News on China's scientific and technological development.

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
Flying over land is gross aggression and is different from crossing airspace which is away from land but over waters. And as Quickie says, the Prowler is not a stealth aircraft and should have been detected and would definitely be shot down.

To be fair it's ECM at the time could've prevented its detection by the chinese side. you do not need to be a stealth aircraft to avoid detection.
 

Schumacher

Senior Member
Second launch this week for China.

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China make it two in a week via successful Shi Jian 11-02 launch
July 29th, 2011 by Rui C. Barbosa

For the second time this week this week alone, China has launched a satellite – this time from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The Shi Jian 11-02 satellite was launch at 07:42UTC by a Long March 2C (Chang Zheng-2C) launch vehicle from the SLS-2 launch pad – as the Chinese prepare for a busy August.

Yet Another Chinese launch:

According to the Chinese media this mission involved an “experimental satellite”. However, what is known is this satellite was launched with the same launch azimuth of the Shi Jian 11-03, three weeks after the launch of the previous Shi Jian 11 satellite....................................................
 

Quickie

Colonel
To be fair it's ECM at the time could've prevented its detection by the chinese side. you do not need to be a stealth aircraft to avoid detection.

ECM don't work the same way as stealth. ECM already presents itself as a source of radiation which itself is a source of detection, besides of the RCS return of the aircraft. ECM involves, among others, missile datalink jamming which is the reason why they've come out with anti radiation capable missiles.
 

bladerunner

Banned Idiot
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Agile micro-robots that are able to skim across the surface of water are being developed by Chinese researchers.

The prototype devices mimic water-striding insects such as mosquitoes and water spiders, and could be used for military spy missions and water-pollution monitoring — among other applications.

While attempts have been made previously to develop such aquatic robots, no one has so far found a way to make them practical, agile and inexpensive.

Researchers from the Harbin Institute of Technology’s School of Chemical Engineering and Technology carefully analysed water striders’ locomotion to better understand exactly how the creatures are able to skim efficiently across the water.

They found that the radius and contact angle of the highly water-repellent (superhydrophobic) legs mainly accounts for the large supporting force.

In addition, small hairs on the legs of the water strider enable it form tiny swirling vortices, trapping small pockets of air and enabling them to skirt across water without drowning.

The scientists describe progress on a new robot in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. The device has an overall leg-span of around 150mm with a body that measures 24mm in diameter; 10 water-repellent wire legs; and two movable, oar-like legs that are propelled by two miniature motors.

‘Because the weight of the micro-robot is equal to that of about 390 water striders, one might expect that it would sink quickly when placed on the water surface,’ the report noted. However, it stands effortlessly on water surfaces and also walks and turns freely, it added.

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bladerunner

Banned Idiot
Some people may think this books worth following up on, I certainly will.


Moving China Up the Value Chain
By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — In “Run of the Red Queen,” a new book about China’s innovation drive, Dan Breznitz and Michael Murphree lay out a contrarian view of this country’s path. They argue that China should worry less about coming up with breakthrough technologies and focus more on what it already does best: making incremental innovations in everything from manufacturing to logistics.

The authors, both at the Georgia Institute of Technology — Mr. Breznitz as an associate professor of international affairs and strategic management, and Mr. Murphree as a doctoral candidate — say China has shown strength in process innovation and creating new manufacturing systems. Rather than trapping China in low-end manufacturing, they say, these capabilities will power the Chinese economy for years to come and eventually allow China to move up the value chain.
Dan Breznitz, co-author of Georgia TechDan Breznitz, co-author of “Run of the Red Queen.”

Indeed, they argue that the Chinese government’s push to compete with the United States and Europe on novel ideas and breakthrough products may be wasteful and inefficient, partly because of government interference but also and because China has not yet reached an advanced stage of development. Here are excerpts from an interview with the two authors.

Q. In “Run of the Red Queen,” you argue that China’s innovation drive is surprisingly strong, but not in the traditional way we think about innovation as novel technologies or products. How is that so?

Dan Breznitz: One thing truly important to understanding China is the defining characteristic of today’s globalization: the fragmentation of production. Today, places specialize not in specific industries but specific stages or activities within those industries.

In different places — Taiwan, the U.S., South Korea — there are different stages of production in each industry. The next logical step in thinking about innovation, since industries are fragmented, is that different places need different systems and different kinds of innovation. China excels in different kinds of process or manufacturing innovation. This includes design for manufacturing, organization of production, sourcing and logistics.

China’s companies are extremely efficient at creating new versions, often simpler, cheaper and more efficient, of technologies and products shortly after they are invented and marketed elsewhere in the world. For instance, I can’t think of any company in the world that can have over 200,000 people in one location producing a wide array of electronic gadgets for multiple companies other than Foxconn in China.

