The lead article of the current Economist is 'The Rise of Chinese Science'. When it comes to numbers of high-impact research papers China is now well ahead of the US and Europe put together in material science, chemistry, engineering, computer science, agricultural science, physics and mathematics. Maybe not the time for complacency.
Cold War against China?
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If you break down Chinese Academia, it has a lot of issues. Mainly peer reviewing and fraudulent research practices.
Their military-scientific research has also been really bizarre. Some of their white-papers are released with great claims, Western organizations try can repeat the results and they find them absolutely unrepeatable.
Funnily enough, it's like Shroedingers economist. On one hand write an article about how amazing Chinese research is, then also about how awful it is.
https://www.economist.com/china/2024/02/22/why-fake-research-is-rampant-in-china
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news...thousands-of-papers-retracted/4018981.article
https://www.economist.com/china/2024/02/22/why-fake-research-is-rampant-in-china
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news...thousands-of-papers-retracted/4018981.article
I wasn't aware of that website, I read mine through a free local authority library site. This is the one anyway:
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2024/06/13/how-worrying-is-the-rapid-rise-of-chinese-science
Tbf, the Yanks may or may not have known it at the time but those Chinese vaccines were dreadful.
The thing with the economist is that it's very pro China.
Not necessarily because it agrees with what the CCP/China are doing internally or its foreign policy, but because the Economist is a very neo-liberal in its social views but most importantly its economic views.
It thinks that free trade, open markets at all costs are the key tenants of success and prosperity and everything else is minor. Hence, you will see many many articles suggesting the US co-operate with China and to stop its "cold war" or its trade wars.
All in all, incredibly naive and ideological stances.
It's poor reasoning but ultimately the right conclusion. This cold war is likely to end in disaster and is totally ideologically driven. The best thing that could happen to the world is the end of tensions between America/Russia/China.
In general I've never understood their rather aggressive 'wolf warrior' diplomacy that only seems to alienate other Asian countries.
I guess they think that any negative PR is temporary and once they've "took" territory everyone will then accept the new status quo and continue to do business with China. And they may be right in that.
That and it's done for internal consumption, much like Brexit.
But why did Hu Jintao not engage in wolf warrior diplomacy? What changed the calculus for Xi to think "I need this for domestic consumption".
That's his preference whereas previous leaders' was for closer to vanilla neoliberalism. The tools of coercion and persuasion wielded by states inclined to use them are now vastly more powerful and sophisticated than they were even in the 20th century, authoritarianism is a lot easier. He may even believe in Chinese exceptionalism like Putin seems to for Russian. Once you have no checks on your actions at home you next want people to believe you have that kind of power abroad.
It's also entirely possible that the recent horrors of the world wars, cold war, and Mao's China lived more prominently in the minds of previous generations than this current aged one ruling China. Again, a bit like in Britain and many other countries.
Also probably China has much more leverage now than with Hu Jintao as the world had grown more and more dependent with china so they feel more untouchable with the raise at the same time of their military power
Agree with the first part in terms of economic power, second part is because Xi committed them to building up their military, it was a deliberate choice.
Well, yes. You are right. I guess is a consequence of adopting that postition
I don't even have an issue with China having a strong military. Their economy is big. With a big economy comes a big defence budget. With a big defence budget comes a well-funded strong military.
Their military in the 90s was pretty shit so a modernization was due anyway.
But what they hope to achieve with bullying the Philippines is hard to understand.
Stealing a bit of land and impressing their own population, and possibly Chairman Xi will have a little tug over what a hard man he is after it all too.
Thank you for breaking down Chinese Academia
Fact of the matter is that are poised to dominate the largest markets in the world in ten frontier technologies including 5G, AI, robotics, electric vehicles, biopharmaceuticals and nuclear.
For example, here's a report from the world’s leading think tank for science and technology policy:
- Looking narrowly at scientific publications on nuclear energy, China ranks first in the H-index, a commonly used metric measuring the scholarly impact of journal publications.
- From 2008 to 2023, China’s share of all nuclear patents increased from 1.3 percent to 13.4 percent, and the country leads in the number of nuclear fusion patent applications.
But, it's not just theory -- they're also putting it into practice:
- Overall, analysts assess that China likely stands 10 to 15 years ahead of the United States in its ability to deploy fourth-generation nuclear reactors at scale.
- The country expects to build 6 to 8 new nuclear power plants each year for the foreseeable future, with the country surpassing the United States in nuclear-generated electricity by 2030. In total, China intends to build a total of 150 new nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035.
- China’s innovation strengths in nuclear power pertain especially to organizational, systemic, and incremental innovation. Many fourth-generation nuclear technologies have been known for years, but China’s state-backed approach excels at fielding them.
Is the US as interested in becoming top dog in nuclear power plants? The US has a lot of energy resources of its own.Thank you for breaking down Chinese Academia
Fact of the matter is that are poised to dominate the largest markets in the world in ten frontier technologies including 5G, AI, robotics, electric vehicles, biopharmaceuticals and nuclear.
For example, here's a report from the world’s leading think tank for science and technology policy:
- Looking narrowly at scientific publications on nuclear energy, China ranks first in the H-index, a commonly used metric measuring the scholarly impact of journal publications.
- From 2008 to 2023, China’s share of all nuclear patents increased from 1.3 percent to 13.4 percent, and the country leads in the number of nuclear fusion patent applications.
