The China Challenge
PaPaPeng
China special: Growing pains of a superpower
07 November 2007
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19626291.400-china-special-growing-pains-of-a-superpower.html
NewScientist.com news service
Peter Aldhous
Gregory T. Huang
Enlarge image
State of the NationTHE 21st century, we are told, will be China's.
Usually this is intended as a warning: if the world's leading
economies fail to respond to the Chinese "threat", we will face a
second-class future trailing in the wake of the People's Republic.
This blinkered view gets us nowhere. China is a proud nation with a
turbulent history, and it makes no secret of its superpower ambitions.
It is certainly a fierce competitor for resources - witness the panic
in the US about China's thirst for oil, and what that means for fuel
prices. But this vast and diverse country is already much more than a
simple adversary. Without China's supply of cheap manufactured goods,
massive overseas investment and talented labour, the world's economy
would be in serious trouble.
In this age of globalisation, China is also a partner - which is why
we should all be concerned about the challenges ahead. China faces
immense social, political and environmental problems, and whatever is
a problem for China is by definition a problem for everyone else too.
Today in rich western countries, people worry about poisoned Chinese
pet food and imported toys tainted with lead. Tomorrow, it could be a
global climate meltdown driven by China's exploding demand for energy.
China's leaders are no fools. Most senior members of the central
government were trained in that most practical of disciplines,
engineering. They know that the nation's present trajectory is
unsustainable, both economically and environmentally. If China is to
continue its remarkable development, it must transform itself from an
exporter of cheap manufactured goods built to western blueprints into
what its leaders call an "innovation nation" - able to sustain its
growth through home-grown ingenuity. So they are pouring huge sums
into science, particularly at the applied end of hot fields like
nanotechnology and renewable energy. China's spending on research and
development has more than doubled in the past five years, and official
plans call for a further rise - from 1.34 per cent of GDP in 2005 to
2.5 per cent by 2020.
If the plan bears fruit, some of the innovations that will be needed
to solve global problems are likely to come from China. Already, top
Chinese researchers and entrepreneurs trained abroad are returning to
their homeland in unprecedented numbers. They are emphatic about one
thing: wanting China to be able to stand with the US and other leading
nations as an equal partner.
Can China really reinvent itself as a lean, green technological
superpower? Will the rural poor get left behind as the urban middle
class reaps the benefits of rapid economic growth? Or will the
economic miracle falter or even collapse? And can the Communist Party
maintain its grip on power through it all? Will it ultimately be an
engine of reform, or an obstacle to change? Will China eventually
embrace democracy as it is practised in the west? Or does conflict lie
ahead?
These are interesting times in China. Talk to westerners who live
there and you will hear the refrain: "The longer I stay, the more I
realise that I don't understand." So rather than trying to provide a
top-down view of what China is all about, we sent our reporters across
the country with a simple brief: profile fascinating people and
compelling projects to give a snapshot of a superpower in the making.
We also asked a leading China-watcher to comment on what it's like to
be governed by a Politburo of engineers.
Over the following 22 pages you'll meet an observant Muslim who grows
grapes in the province that borders Kazakhstan, a science writer who
moonlights as a fraudbuster, and entrepreneurs in Beijing who are
giving the internet a Chinese flavour. Along the way you'll learn of
an epidemic of spinal injury, China's ambitions to build the world's
first quantum computer, and a growing debate over whether the
notorious "one-child policy" needs to be relaxed. There is some good
news, some bad news, and more than a few surprises.
If you care about the future, you should care about China. If you want
to see its future in the making, you really should visit. Failing
that, let us be your guide.
China special: The solar power king
China special: The backbone of spinal research
China special: Small farmer/big pharma
China special: One child, one big problem
China special: Exposing the science charlatans
China special: Beyond the Great Firewall
China special: Quantum revolution
China special: Engineers rule, OK?