The American military, the best fighting machine in the world, can hardly move 200,000 people into the exact locations it wants them in months, but this company moves engineers and production workers from line to line and product to product with amazing efficiency. This is production innovation. China does innovate.

In novel-product innovation, China is very weak. There’s no way around it. The central government is the main antagonist in the process. The political economic institutions and system in China make it so entrepreneurs can’t make profit by developing novel innovation. But this same system makes process and second-generation innovation very profitable and successful.

China doesn’t need to crave novel innovation. For China’s stage of development, with the amount of people it has, the size of the labor force, and the skills developed by China’s education system, this is a vastly smarter utilization of its muscle and brain power.

Q. Mr. Murphree, is China’s innovation drive misunderstood?
Michael Murphree, co-author of Michael Murphree, co-author of “Run of the Red Queen.”

Michael Murphree: There is a tendency in the business literature and discussions to equate innovation with invention, measured as the output of patents and peer-reviewed articles or new products. From this perspective, if you look at the metrics, it is believed that if you have high numbers then you are innovative and will have growth. If you don’t, you’ll fade. This leads to a tired dichotomy: either China is already innovating, or it’s on borrowed time and will stagnate like other middle income countries.

Innovation is not just invention; it’s the whole array of moving and improving inventions so consumers get better, newer, and cheaper products and services. For example, consider the case of Techfaith, a Beijing company that produces innovative products that sell under other brand names but is not a contract manufacturer. A lot of what we think of as innovation is what we notice in the final gizmo, but the innovation is actually in the guts that make the device work.

Mr. Breznitz: Another example might relate more to most people’s experiences. Do you own an Apple computer? There’s a white power supply box on the power cord. That box has been improved with continuous R.&D. so it doesn’t go up in smoke and so it will do what it does ever more efficiently. This is entirely done in China. The company that makes the power supplies is constantly doing research to make them smaller, more efficient, cooler, cheaper, and less energy intensive. This can only be done in China because firms can find high-quality engineers and tell them, ‘You will make power supplies better’ and the engineers will oblige. What are the chances you can hire someone from an elite U.S. university such as Carnegie Mellon to do that? This gives China power in the global production networks.

Q. But isn’t a lot of this simply China’s size and low wages, giving it a strong manufacturing and cost advantage? And is it sustainable?

Mr. Breznitz: As long as we have a fragmented global system of production, you will need places that specialize in different stages to make “inventions” into real things at a price that people can afford.

Probably, over time, due to its critical mass of production capabilities, China can command more and more of a premium on these activities. Over the next 15 years, we think that China’s model is not just sustainable, but that China’s power will actually grow. I don’t think China needs to worry about indigenous innovation right now.

Q. In your book, it appears the Chinese government often seems to constrain development and innovation, either by interfering in markets or trying to use its resources to affect outcomes. What, in your view, should be the Chinese government’s role in spurring innovation?

Mr. Breznitz: What you’re trying to do when you create industrial innovation policies is to create agents that produce innovation. Unlike the Japanese or Korean developmental state where they tried to create a car industry where the product, market, and technology is defined, when fostering innovation you don’t know what the products will be or what the markets will look like. This means planning has limited effectiveness but does not mean there is not a large role for the state.

Look at the cases of Israel and Taiwan. The state has a role first as financier and stimulator of innovation. This is not done by strategically choosing winners but, in the case of Israel, by making capital available to entrepreneurs and scientists to pursue their ideas. The second role is to create ventures by making an institutional and economic framework in which entrepreneurship is rewarded. In the case of Taiwan, even after new ideas were developed, most businessmen perceived technological entrepreneurship as too risky. Hence the state directly created the first ventures in new industries, creating the model and market. But these were not state-owned or controlled. They were state-created and quickly spun-off private and entrepreneurial ventures.

For the Chinese government to have large projects that are mostly copying ideas or industries already developed elsewhere is not the way to go. Hence megaprojects in building wide-body aircraft or supercomputers may just be costly diversions in terms of innovation.

However, encouraging the diffusion of technology in China is an area the state can and should encourage.

Choosing winners is a dead end. Look at how China has done in rolling out telecom technologies. By trying to develop new technologies by government fiat, there has been a tremendous holdup in adoption of 3G and 4G.

Q. Mr. Murphree, is the problem in China that the state has too much control? And won’t simply allowing private companies more space to thrive allow China to move up the value chain and develop great, innovative companies?