But, it's not just theory -- they're also putting it into practice:
- Overall, analysts assess that China likely stands 10 to 15 years ahead of the United States in its ability to deploy fourth-generation nuclear reactors at scale.
- The country expects to build 6 to 8 new nuclear power plants each year for the foreseeable future, with the country surpassing the United States in nuclear-generated electricity by 2030. In total, China intends to build a total of 150 new nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035.
- China’s innovation strengths in nuclear power pertain especially to organizational, systemic, and incremental innovation. Many fourth-generation nuclear technologies have been known for years, but China’s state-backed approach excels at fielding them.
Who wouldn't be interested in securing energy independence, economic resilience, and increasing American competitiveness in global markets? It's true that U.S. crude oil exports hit a record high in 2023, but U.S. oil fields are aging, production growth has slowed, and U.S. crude is becoming heavier and sourer. The U.S. must shift to green/nuclear energy to future-proof manufacturing jobs.
The country (Biden's administration really) has taken important steps toward achieving these goals through the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes direct incentives for nuclear energy by supporting HALEU (High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium) and offering production and investment tax credits. It also backs sustainable infrastructure, including solar, wind, biofuels, and battery storage. However, successful implementation requires more than just funding to effectively address some rather complex supply chain issues.
Meanwhile, China is betting on dominating the global transition to green/nuclear energy, leveraging its one-party state to drive initiatives in a way free markets cannot or will not. How this plays out could have serious implication for American power and influence.
My interests lie in mostly the research papers around military applications, and that's where China puts out stacks and stacks of papers that are worth shit.
For example, this:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/sci...-develop-anti-stealth-radar-so-small-it-could
Then you read the paper and it's just a load of shit -> Radar power is directly proportional to the amount of surface area, curvature, and most importantly, power, you can get to a system. Reading through their actual published paper, they talk about metric wave radars...which have been around for decades, but are so low band that they cannot be used to provide any weapons tracking solution. It doesn't even mention how it solves the power and surface area curvature issue. Basically, if they've actually managed to achieve this, we have to entirely re-look at how we look at the electromagnetic spectrum because it's so ground breaking. They made this bold claim, it got "peer reviewed" domestically and then...nothing...silence. And just like that, it disappeared.
Only for it to be replaced by another guy making the exact same thing 2 years later with the exact same claim but with an entirely different solution.
https://interestingengineering.com/military/china-radar-stealth-f-22
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10416995
Again, peer reviewed domestically. Only...he basically just suggested placing low band with high band and S band, with alternating frequency radars all data-linked to one another, just using latest technology and materials to make it more efficient. This is in an entirely static ground based setup.
Great, this has been around since the 1980's, and all Aegis networks on US ships have had this setup of multi-band arrays data-linked to one another since the mid 1990's. Only, the research was, "Lets use modern materials and power generation to make it even more effective!"
Here's another example.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/sci...-powerful-detonation-engine-hypersonic-flight
Reading the paper, again, peer reviewed domestically, it talks about how they've devised a mechanism to make the payload injection upon detonation super efficient on Scramjet powered engines. Then the paper talks about how it can feed air into its stableization properties to provide stabilization on the flight path. All sounds amazing...right?
Okay, but it completely neglects to mention how to handle the heat disappation problem. Post mach-6, which is what scramjets are built for, temperatures can reach and exceed 3000c. How on earth do you expect a fighter plane to be able to withstand that level of heat, especially since at that speed, air is no longer a viable coolant as it's being consumed by the engine itself for more speed. The drag co-efficient is so high, hypersonic planes are about 30-40 years away. It works for missiles because a missile has limited need for functional electronics and sensors, nor does it has a person inside.
Brilliant, you've written a paper that analogously shows how a guy can jump off a space station and land at a specific target, but you've neglected to mention how someone is supposed to survive the impact.
These two examples are just one of many of the ridiculous claims China has made, and peer reviewed, in this sector of its academia.
Maybe, it's only the military research papers that are like this, and everything else is pretty legit. But given the published retraction rates across the board of its research papers, I'm inclined to believe otherwise.
I've seen many a claim from Weichai (big state owned automotive company) about diesel engine or other power generation systems that are well...if not strictly impossible, let's say incredibly unlikely. I don't think it's limited to military stuff, it's the nature of how they are encouraged to report things.
It doesn't mean they don't do impressive things of course, there's nobody better at scaling things up cheaply, and they may well save the world with their cheap solar power, batteries etc. There's just usually a limit at the very highest of tech end of things to their understanding in my experience. A lot of their basic research is pretty good though I think - materials development and that kind of thing.
Nuclear energy is interesting but it seems there are significant drawbacks to it?
https://www.redcafe.net/threads/nuclear-energy.483023/
The latter applies to the Middle East as well from what I’ve heard. I remember a few years ago the Chinese ambassador in Beirut could quote classical Arabic poetry and literature while his US counterpart wouldn’t have been able to order shawarma on the street.
Difference of atitude in your in ""home". One adapting to you, the other expecting to adapt to him/her
Is this like when Zelensky starred in a show about him becoming president and then he became president in real life.
Former Australian PM Keating has caused controversy by saying Taiwan is "Chinese real estate".
There is no way that China can gain air superiority and naval control over the Pacific side of Taiwan coastline.
Do you expect that the US + partners would intervene if China conducts a blockade?
For the sake of balance and fairness, this is a response to a Japanese Warship entering Chinese waters a few weeks back.
Where was this? I hope you don’t mean the Senkakus