News on China's scientific and technological development.

Why drone maker picked Shenzhen over HK
Apr 08, 2015

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When the founder of the world's current top consumer drone maker Dajiang Innovation (DJI) looked around in 2006 for a place to set up his first research base and production floor, he chose a village house in Shenzhen.

Many would have expected Frank Wang, who graduated from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), to stay put in Asia's top commercial hub instead of venturing north.

After all, Hong Kong provides a plurality of services rarely offered in one place, ranging from venture capital financing to an efficient trade support network.
But there was something more that the then green technopreneur wanted - a place teeming with people chasing engineering dreams and capable of bringing his envisioned products to life without much ado.

The 35-year-old could not find such qualities in Hong Kong.

"I only design, I do not produce. We have to source even a screw from outside," Mr Wang, who was born in China's Hangzhou, told Hong Kong-based news weekly Yazhou Zhoukan recently in his Shenzhen office.

"The divison of labour provided by suppliers here guarantees what we get is better and cheaper than what we could expect."

DJI has long left behind its modest beginnings and is now ensconced across 11 floors in a building located in an industrial belt where Shenzhen's high-tech companies cluster.

With more than 3,000 employees, DJI now leads the world in the production of consumer drones used for purposes ranging from archaeological survey to roof inspection, firefighting, sports training and movie filming.

"2014 was the year that drones went from creepy military gear to consumer-friendly video tool, and it's almost entirely due to DJI, one of the world's fastest-growing drone manufacturers," noted Fast Company, a publication in the United States that focuses on trail-blazing and next-to-watch companies, in a recent article.

"(DJI) makes the ubiquitous Phantom line, a relatively inexpensive (US$1,300 or S$1762 for its best) remote-control camera quadcopter. In the past three years, sales grew by a factor of 125," the magazine said.

Mr Wang, who said he got no higher grade than a B during his HKUST days, told Yazhou Zhoukan that DJI now controls 70 per cent of the world's consumer drone market while its annual earnings have topped 3 billion yuan (S$660 million).

Mr Wang's story of giving up the more streamlined and more comfortable business world of Hong Kong for a hard-knuckled entrepreneur's life in seemingly rowdy Shenzhen is not an uncommon one in this once-upon-a-time southern Chinese backwater whose gross domestic product, in just three decades, has risen to 94 per cent that of Hong Kong last year.

According to Mr Wang, most of his innovation technology staff are, like him, from the mainland and had once been "gangpiao": meaning sojourners as students in Hong Kong.
"But as for Hong Kongers - there're almost none here," he said.

A HKUST professor once told Mr Wang that Hong Kong's young refused to move to China, citing reasons such as objection by their mothers and being unable to log on to Facebook from the mainland.

The thriving of Shenzhen on the back of technopreneurs such as Mr Wang also contrasts with Hong Kong's uphill task to become a technological powerhouse, thanks to its political opposition camp.

Early this year, funding for the setting up of an innovation and technology bureau that the Hong Kong government is keen on was blocked in the legislative house.

The government has said the bureau would be vital in the development of the city's technological talents and help in boosting the sector.

But opposition parties claim the proposal hides a political design by Beijing to infiltrate yet another economic "stronghold" of Hong Kong in its bid to gradually bring the semi-autonomous Chinese city under its heel.

So even as Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore are all running full steam towards becoming innovation technology bases, Hong Kong is retiring to the sidelines, said Yazhou Zhoukan.
"What better news can there be for those competitors still in the field," quipped the magazine.
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China to build $2bn Iran-Pakistan pipeline - media
Published time: April 09, 2015 15:47

China will reportedly finance the so-called ‘Peace Pipeline’ natural gas pipeline from Iran, home to the world’s second largest reserves, to energy-deprived Pakistan. The project was delayed due to US dissent.

The final deal is to be signed during the long-sought visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Islamabad in April, the Wall Street Journal

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on Thursday.

“We’re building it. The process has started,” Pakistani Petroleum Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi told the WSJ.

First proposed over 20 years ago, the 1045 mile (1682km) pipeline will transfer gas from Iran’s south to the Pakistani cities of Gwadar and Nawabshah. Karachi, the country’s biggest city of 27.3 million, will also be connected via local energy distribution systems already in place.

Iran has said the 560-mile portion that runs to the Pakistan border is already complete, which only leaves $2 billion needed to build the Pakistani stretch.

The project could cost up to $2 billion if a Liquefied Natural Gas port is constructed at Gwadar. Otherwise, the project to complete the Pakistani pipeline will cost between $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion, the WSJ said. Pakistan is in negotiations with China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau, a subsidiary of Chinese energy major China National Petroleum Corporation, to finance 85 percent of the project. Pakistan will pay the rest.

The original plan envisioned the pipeline continuing to India, but Delhi dropped out due to US pressure in 2009, Tehran claims. Pakistan, a country of 199 million people faces intermittent blackouts in major cities, and Iran is looking for a place to export its soon-to-not-be-banned gas.

Iran has 33.7 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves according to the June 2014 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. According to BP estimates, it has the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves at 157 billion barrels.

US-led sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program have stunted Iran’s oil and gas industry.

Iran’s oil exports have dropped from 2.5 million barrels a day in 2011 to about one million barrels in 2014, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). In March, Iran produced 2.85 million barrels of oil per day, according to data from Bloomberg.

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U.S. Agencies Block Technology Exports for Supercomputer in China

Moves comes as U.S. technology companies grapple with Beijing’s proposed restrictions
Updated April 9, 2015 9:14 a.m. ET

U.S. officials are blocking technology exports to facilities in China associated with the world’s fastest supercomputer, a blow to Intel Corp. and other hardware suppliers that adds to the list of tech tensions between the two countries.