Mr. Murphree: There is a belief, accepted on faith, that markets are organic and dynamic, and that if the government steps away, innovation will blossom. But there is a really clear role the Chinese government should play. At the most basic level, they should clearly define and enforce rules and regulations because markets are created by rules and laws.

Mr. Breznitz: Becoming a regulator and law enforcer is one point. But the reality is more complex. If you are to look at major innovative countries, Finland, Taiwan, Israel, and even the U.S., almost all great new technologies came in large extent thanks to government funding and pushing. Hence, apart from being the regulator, the state often stimulates and steps in. In Taiwan, the government gave training and much more to the semiconductor companies, and taught them how to make a profit. In Israel, without the state channeling money toward R.&D., pushing innovations and lowering the risk that entrepreneurs needed to take in order to do R.&D., there wouldn’t have been the Israeli high-tech miracle with its hundreds of companies listed on Nasdaq. So there is an active role for the Chinese government to play.

Q. So, after reviewing China’s growth situation and its efforts to drive innovation, what advice would you have for the government? What can Beijing do to drive growth and innovation?

Mr. Breznitz: The things that will help China have strength, sustain growth and make the country more profitable are to focus on its existing activities in production and development. China should put more R.&D. around those activities and make itself a player in even more stages and activities.

The second problem to address is that the finance system is broken. Improving it would do a lot. Make it easier and more transparent for companies to get financing.

Third, every big company, including Lenovo, now needs to have multiple ownership structures to engage in new and different activities. Trying to balance foreign, state, and private ownership forms and structures within the same organization or group of companies in order to participate in different market segments or economic activities is a drain on resources. Equal treatment for different types of firms would be beneficial.

And then there’s the rule of law. Fix that part. Making laws and regulations clear will go a long way. Uncertainly means higher risks.

R.&D., especially novel-product R.&D., is expensive, time-consuming and inherently risky. Uncertainty over political and economic institutions makes it even more risky and discourages investment or entrepreneurship in this area. We’re not even talking about intellectual property rights. This is about basic rule of law. Even if laws appear restrictive, having clear and enforced laws will reduce uncertainty and immensely benefit R.&D.-intensive enterprises.

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Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
^ There's no reason they can't do both incremental and groundbreaking.
 

nosh

Junior Member
Some people may think this books worth following up on, I certainly will.


Moving China Up the Value Chain
By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — In “Run of the Red Queen,” a new book about China’s innovation drive, Dan Breznitz and Michael Murphree lay out a contrarian view of this country’s path. They argue that China should worry less about coming up with breakthrough technologies and focus more on what it already does best: making incremental innovations in everything from manufacturing to logistics.

The authors, both at the Georgia Institute of Technology — Mr. Breznitz as an associate professor of international affairs and strategic management, and Mr. Murphree as a doctoral candidate — say China has shown strength in process innovation and creating new manufacturing systems. Rather than trapping China in low-end manufacturing, they say, these capabilities will power the Chinese economy for years to come and eventually allow China to move up the value chain.
Dan Breznitz, co-author of Georgia TechDan Breznitz, co-author of “Run of the Red Queen.”

Indeed, they argue that the Chinese government’s push to compete with the United States and Europe on novel ideas and breakthrough products may be wasteful and inefficient, partly because of government interference but also and because China has not yet reached an advanced stage of development. Here are excerpts from an interview with the two authors.

Q. In “Run of the Red Queen,” you argue that China’s innovation drive is surprisingly strong, but not in the traditional way we think about innovation as novel technologies or products. How is that so?

Dan Breznitz: One thing truly important to understanding China is the defining characteristic of today’s globalization: the fragmentation of production. Today, places specialize not in specific industries but specific stages or activities within those industries.

In different places — Taiwan, the U.S., South Korea — there are different stages of production in each industry. The next logical step in thinking about innovation, since industries are fragmented, is that different places need different systems and different kinds of innovation. China excels in different kinds of process or manufacturing innovation. This includes design for manufacturing, organization of production, sourcing and logistics.

China’s companies are extremely efficient at creating new versions, often simpler, cheaper and more efficient, of technologies and products shortly after they are invented and marketed elsewhere in the world. For instance, I can’t think of any company in the world that can have over 200,000 people in one location producing a wide array of electronic gadgets for multiple companies other than Foxconn in China.

The American military, the best fighting machine in the world, can hardly move 200,000 people into the exact locations it wants them in months, but this company moves engineers and production workers from line to line and product to product with amazing efficiency. This is production innovation. China does innovate.

In novel-product innovation, China is very weak. There’s no way around it. The central government is the main antagonist in the process. The political economic institutions and system in China make it so entrepreneurs can’t make profit by developing novel innovation. But this same system makes process and second-generation innovation very profitable and successful.

