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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: 4, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Sunday March 05, @07:43PM (4 children)
Comparing the USA's and China's GDP, it's not reasonable to assert that they haven't made tremendous economic progress in the last three decades, even if you assume the numbers have a significant fudge factor.
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp [tradingeconomics.com]
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp [tradingeconomics.com]
You're right regarding coal power, but I don't find their or India's growth in that unreasonable. The "developed" world burned coal with reckless abandon for centuries to build their economies. It was cheap and ubiquitous. It's unfair to kneecap developing countries by blocking it. China is electrifying infrastructure for a billion people, and that requires a lot of energy. They're piling money into coal, natural gas, nuclear, and renewables to feed that need. IIRC, they're building nuclear capacity ten times faster than the rest of the world combined, and growing renewables at the same rate (%/yoy) as the US.
The idea that China is a backwater pretending to be a superpower is dangerous. They aren't just making cheap knock-offs of American tech anymore. We, the world, gave them trillions in exchange for cheap manufacturing. They took that money and invested it in education and infrastructure. The dividends from that investment have already created a strong middle class, but that's nothing compared to the real payoff that's coming. If they continue to maintain domestic stability (and dodge the bullet of investing trillions in policing the rest of the world) their next generation will rocket past every other country in science, economics, and engineering achievement.
To quote the movie Looper: "I'm from the future; you should go to China."
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday March 05, @09:25PM
And everybody thought Nixon going to China was a GOOD thing...
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @11:35PM
They also have a history of regular purges followed by authoritarian rulers followed by regular purges followed by etc. etc.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @01:57AM (1 child)
The difference is that the developed world didn't know the damage that was being caused back then, and it was on a much smaller scale. Today, we know that burning coal releases tremendous amounts of CO2, which is driving extreme weather events, raising sea levels, destroying ecosystems, causing extinctions.
The developed world used ozone-destroying chemicals to build their economies. Is it therefore okay for China and India to pump those chemicals into the atmosphere? For how long? Until the entire ozone layer is destroyed?
The developed world also used chattel slavery to build their economies. Is it therefore okay for China and India to enslave people and force them to work to death? For how long? Until all their "troublesome" minorities are eradicated?
Wait, hang on though...
Isn't China part of the developed world? I thought they were the world's number 2 economy? Factory of the world? Challenging the US for global influence? They put a rover on the moon, and have their own permanently crewed space station FFS! How much more developed do they need to get, before we stop excusing their crimes as "growing pains"?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 07, @11:08PM
In a few centuries, it could be a serious problem. But it isn't now.
I'll note that we don't actually know how harmful ozone-destroying chemicals are. The evidence is heavily subject to observation bias. For example, we don't know if ozone holes are a new, alarming thing that required the effort we put into suppressing CFCs, or something that's been going on for the past five million years which might get mildly worse with that human contribution. We just know that when we looked for ozone holes, we saw them.