Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
Media caption The billionaire financier and philanthropist has become a divisive figure in global politics in recent years
Billionaire philanthropist George Soros has launched a stinging attack on the “authoritarian rulers” of both the US and China.
He said President Donald Trump was a “conman and the ultimate narcissist” who had breached the limits of the US constitution.
And he said China’s President Xi Jinping was using technology to exert total control over Chinese life.
“The world would be a better place if they weren’t in power,” Mr Soros said.
Using his annual speech at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, the financier warned of a growing threat from populism and climate change, while pledging $1bn towards a new global university network to tackle intolerance.
But the businessman – who is a major donor to the US Democratic party – said Beijing and Washington posed the biggest threat to “open societies”.
“Both [leaders] try to extend the powers of their office to its limit and beyond.
“Trump is willing to sacrifice the national interests for his personal interests and he will do practically anything to win re-election.
“By contrast, Xi Jinping is eager to exploit Trump’s weaknesses and use artificial intelligence to achieve total control over his people.”
The White House was approached for comment.
Media caption Modi to Trump: “My honour to introduce you to my family”
Mr Soros also targeted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying the Indian state was “imposing punitive measures on Kashmir, a semi-autonomous Muslim region, and threatening to deprive millions of Muslims of their citizenship”.
He was referring to two controversial decisions made by Mr Modi’s Hindu nationalist government.
The first was to strip the disputed Kashmir region of its semi-autonomous status and place it under virtual lockdown.
The second is the introduction and passage of a controversial citizenship law that critics say is discriminatory towards Muslims.
It seeks to fast-track Indian citizenship to non-Muslim minorities from three nearby Muslim-majority countries.
Media caption The Conspiracy Files: Why did Hungary’s PM turn on George Soros?
The US and China recently struck a deal to de-escalate a major trade war which has seen both sides impose tariffs on billions of dollars worth of exports.
But Mr Soros said President Xi’s had stifled China’s economy, while Mr Trump had “overheated” his.
“US stock markets are high but can’t be kept at boiling point for too long.”
Mr Soros, a Jew who survived Nazi occupation by forging identity documents, became infamous for his involvement in the devaluation of the British pound, known as Black Wednesday.
But it is his philanthropic and political activities that have made him a divisive figure in the US, Europe and beyond.
He has spent billions of his own money funding human rights projects and liberal democratic ventures around the world, and has become a frequent target for criticism by right-wing groups due to his support for liberal causes.
Much of the criticism aimed at him has been criticised as having anti-Semitic undertones.
The financier, who is a regular at the elite World Economic Forum, said his new university network would help promote “critical thinking” in an age of intolerance.
The move will be seen as a riposte to Hungarian President Victor Orban, who has repeatedly tried to shut down the Central European University, a private institution set up by Mr Soros in the country in 1971.
Mr Orban’s populist nationalist government claims Mr Soros has a secret plot to flood Hungary with migrants and destroy the nation, an accusation Mr Soros denies.
Mr Soros said the network would be “the most important and enduring project of my life and I should like to see it implemented while I am still around”.
A push to connect Pacific nations highlights a submarine struggle for dominance over the world’s technology infrastructure
The ambitions of Chinese tech giants like Huawei, which have laid thousands of kilometres of cable, are of increasing concern to Washington
The ambitions of Chinese tech giants like Huawei, which have laid thousands of kilometres of cable, are of increasing concern to Washington. Photo: Reuters
While the US has been upping the pressure on its allies not to include equipment made by Chinese telecom giants like Huawei and ZTE in their 5G systems, Chinese companies have gained a foothold in some of the world’s most essential communications infrastructure – undersea internet cables.
Smart telecom cables: climate change hope or submarine spying tech?
14 Dec 2019
Almost all global data communications flow through cables under the ocean – just one per cent travels by satellite – and Chinese companies have quietly been eroding US, European and Japanese dominance over the backbone of the internet, the undersea cable market. Now, they have trained their sights on connecting one of the most virtually remote parts of the globe, the Pacific Island countries.
Of the 378 cables currently operating worldwide, 23 are under the Pacific. But many of these cables run right by Pacific Island nations on their paths between hubs in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Singapore.
An electric submarine cable and optical fibre. File photo
Despite the volume of data flowing under the Pacific Ocean, just half a million of the 11 million people living in Pacific Island countries and Papua New Guinea – less than five per cent – have access to a wired internet connection and only 1.5 million to a mobile connection, according to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for the Asia Pacific (UNESCAP), compared with 53 per cent of people in Thailand and 60 per cent in the Philippines.
More than US$4 billion worth of cables are to come into service by 2021, continuing a trend in which US$2 billion worth of cables have come online every year since 2016, and six of these cables will connect Pacific Island countries.
The push to connect Pacific Island nations to the latest generation of internet infrastructure has received extra scrutiny from the US and its allies like Australia
over the involvement of Chinese tech companies.
Choose Beijing over Taipei, Solomon Islands task force recommends
13 Sep 2019
SECURITY CONCERNS
While the US has moved to block Huawei from supplying equipment to its allies’ 5G networks, experts say Chinese tech companies could contest the US, EU and
long-standing dominance over global data traffic through investments in subsea cables.
Chinese tech giants like Huawei have entire divisions devoted to undersea connectivity that have laid thousands of kilometres of cable, and Chinese state telecommunication companies such as China Unicom have access to many of the existing trans-Pacific cables.