China doesn’t need to crave novel innovation. For China’s stage of development, with the amount of people it has, the size of the labor force, and the skills developed by China’s education system, this is a vastly smarter utilization of its muscle and brain power.

Q. Mr. Murphree, is China’s innovation drive misunderstood?
Michael Murphree, co-author of Michael Murphree, co-author of “Run of the Red Queen.”

Michael Murphree: There is a tendency in the business literature and discussions to equate innovation with invention, measured as the output of patents and peer-reviewed articles or new products. From this perspective, if you look at the metrics, it is believed that if you have high numbers then you are innovative and will have growth. If you don’t, you’ll fade. This leads to a tired dichotomy: either China is already innovating, or it’s on borrowed time and will stagnate like other middle income countries.

Innovation is not just invention; it’s the whole array of moving and improving inventions so consumers get better, newer, and cheaper products and services. For example, consider the case of Techfaith, a Beijing company that produces innovative products that sell under other brand names but is not a contract manufacturer. A lot of what we think of as innovation is what we notice in the final gizmo, but the innovation is actually in the guts that make the device work.

Mr. Breznitz: Another example might relate more to most people’s experiences. Do you own an Apple computer? There’s a white power supply box on the power cord. That box has been improved with continuous R.&D. so it doesn’t go up in smoke and so it will do what it does ever more efficiently. This is entirely done in China. The company that makes the power supplies is constantly doing research to make them smaller, more efficient, cooler, cheaper, and less energy intensive. This can only be done in China because firms can find high-quality engineers and tell them, ‘You will make power supplies better’ and the engineers will oblige. What are the chances you can hire someone from an elite U.S. university such as Carnegie Mellon to do that? This gives China power in the global production networks.

Q. But isn’t a lot of this simply China’s size and low wages, giving it a strong manufacturing and cost advantage? And is it sustainable?

Mr. Breznitz: As long as we have a fragmented global system of production, you will need places that specialize in different stages to make “inventions” into real things at a price that people can afford.

Probably, over time, due to its critical mass of production capabilities, China can command more and more of a premium on these activities. Over the next 15 years, we think that China’s model is not just sustainable, but that China’s power will actually grow. I don’t think China needs to worry about indigenous innovation right now.

Q. In your book, it appears the Chinese government often seems to constrain development and innovation, either by interfering in markets or trying to use its resources to affect outcomes. What, in your view, should be the Chinese government’s role in spurring innovation?

Mr. Breznitz: What you’re trying to do when you create industrial innovation policies is to create agents that produce innovation. Unlike the Japanese or Korean developmental state where they tried to create a car industry where the product, market, and technology is defined, when fostering innovation you don’t know what the products will be or what the markets will look like. This means planning has limited effectiveness but does not mean there is not a large role for the state.

Look at the cases of Israel and Taiwan. The state has a role first as financier and stimulator of innovation. This is not done by strategically choosing winners but, in the case of Israel, by making capital available to entrepreneurs and scientists to pursue their ideas. The second role is to create ventures by making an institutional and economic framework in which entrepreneurship is rewarded. In the case of Taiwan, even after new ideas were developed, most businessmen perceived technological entrepreneurship as too risky. Hence the state directly created the first ventures in new industries, creating the model and market. But these were not state-owned or controlled. They were state-created and quickly spun-off private and entrepreneurial ventures.

For the Chinese government to have large projects that are mostly copying ideas or industries already developed elsewhere is not the way to go. Hence megaprojects in building wide-body aircraft or supercomputers may just be costly diversions in terms of innovation.

However, encouraging the diffusion of technology in China is an area the state can and should encourage.

Choosing winners is a dead end. Look at how China has done in rolling out telecom technologies. By trying to develop new technologies by government fiat, there has been a tremendous holdup in adoption of 3G and 4G.

Q. Mr. Murphree, is the problem in China that the state has too much control? And won’t simply allowing private companies more space to thrive allow China to move up the value chain and develop great, innovative companies?

Mr. Murphree: There is a belief, accepted on faith, that markets are organic and dynamic, and that if the government steps away, innovation will blossom. But there is a really clear role the Chinese government should play. At the most basic level, they should clearly define and enforce rules and regulations because markets are created by rules and laws.

Mr. Breznitz: Becoming a regulator and law enforcer is one point. But the reality is more complex. If you are to look at major innovative countries, Finland, Taiwan, Israel, and even the U.S., almost all great new technologies came in large extent thanks to government funding and pushing. Hence, apart from being the regulator, the state often stimulates and steps in. In Taiwan, the government gave training and much more to the semiconductor companies, and taught them how to make a profit. In Israel, without the state channeling money toward R.&D., pushing innovations and lowering the risk that entrepreneurs needed to take in order to do R.&D., there wouldn’t have been the Israeli high-tech miracle with its hundreds of companies listed on Nasdaq. So there is an active role for the Chinese government to play.