From issue 2629 of New Scientist magazine, 07 November 2007, page
48-49
PaPaPeng
1. China special: The solar power king
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19626291.500-china-special-the-solar-power-king.html
" 07 November 2007
" Richard Fisher Phil McKenna
" Magazine issue 2629
Watch an interview with the mayor of Rizhao and the director of
Mountain Yoga about how they are now using solar water heaters
SHI ZHENGRONG is an unlikely contender for the title of China's
richest man. He is a green entrepreneur in a nation that is home to 16
of the world's 20 most polluted cities. Last year, Forbes magazine
ranked him top of mainland China's rich list, with a net worth of $2.2
billion. Only electrical retailer Wong Kwong Yu kept him from
retaining the title in 2007.
Shi is head of Suntech Power, based in Wuxi, which is one of the
largest producers of solar-cell modules in the world. He represents
the kind of home-grown success story in both technology and business
that will be needed in spades to meet the crushing energy demands of
the emerging superpower.
China's demand for energy is expected to nearly ...
The complete article is 2060 words long.
2. China special: The backbone of spinal research
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19626291.600-china-special-the-backbone-of-spinal-research.html
" 07 November 2007
" Jane Qiu
" Magazine issue 2629
WHEN Yang Gui-rong was taken to the Chengdu Army Kunming General
Hospital more than a year ago, after an accident diving into a pool,
he could move only his mouth and eyes and was struggling to breathe.
Surgeons transplanted fetal cells into the injured spinal cord in
Yang's broken neck. With intensive rehabilitation, he slowly regained
feeling and movement in his arms. Today, Yang is on the hospital's
wheelchair rugby team, which won a silver medal in the Chinese Games
for the Disabled in May. "We didn't expect he would survive the
surgery," says Shen Caihong, head nurse in the hospital's spinal
injuries centre. "Now his progress is visible almost on a daily
basis."
Yang is just one individual hit by an epidemic of spinal injuries in
China that is a direct consequence of the nation's economic
development. Over the past decade, the rate of spinal cord injuries
has increased ...
The complete article is 2076 words long.
3. China special: Small farmer/big pharma
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19626291.700-china-special-small-farmerbig-pharma.html
07 November 2007
Phil McKenna Richard Fisher
Magazine issue 2629
Farmers in the far west of China might be living on a different planet
from workers in Beijing's booming biotech firms...
KASAM SAYIM doesn't have a cellphone and has never used a computer.
"I'm an old man. I have no use for them," he says.
Sayim is a 63-year-old grape farmer from Hando village in Xinjiang
province in north-west China. He is Uighur, a member of a Muslim
minority group that has its own language and uses a modified Arabic
script. Sayim doesn't speak Mandarin.
The Turpan basin, where he lives, is the second lowest place on Earth
apart from the Dead Sea. It gets so hot and dry that from May to
October the villagers drag their beds - and often their TV sets -
outside and sleep under the stars. Officially Xinjiang province, some
3000 kilometres west of Beijing, is in the same time zone as the
capital. ...
4. China special: One child, one big problem
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19626291.800-china-special-one-child-one-big-problem.html
07 November 2007
Rachel Nowak
Magazine issue 2629
IT HAS been called the demographic sweet spot - a huge working-age
population supporting a relatively small number of old and young
people - and it has helped power China's economic explosion. China hit
that sweet spot because of decades of social engineering. In the late
1950s, Mao Zedong promoted large families to power his economic vision
of a Great Leap Forward, and by 1976 the population had almost
doubled. This prompted the introduction of national family planning
policies to restrict the number of children a couple could have. With
some modifications, these policies are still in place. They were
designed to put a brake on runaway population growth, end poverty and
encourage economic development. In part, the plan has worked: today
almost 72 per cent of Chinese people are of working age.
But the country's drive to reduce birth rates - known outside China as
the one-child policy - ...
The complete article is 1433 words long.
