined with the local operations expertise of 21Vianet, the Chinese leading carrier-neutral Internet data center services provider in China, as well as Microsoft Azure and Office 365 operated by 21Vianet, have achieved unprecedented, robust three-digit growth for nearly four consecutive years in the world's second largest economy, Microsoft wrote in its official blog post Wednesday.

The cooperation model pioneered by Microsoft and 21Vianet has been recognized as an effective and successful method for a legal and compliant operation of international cloud services in China, it said.

Microsoft was the first international public cloud provider to bring its cloud technology to China in partnership with 21Vianet after it officially launched the Azure service, a cloud computing platform in March 2014.

Azure public cloud services have served more than 100,000 Chinese enterprise customers, attracting over 1,300 cloud partners and over 100,000 active Azure DevOps developers, 21Vianet said in a statement Wednesday.

The customers of Microsoft Azure include almost all of China's big names, ranging from established Chinese brands such as China's top home appliances manufacturer Haier, the primary Chinese computer leader Lenovo, and China's telecom giant Huawei, to emerging powerhouses such as smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi, bike-share company Mobike, and automobile manufacturer BYD.

About 1.2 million Chinese enterprise users and 20 million educational users are currently conducting their daily work using Office 365, the brand name that Microsoft uses for a group of subscriptions that provide productivity software and related services.

Office 365 operated by 21Vianet was launched in China in April 2014 and now ranks top place in China's SaaS market.

Huawei, Tencent, and Pactera currently use Office 365 operated by 21Vianet to empower their employees and optimize their daily business operations.

Since its establishment in 2013, 21Vianet's cloud operation and maintenance group for Azure and Office 365 in China has grown from dozens of people to one of the largest professional cloud operation and maintenance teams in China, 21Vianet said.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced in November 2017 that Microsoft Azure operated by 21Vianet will triple its capacity in China in the beginning of 2018.

Azure's enlarged capacity will make it easier for multinational companies to meet the needs of Chinese customers through the scale, power, and secure infrastructure of the Azure cloud, Microsoft said.

21Vianet operates in more than 30 cities throughout China, serving more than 4,000 hosting enterprise customers that range from Internet companies to government entities, and from blue-chip enterprises to small- to medium-sized enterprises.

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The most recent advancement in China's facial recognition surveillance software is being sported by police officers at roadside checkpoints: glasses that scan and identify faces within three seconds.

The technology, which was first noted in use on March 10 outside Beijing, is supposedly able to scan and identify faces, then provide identity information, such as plate registration numbers, to police in real time.

The AI-powered glasses, made by LLVision, scan the faces of vehicle occupants and the plates, flagging with a red box and warning sign to the wearer when any match up with a centralized "blacklist."

The test – which coincides with the annual meeting of China's parliament in central Beijing – underscores a major push by China's leaders to leverage technology to boost security in the country.

That drive has led to growing concerns that China is developing a sophisticated surveillance state.

"[China's] leadership once felt a degree of trepidation over the advancement of the internet and communication technologies," said David Bandurski, co-director of the China Media Project, a media studies research project at the University of Hong Kong.

"It now sees them as absolutely indispensable tools of social and political control."

Wu Fei, chief executive of LLVision, said people should not be worried about privacy concerns because China's authorities were using the equipment for "noble causes," catching suspects and fugitives from the law.

"We trust the government," he told Reuters at the company's headquarters in Beijing.

The new technologies range from police robots for crowd control, to drones to monitor border areas, and artificially intelligent systems to track and censor behavior online. There are also scanners to forcibly read mobile phone data and even police dogs with virtual reality cameras.

At the meeting of the NPC, most delegates said the increasing use of technology to improve state security was a positive, and that the benefits far outweighed privacy concerns.

"This is a good thing, it means our technology is really leading the world," said Lu Yaping, a delegate from Jiangsu province in eastern China. "I don't have any concerns about safety."

China dished out $6.4 billion on surveillance in 2017, with that number rising at a steady annual 12 percent. The country now uses 176 million active surveillance cameras, expected to number 626 million by 2020, according to research firm IHS Market.

While the People's Republic has gotten a bad rap for its societal controls, other countries are looking into advanced surveillance systems similar to the police glasses. Germany announced in August it would test a biometric recognition system for Berlin's subway.

And, the world's most monitored nation remains the United Kingdom, possessing 20 percent of the world's surveillance cameras to monitor its 65.6 million inhabitants—less than 1 percent of the global population.

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How long does it take to travel from Beijing to Hong Kong? Well, it depends on the means of transport. But a 24-hour train ride, even though non-stop, is not an acceptable answer for a country with a world-class high-speed rail network.

The Beijing–Guangzhou–Shenzhen–Hong Kong high-speed railway is scheduled to open in the third quarter of 2018, which will shorten the rail travel time between Beijing and Hong Kong to around nine hours.

The 2,230-kilometer-long line is the world's longest high-speed rail route. Most of it is already in use. The last section, the cross-border Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link (XRL) is expected to be finished soon.

As Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region (SAR), the XRL will pass through an immigration control point that requires customs clearance.

A joint checkpoint plan has been approved by the HKSAR government to make the route more efficient. According to the plan, Chinese mainland officials will be able to operate together with HK officials at the West Kowloon Terminus to conduct immigration control so that travelers can finish procedures of emigration from the Chinese mainland and immigration into HK at one site.

Chan Fan, Hong Kong’s secretary for Transportation and Housing, said the value of the new link goes beyond transportation. He believes the high-speed route will bring HK residents greater living space and more business opportunities.

In fact, cross-boundary links between Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland are poised to hit new heights this year with the scheduled opening of three mega infrastructure projects.

Besides the high-speed link, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (HZMB),the world’s largest sea-crossing bridge, will open to traffic by the middle of the year, immensely cutting commute times between the three cities and offering new options for travel and work; and a 7th land-based crossing between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, Liantang/Heung Yuen Wai Boundary Control Point will also be finished by the end of this year.

Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said the connectivity buildup is expected to pave the way for broader and deeper exchanges of talents and among various sectors in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and also between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong.

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China has been ranked third in the world for innovation by global business leaders, according to the GE 2018 Global Innovation Barometer Report released Friday in Shanghai.

The report polled over 2,000 business executives responsible for R&D and product development from 20 countries and regions, to gauge their perception on the evolving state of innovation across the globe.

The United States was ranked the most innovative country among business leaders, but it has continued to trend downward since 2014, the report said.

Japan ranked second, with China taking third place, overtaking Germany.

Fourteen percent of global executives regarded China as leading in innovation, a 4-percentage-point increase than the last survey in 2014.

Meanwhile, 73 percent of Chinese executives believed that China has an environment conducive to innovation.

"As China transits to a more innovation-driven economy, an understanding of how businesses deal with this change is critical to operating in this environment," said Rachel Duan, president and CEO of GE China.

Chinese executives cited the difficulty in coming up with radical and disruptive ideas as well as in scaling successful innovations to a wider or international market as the top challenges to innovation.

Despite challenges, Chinese executives remained optimistic about the promise of innovation and emerging technologies.

The report indicated that 83 percent of Chinese executives viewed additive manufacturing and 3D printing as promising, 20 percentage points higher than globally.

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