Q. So, after reviewing China’s growth situation and its efforts to drive innovation, what advice would you have for the government? What can Beijing do to drive growth and innovation?

Mr. Breznitz: The things that will help China have strength, sustain growth and make the country more profitable are to focus on its existing activities in production and development. China should put more R.&D. around those activities and make itself a player in even more stages and activities.

The second problem to address is that the finance system is broken. Improving it would do a lot. Make it easier and more transparent for companies to get financing.

Third, every big company, including Lenovo, now needs to have multiple ownership structures to engage in new and different activities. Trying to balance foreign, state, and private ownership forms and structures within the same organization or group of companies in order to participate in different market segments or economic activities is a drain on resources. Equal treatment for different types of firms would be beneficial.

And then there’s the rule of law. Fix that part. Making laws and regulations clear will go a long way. Uncertainly means higher risks.

R.&D., especially novel-product R.&D., is expensive, time-consuming and inherently risky. Uncertainty over political and economic institutions makes it even more risky and discourages investment or entrepreneurship in this area. We’re not even talking about intellectual property rights. This is about basic rule of law. Even if laws appear restrictive, having clear and enforced laws will reduce uncertainty and immensely benefit R.&D.-intensive enterprises.

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Seems US government funded "scholars" have cook up some snake oil economics for China.
 

bladerunner

Banned Idiot
^ There's no reason they can't do both incremental and groundbreaking.

Wouldn't we all like to see that but I guess its only the people engaged in this activity have the real answer.

Meanwhile I came across this not so long ago posted on another forum as a response to China's increasing amount of patent filings.Based on this articles findings, I wonder if it has a flow on effect into coming out with groundbreaking innovations.

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Over 95% of the Chinese applications were filed domestically with the State Intellectual Property Office. The vast majority cover Chinese “innovations” that make only tiny changes on existing designs. In many other cases, a Chinese filer “patents” a foreign invention in China with the goal of suing the foreign inventor for “infringement” in a Chinese legal system that doesn’t recognize foreign patents ….

The most compelling evidence is the count of “triadic” patent filings or grants, where an application is filed with or patent granted by all three offices for the same innovation. According to the OECD, in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, there were only 473 triadic patent filings from China versus 14,399 from the U.S., 14,525 from Europe, and 13,446 from Japan. Data for patent grants in 2010 by individual offices paint a virtually identical picture.

Starkly put, in 2010, China accounted for 20% of the world’s population, 9% of the world’s GDP, 12% of the world’s R&D expenditure, but only 1% of the patent filings with or patents granted by any of the leading patent offices outside China. Further, half of the China-origin patents were granted to subsidiaries of foreign multinationals.


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P.S. Earlier on in this forum I had posted some extracts from a Mainland university prof in nantechnology, lamenting the fact that many patent filings/thesis work in this field done by mainland students had little bearing on the needs of the said industry, or somethig like that.
 
Last edited:

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
^ There's a while to go, and depending on which places one turns to you can always find differing views on the growth of ground breaking innovation and especially the value of chinese patents.
Personally I'm starting to not care about media reports on the growth/illusion of growth of chinese patents and technology. This is going to become a topic much thrown about, because if they do have large amounts of successful patents it'll reflect on china's overall education, political system, and vice versa.
There's definitely going to be people on both sides less interested in giving the numbers than chest thumping their own opinions of said numbers.

But imho most people would agree that they're going to get there and then some with much increased investment, encouragement from the gov. At least there's not like an inherent barrier in the chinese education and political environment stopping them from making ground breaking innovations and incremental at the same time.
 

bladerunner

Banned Idiot
^ There's a while to go, and depending on which places one turns to you can always find differing views on the growth of ground breaking innovation and especially the value of chinese patents.
Personally I'm starting to not care about media reports on the growth/illusion of growth of chinese patents and technology. This is going to become a topic much thrown about, because if they do have large amounts of successful patents it'll reflect on china's overall education, political system, and vice versa.
There's definitely going to be people on both sides less interested in giving the numbers than chest thumping their own opinions of said numbers.

But imho most people would agree that they're going to get there and then some with much increased investment, encouragement from the gov. At least there's not like an inherent barrier in the chinese education and political environment stopping them from making ground breaking innovations and incremental at the same time.

yes, Im in agreement with that.
 
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