5. China special: Exposing the science charlatans
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19626291.900-china-special-exposing-the-science-charlatans.html
07 November 2007
Richard Fisher
Magazine issue 2629
IT WAS supposed to be a national triumph, but instead it became a
serious embarrassment. Four years ago, Chen Jin's star rose fast after
he unveiled a new computer chip. It was billed as China's first
home-grown digital signal processor - the kind of chip that forms the
guts of devices from digital cameras to mobile phones. Buoyed by
millions of dollars from both the central and Shanghai governments,
Chen set up a company called HISYS Technology to mass-produce the
chips.
His fall was spectacular. In January 2006, an anonymous tipster
claimed Chen had bought chips made by electronics giant Motorola,
sanded off the logos and presented them as his own. Chen's employers
at Shanghai Jiao Tong University later concluded that he had falsified
results. He was fired, and "China's chip" was no more.
Chen's is not the only recent high-profile case of scientific fraud in
China. Last year, ...
The complete article is 1613 words long.
6. China special: Beyond the Great Firewall
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19626292.000-china-special-beyond-the-great-firewall.html
" 07 November 2007
" Gregory T. Huang
" Magazine issue 2629
IT'S a familiar scene the world over. Rows of young men hunched over
glowing screens, looking like they've been there for days. They are
immersed in virtual worlds, surfing the web, or shopping for gadgets.
I'm in a wang ba, or net bar, on bustling Chengfu Street in Beijing.
The scene appears at odds with the popular perception of China as a
ruthless suppressor of internet freedom: in the run-up to the Chinese
Communist Party congress last month, western media reported the
censoring of blogs, suspension of websites and even whole internet
service providers being closed down. Yet when I ducked into one of the
dozens of net bars in the vicinity of Tsinghua University, I couldn't
find an empty seat. Welcome to the Chinese internet.
I peek at the screens and see no trace of Google, YouTube, eBay or
other western sites. Not because they are blocked - most ...
The complete article is 1378 words long.
7. China special: Quantum revolution
http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/mg19626292.100-china-special-quantum-revolution.html
" 07 November 2007
" Gregory T. Huang
" Magazine issue 2629
THIS is where the revolution might begin. One night five years ago,
Jian-Wei Pan had a vivid dream. Sitting in front of him was the
world's first quantum computer. It was a strange mix of translucent
solid and swirling fluid with a piercing beam of blue light emanating
from within. He approached it, trying to figure out how it worked, but
it was too fuzzy to examine. Nor could he imagine where it had come
from. Did it have a "Made in China" sticker on it? "I have no idea,"
Pan laughs.
In his lab at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC)
in Hefei, Pan is now striving to make his dream a reality. When I
visit, it is buzzing with activity. In an office thick with cigarette
smoke, young professors argue over their latest experiments, while in
the next room students scurry around a ...
The complete article is 1890 words long.
8. China special: Engineers rule, OK?
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19626292.200-china-special-engineers-rule-ok.html
" 07 November 2007
" Richard P. Suttmeier
" Magazine issue 2629
CONTEMPORARY China is a nation led by technocrats. The current
generation of leaders is made up mostly of graduates from some of
China's leading universities, typically trained in science and
engineering. Until this year's 17th National Congress of the Communist
Party of China, which closed on 22 October, every member of the
central bastion of power - the Standing Committee of the Politburo -
was an engineer by training. President Hu Jintao is a graduate of
Beijing's Tsinghua University, often referred to as China's MIT, while
the premier, Wen Jiabao, trained as a geologist.
For those in the west, where lawyers dominate the political
establishment, China provides an intriguing contrast. How did the
country come to be led by a cohort of technocrats? Does their
technical mindset define the way they rule? Do they govern as
engineers and scientists? And, most importantly, do they govern well?
The current leadership's rise ...
The complete article is 1324 words long.
deem...@aol.com
> On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 10:09:03 GMT, PaPaPeng <PaPaP...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> 1. China special: The solar power kinghttp://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg19626291.500-china-spec...
> " 07 November 2007
> " Richard Fisher Phil McKenna
> " Magazine issue 2629
> Watch an interview with the mayor of Rizhao and the director of
> Mountain Yoga about how they are now using solar water heaters
> SHI ZHENGRONG is an unlikely contender for the title of China's
> richest man. He is a green entrepreneur in a nation that is home to 16
> of the world's 20 most polluted cities. Last year, Forbes magazine
> ranked him top of mainland China's rich list, with a net worth of $2.2
> billion. Only electrical retailer Wong Kwong Yu kept him from
> retaining the title in 2007.
