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China has a "stunning lead" over the US:
The Biden administration might be limiting China's ability to manufacture advanced chips, but according to an independent think tank, the Asian nation is still ahead of the US when it comes to research in 37 out of 44 crucial and emerging technologies, including AI, defense, and key quantum tech areas.
Insider reports that the Canberra-based Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) believes China has a "stunning lead" over the US when it comes to high-impact research across the majority of critical and emerging technology domains.
[...] The think tank notes that for some of these technologies, the ten leading research institutions are based in China and are collectively generating nine times more high-impact research papers than the second-ranked country, which is usually the US. What could be especially worrying for America is that two areas where China really excels are Defense and space-related technologies. ASPI writes that China's advancements in nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles took the US by surprise in 2021.
How is China so far ahead? Some of it is down to imported talent. The report notes that one-fifth of its high-impact papers are being authored by researchers with postgraduate training in a Five-Eyes country (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States). However, most of China's progress comes from deliberate design and long-term policy planning by President Xi Jinping and his predecessors.
The near-term effects of China's lead could see it gaining a stranglehold on the global supply of certain critical technologies, while the long-term impact could result in the authoritarian state gaining more global influence and power.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Sunday March 05, @02:20PM (2 children)
That *ought* to be true, but it isn't. The feds control lots of things that affect the targets of education. One of the targets they've pushed is "teach everyone equally". This doesn't work when people AREN'T equal.
That said, a lot of the "love of ignorance" is *because* of local controls. People tend to not like things that challenge their preconceptions. And the US as always been one to push "faith over works". That said, we also praise "folks who successfully become rich". Considerations about *how* the became rich are usually secondary. And there's a lot of praise of "working hard", as long as the one doing the praising isn't expected to do the work.
All that said, the Chinese have their own problems. They appear to have greater tolerance for fake claims than even the US. And they react much more strongly against any truth that might be embarrassing. So you can't really trust any claims they make as to how advanced they are, even if those making the claim believe it. This, unfortunately, means that the report may be totally accurate. (China does have a large population, and has a history of [often] trusting scholars. And periods when scholars [i.e. mandarins before that was made hereditary] ran the government quite well...for certain senses of well.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @05:56PM (1 child)
The Asian concept of "losing face" is the antithesis of scientific discovery. And I can't see them losing that any time in the next 1000 years. As Carl Sagan said, there is NO authority in science:
* Arguments from authority carry little weight—“authorities” have made mistakes in the past. They will do so again in the future. Perhaps a better way to say it is that in science there are no authorities.
* Argumentation cannot suffice for the discovery of new work, since the subtlety of Nature is greater many times than the subtlety of argument.
* Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station.
* If there’s a chain of argument, every link in the chain must work - not just most of them.
http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/pmo/eng/Sagan-Baloney.pdf [fu-berlin.de]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @09:30AM
I see plenty of signs that Western researchers also care about "losing face".
There's enough for Planck to say this and be accurate enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle [wikipedia.org]
Not in all cases of course but enough to refute your "no authorities" claim.