Four technical centers in China associated with the massive computer known as Tianhe-2 have been placed on a U.S. government list of entities determined to be acting contrary to U.S. national security or foreign-policy interests.

The system, which is powered by two kinds of Intel microprocessor chips, and an earlier system called Tianhe-1A “are believed to be used in nuclear explosive activities,” according to a notice dated Feb. 18 and posted by the U.S. Commerce Department.

The Commerce Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Intel was denied an export license late last fall to supply more chips associated to Chinese supercomputer projects, Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said Tuesday.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, three of the centers, and Chinese computer maker Inspur Group Co. — which helped build the machine — didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The National Supercomputing Center in Guangzhou said it didn’t immediately have a comment.

Intel’s Mr. Mulloy said the chip maker is in compliance with the law. Designers of the Tianhe-2 — or the Milky Way-2 in English — have said it is mostly used for scientific projects like genome research.

The blockage comes at a time when U.S. technology companies are grappling with Beijing’s proposed new restrictions on their ability to do business in the vast Chinese market amid rising concerns there over cybersecurity. The companies are protesting China’s new banking-technology procurement rules as well as a proposed counterterrorism law that they say are overly invasive and involve handing over sensitive material. The Obama administration has called on Beijing to hold back on those efforts.

Supercomputers — room-sized systems that yoke together large numbers of processor chips — are often used in weapons research, code breaking, weather forecasting and many scientific disciplines. The U.S. has long dominated the field, which has become a symbol for national competitiveness in technology.

The Tianhe-2 system in 2013 vaulted to the top of a twice-yearly ranking of supercomputers, based on its performance on a series of standard computing tests.

The U.S. government action effectively blocks Intel and others from selling newer chips to update the system. They must seek an export license to sell technology to be used by the four Chinese sites. Such licenses are “usually subject to a policy of denial,” according to the Commerce Department notice.

Intel has dealt with Inspur rather than directly with the Chinese centers, said Mr. Mulloy, the Intel spokesman. He said the company was informed in August by the Commerce Department that an export license would be required to supply chips associated with previously disclosed supercomputer projects associated with Inspur.

“Intel complied with the notification and applied for the license, which was denied,” Mr. Mulloy said.

Despite the potential use of supercomputers for military applications, governments have rarely applied export restrictions to the technology. One potential reason is that most of components used in such systems are widely available around the world and their shipments would be hard to stop.

China significantly lags behind the U.S. in chip design, though the government has been bankrolling research to improve the capabilities of local chip makers.

Horst Simon, a supercomputer expert and deputy director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said the U.S. restrictions in the long run will help Chinese chip makers and hurt U.S. companies.

“The Chinese will be more incentivized to develop their own technology, and U.S. manufacturers will be seen as less reliable and potentially not able to satisfy foreign orders,” Mr. Simon said.

The U.S. government restrictions list national supercomputing centers in the cities of Changsha, Guangzhou and Tianjin, as well as the National University of Defense Technology in Changsha.

News of the government restrictions was reported earlier by the website VR World.

Corrections & Amplifications

Intel was informed in August by the Commerce Department that an export license would be required to supply chips associated with previously disclosed supercomputer projects associated with Inspur. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said it was told the license would be approved.

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SamuraiBlue said:

Looks as if the US had done what I had predicted several months ago.

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BEIJING, CHINA - It may look like nothing more than a small ball of metal, but the shape-shifting and self-propulsion abilities of a liquid metal alloy discovered by scientists at China's Tsinghua University has captured the imaginations of scientists and science-fiction fans across the world.

Professor Liu Jing and his team have created what they believe could prove the first step toward developing a robot similar to the infamous T-1000 shape-shifting, liquid metal assassin from the Terminator movies.

The device is made from a drop of metal alloy consisting mostly of gallium, which is a liquid at just under 30 degrees Celsius. Last year they discovered that an applied electrical current causes the gallium alloy to drastically alter its shape. Changing the voltage applied to the metal allowed it to 'shape-shift' into different formations. When the current was switched off, the metal returned to its original drop shape.

But the team made their biggest breakthrough when they realized that bringing it into contact with a flake of aluminium caused a reaction creating hydrogen bubbles that allowed it to move of its own accord. Liu said it was able to 'fuel' itself for about an hour.

"The machine has two processes. One is to create gases like hydrogen. Part of these gases form the propulsion. There's also something important, in fact very important, which is the electricity generated behind the alloy. So this galvanic battery creates an internal electrical power, and this type of electricity will very easily lead to stretching of the surface of the liquid metal in an asymmetrical pattern, and this pattern leads to rotations inside the liquid metal, and the process of these rotations will set the liquid metal in motion in a certain direction," he said.

While the scientists are still learning more about the properties of the metal, Liu believes it could have a variety of medical applications, for example delivering medicine in blood vessels.

"At present it has potential to become a robot, but a robot for the veins. So apart from a robot for the veins it could for example [be used in] people's windpipes and digestive system, it may perhaps be able to carry out some medical tasks, for example transporting some medicines," he said, adding that scientists would of course first have to ensure that there would be no side-effects to ingesting the metal.

As for comparisons to the deadly machine in the Terminator movies, Liu said that while the thought of his discovery bearing resemblance to the T-1000 did make him chuckle, he hoped that his robot would work for the good of mankind.

"Perhaps people think it's like the Terminator but I think to a certain extent the Terminator's not very good, he wasn't good for mankind. So we hope that if in the future we can really make a soft robot, we hope that it can be a more human-like robot," he said.

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t2contra said:

Had been looking for this piece to post and finally found it. Contain interesting nuggets.

Its earnings top US$486m. Reason for choosing Shenzhen over Hongkong is self-evident.

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