> Shi is head of Suntech Power, based in Wuxi, which is one of the
> largest producers of solar-cell modules in the world. He represents
> the kind of home-grown success story in both technology and business
> that will be needed in spades to meet the crushing energy demands of
> the emerging superpower.
> China's demand for energy is expected to nearly ...
> The complete article is 2060 words long.
>
> " 07 November 2007
> " Jane Qiu
> " Magazine issue 2629
> WHEN Yang Gui-rong was taken to the Chengdu Army Kunming General
> Hospital more than a year ago, after an accident diving into a pool,
> he could move only his mouth and eyes and was struggling to breathe.
> Surgeons transplanted fetal cells into the injured spinal cord in
> Yang's broken neck. With intensive rehabilitation, he slowly regained
> feeling and movement in his arms. Today, Yang is on the hospital's
> wheelchair rugby team, which won a silver medal in the Chinese Games
> for the Disabled in May. "We didn't expect he would survive the
> surgery," says Shen Caihong, head nurse in the hospital's spinal
> injuries centre. "Now his progress is visible almost on a daily
> basis."
> Yang is just one individual hit by an epidemic of spinal injuries in
> China that is a direct consequence of the nation's economic
> development. Over the past decade, the rate of spinal cord injuries
> has increased ...
> The complete article is 2076 words long.
>
> 07 November 2007
> Phil McKenna Richard Fisher
> Magazine issue 2629
> Farmers in the far west of China might be living on a different planet
> from workers in Beijing's booming biotech firms...
> KASAM SAYIM doesn't have a cellphone and has never used a computer.
> "I'm an old man. I have no use for them," he says.
> Sayim is a 63-year-old grape farmer from Hando village in Xinjiang
> province in north-west China. He is Uighur, a member of a Muslim
> minority group that has its own language and uses a modified Arabic
> script. Sayim doesn't speak Mandarin.
> The Turpan basin, where he lives, is the second lowest place on Earth
> apart from the Dead Sea. It gets so hot and dry that from May to
> October the villagers drag their beds - and often their TV sets -
> outside and sleep under the stars. Officially Xinjiang province, some
> 3000 kilometres west of Beijing, is in the same time zone as the
> capital. ...
>
> 07 November 2007
> Rachel Nowak
> Magazine issue 2629
> IT HAS been called the demographic sweet spot - a huge working-age
> population supporting a relatively small number of old and young
> people - and it has helped power China's economic explosion. China hit
> that sweet spot because of decades of social engineering. In the late
> 1950s, Mao Zedong promoted large families to power his economic vision
> of a Great Leap Forward, and by 1976 the population had almost
> doubled. This prompted the introduction of national family planning
> policies to restrict the number of children a couple could have. With
> some modifications, these policies are still in place. They were
> designed to put a brake on runaway population growth, end poverty and
> encourage economic development. In part, the plan has worked: today
> almost 72 per cent of Chinese people are of working age.
> But the country's drive to reduce birth rates - known outside China as
> the one-child policy - ...
> The complete article is 1433 words long.
>
> 07 November 2007
> Richard Fisher
> Magazine issue 2629
> IT WAS supposed to be a national triumph, but instead it became a
> serious embarrassment. Four years ago, Chen Jin's star rose fast after
> he unveiled a new computer chip. It was billed as China's first
> home-grown digital signal processor - the kind of chip that forms the
> guts of devices from digital cameras to mobile phones. Buoyed by
> millions of dollars from both the central and Shanghai governments,
> Chen set up a company called HISYS Technology to mass-produce the
> chips.
> His fall was spectacular. In January 2006, an anonymous tipster
> claimed Chen had bought chips made by electronics giant Motorola,
> sanded off the logos and presented them as his own. Chen's employers
> at Shanghai Jiao Tong University later concluded that he had falsified
> results. He was fired, and "China's chip" was no more.
> Chen's is not the only recent high-profile case of scientific fraud in
> China. Last year, ...
> The complete article is 1613 words long.
>
> " 07 November 2007
> " Gregory T. Huang
> " Magazine issue 2629
> IT'S a familiar scene the world over. Rows of young men hunched over
> glowing screens, looking like they've been there for days. They are
> immersed in virtual worlds, surfing the web, or shopping for gadgets.
> I'm in a wang ba, or net bar, on bustling Chengfu Street in Beijing.
> The scene appears at odds with the popular perception of China as a
> ruthless suppressor of internet freedom: in the run-up to the Chinese
> Communist Party congress last month, western media reported the
> censoring of blogs, suspension of websites and even whole internet
> service providers being closed down. Yet when I ducked into one of the
> dozens of net bars in the vicinity of Tsinghua University, I couldn't
> find an empty seat. Welcome to the Chinese internet.
> I peek at the screens and see no trace of Google, YouTube, eBay or
> other western sites. Not because they are blocked - most ...
> The complete article is 1378 words long.
>
> " 07 November 2007
> " Gregory T. Huang
> " Magazine issue 2629
> THIS is where the revolution might begin. One night five years ago,
> Jian-Wei Pan had a vivid dream. Sitting in front of him was the
> world's first quantum computer. It was a strange mix of translucent
> solid and swirling fluid with a piercing beam of blue light emanating
> from within. He approached it, trying to figure out how it worked, but
> it was too fuzzy to examine. Nor could he imagine where it had come
> from. Did it have a "Made in China" sticker on it? "I have no idea,"
> Pan laughs.
> In his lab at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC)
> in Hefei, Pan is now striving to make his dream a reality. When I
> visit, it is buzzing with activity. In an office thick with cigarette
> smoke, young professors argue over their latest experiments, while in
> the next room students scurry around a ...
> The complete article is 1890 words long.
>
> " 07 November 2007
> " Richard P. Suttmeier
> " Magazine issue 2629
> CONTEMPORARY China is a nation led by technocrats. The current
> generation of leaders is made up mostly of graduates from some of
> China's leading universities, typically trained in science and
> engineering. Until this year's 17th National Congress of the Communist
> Party of China, which closed on 22 October, every member of the
> central bastion of power - the Standing Committee of the Politburo -
> was an engineer by training. President Hu Jintao is a graduate of
> Beijing's Tsinghua University, often referred to as China's MIT, while
> the premier, Wen Jiabao, trained as a geologist.
> For those in the west, where lawyers dominate the political
> establishment, China provides an intriguing contrast. How did the
> country come to be led by a cohort of technocrats? Does their
> technical mindset define the way they rule? Do they govern as
> engineers and scientists? And, most importantly, do they govern well?
> The current leadership's rise ...
> The complete article is 1324 words long.
From my point of view, the one challenge China (and India...to a
greater extent) faces is its population. Just providing for that many
people will be a huge challenge. This challenge will get greater as
the people come to expect more. If China can do this, the 21st Century
may well be the "China Century"...if not, China won't be able to
harness its advantages.
PaPaPeng
> From my point of view, the one challenge China (and India...to a
>greater extent) faces is its population. Just providing for that many
>people will be a huge challenge. This challenge will get greater as
>the people come to expect more. If China can do this, the 21st Century
>may well be the "China Century"...if not, China won't be able to
>harness its advantages.
Developments in China should indeed be viewed through this population
lens. The ecological and economic carrying capacity of the land (my
guess) should ideally be around 800 millions. 800 millions still
exceed the current populations of the US and the EU combined to give
an idea of magnitude. Yet even with "the one child per family"
rigorous birth control measures the optimistic population projection
hopefully will stabilize at 1.5 billions by 2035 thereabouts.
The natural replacement rate for a population is 2.1 children per
family*. These figures don't conform to any logical expectations or
explanation. Rather than argue the point this should instead be a
wake up call that China has an enormous problem on controlling its
population gains. Yet we have to suffer these Christian
fundamentalists and human rights activists attacks that people (aka
Chinese) should have the God given right to have as many children as
they want.
*[WIKI: Replacement fertility is the total fertility rate at which
women would have only enough children to replace themselves and their
partner. By definition, replacement is only considered to have
occurred when the offspring reach 15 years of age. If there were no
mortality in the female population until the end of the childbearing
years (generally taken as 44 or 49, though some exceptions exist) then
the replacement rate would be exactly 2, but in practice it is
affected by mortality, especially childhood mortality. The replacement
fertility rate is roughly 2.1 births per woman for most industrialized
countries but ranges from 2.5 to 3.3 in developing countries because
of higher mortality rates.[1] Taken globally, the total fertility rate
at replacement is 2.33 children per woman. At this rate, global
population growth would trend towards zero.]
There is a Special Report on India and China in The ECONOMIST worth
reading up on.
http://www.economist.com/printedition/
A special report on technology in India and China
Running fast
Leapfrogging or piggybacking?
Transcending the genre
Imitate or die
Consumer champion
Old parts, but a new whole
E-hinterland
For all the PCs in China
Does not compute
Splendid miscegenation
Offer to readers
Sources and acknowledgments
I am curious about this convention to put India first when using the
phrase "India and China". Is it from the historical perspective that
England was in India longer and had ruled her once or is it from the
geographical instinct to look east and come across India first before
arriving on China? Some other reason?
Ray O'Hara
"PaPaPeng" <PaPa...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:dhdej35lo2iug5i78...@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 06:03:09 -0800, "deem...@aol.com"
what we need to do is start beaming radio broadcasts and flooding the net
with pro-democracy broadcasts aimed at destabilizing the chinese government
much like we did with the voice of america radio aimed at the old union.
social revolution is just below the surface waiting to boil up. we should
encourage it.
let the party fuss and fume all it wants.
PaPaPeng
You are already doing that from Hollywood. The ones tearing their
hair is the US Movie Industry Group. The Chinese pick the best ideas
on fashions, trends, etc. make copies or modify them and export them
back to Hollywood.
Henry J Cobb
Sorry, but in addition to being our greenest President ever, Bush is
also the most pro-communist and will do nothing to upset his Chinese
bankers.
-HJC
Fred J. McCall
:
:Sorry, but in addition to being our greenest President ever, Bush is
:bankers.
You really are nuts, aren't you, Cobb? No doubt you missed all the
support of Clinton from China...
--
"You take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of
your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear."
-- Mark Twain
PaPaPeng
<fmc...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>Henry J Cobb <hc...@io.com> wrote:
>:
>:Sorry, but in addition to being our greenest President ever, Bush is
>:also the most pro-communist and will do nothing to upset his Chinese
>:bankers.
>:
>
>You really are nuts, aren't you, Cobb? No doubt you missed all the
>support of Clinton from China...
Now hear this. All US Presidents after Nixon start off their
Presidency with showing how tough they are with China. And proving
how "soft" and weak their predcessor was. Slick Willie was no
different. We have to groan at the ritual where El Presidente
lectures China on human rights, religious freedom, the economy, trade,
etc. (Except for Bush '41. He was once Ambassador to China and is an
old China hand. He has fond memories of his time in China and visits
China frequently as a private person.) But by their last year in
office every one of your sitting El Presidentes makes nice to China
without having made the least difference to China's whatever practice
the President had tried to make China follow. I predicted way back in
2001 that Bush '43 would follow this pattern. While he hasn't exactly
kissed and made up with China he is remarkably quiet in his criticism
of late. There's still 12 months to go in his Presidency. And he has
accepted China's invitation to be at the Beijing Olympics. There will
not be any surprises.
Your President in Waiting Hillary Clinton will be no different. There
is even greater pressure on Madam President to skip the bash China
phase this time round. China is the best hope that can forestall a
banking meltdown and recession in the US.