But a panel led by the US Department of Justice has held up a nearly complete trans-Pacific cable project over concerns about its Chinese investor, Beijing-based Dr Peng Telecom & Media Group.
The project, the Pacific Light Cable Network, could be the first cable rejected by the panel on the grounds of national security – despite being backed by American tech giants Google and Facebook – setting a precedent for a tougher US stance on Chinese involvement in subsea cables.
Chinese tech giants like Huawei have entire divisions devoted to undersea connectivity that have laid thousands of kilometres of cable. Photo: AP
Craige Sloots, director of sales at Southern Cross Cable Network, which operates the largest existing sets of trans-Pacific cables, said for any new cable, regulators were likely to scrutinise the ownership of the companies involved and the maker of the project’s equipment.
These two factors, said Sloots, “pragmatically limit some of the providers you can use if you want to connect through the US”.
Experts say that Hong Kong, where the stalled Pacific Light Cable would land, was previously considered a more secure shore landing point than mainland China. But people close to the project say the recent unrest in the city has made this distinction less relevant, according to The Wall Street Journal.
If these nations want to be part of the international economy, they need reliable communications: Bruce Howe, University of Hawaii
Similar concerns caused a proposed Huawei-backed cable linking Vanuatu with Papua New Guinea to be called off last year after Australia stepped in to fund its own cable instead.
Just months after the government-owned Solomon Islands Submarine Cable Company agreed to the project with Huawei in mid-2017, Canberra put up US$67 million to connect Sydney with the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea with cables laid under the Coral Sea by Nokia’s Alcatel Submarine Networks.
Simon Fletcher, CEO of Vanuatu company Interchange, which had been planning another cable in the neighbourhood connecting Vanuatu with the Solomon Islands, said the Coral Sea project undercut the viability for small private businesses to operate in the fledgling market, where services had historically been provided by international organisations like development banks. His company’s cable has been on pause since the announcement of the Coral Sea project, though Fletcher said it would go forward next year.
US-China battle for dominance extends across Pacific, above and below the sea
22 Jul 2019
VIRTUALLY REMOTE
For years, as Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore became global hubs of high-speed internet data traffic, the cables criss-crossing the ocean floor passed by just off the shores of Pacific Island countries en route between hubs on either side of the ocean.
Tiziana Bonapace, director of UNESCAP’s information technology and disaster risk-reduction division, said the Pacific Islands remain one of the most disconnected areas in the world, where “a vast proportion of the population has no access to the internet”.
Over the past five years, international organisations like UNESCAP, the Asia Development Bank and the World Bank have been pushing for better connectivity in the region. The World Bank’s Pacific Regional Connectivity Programme has invested more than US$90 million into broadband infrastructure for Fiji, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Palau, Samoa and Tuvalu.
Internet cables in the Pacific Ocean.
But the business case had never been good, said Bonapace.
“A cable has to travel thousands of kilometres just to connect a population smaller than one of Asia’s megacities,” she said. “As everything we do is somehow connected to the internet, the prospects for the Pacific to become virtually more remote are even higher.”
Even nations which are connected have tenuous infrastructure. In January, Tonga experienced a total internet blackout for two weeks after damage to its single cable. Most parts of the world were linked by multiple cables to prevent this type of outage, said Bruce Howe, professor of ocean and resources engineering at University of Hawaii.
“If these nations want to be part of the international economy, they need reliable communications,” Howe said.
Is Chinese support for Pacific nations shaping their stance on West Papua?
26 Aug 2019
DRAWING NEW LINES
In Papua New Guinea, where mobile internet currently reaches less than a third of the population, a partnership between local telecoms company GoPNG and the Export-Import Bank of China funded the new Huawei-built Kumul Domestic cable system, which came online this year.
The Southern Cross Next system, owned by Spark, Verizon, Singtel Optus and Telstra – the same group of shareholders which operates the massive 30,500km (19,000 mile) set of twin cables connecting the US with Australia and New Zealand known as Southern Cross – is planned to come online in 2022, and will connect directly to Fiji, Samoa, Kiribati and Tokelau.
Chinese telecoms company China Unicom counts the existing Southern Cross cables among its network capabilities – meaning it is likely to have access to the cable through a leasing agreement with one of the other companies that uses the cable, according to Canberra think tank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).
An undersea fibre optic cable. Photo: AFP
China Unicom and China Telecom also list the Asia America Gateway Cable System as one of their network capabilities, according to ASPI. The 20,000km (12,400-mile) cable came online in 2009 and connects the US, Guam, Hong Kong, Brunei, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand.
It is owned by a consortium of carriers including AT&T, Telekom Malaysia, Telstra and Spark.
A cable backed by Google and the Australian Academic and Research Network connecting Japan and Australia through Guam is to come online early next year.
China: the real reason Australia’s pumping cash into the Pacific?
28 Jul 2018
WHAT’S NEXT
Natasha Beschorner, senior digital development specialist at the World Bank, said that while there were challenges ahead in terms of broadband access and affordability, increased connectivity was starting to bring new opportunities to the Pacific.
“Digital technologies can contribute to economic diversification, income generation and service delivery in the Pacific,” Beschorner said. “E-commerce and financial technologies are emerging and governments are considering how to roll out selected services online.”
Experts say the industry has recently seen a switch from cables being mostly funded by telecommunication carriers to being funded by content providers, like Google and Facebook. Members of the private cable industry say content companies can afford to invest in cable infrastructure to ensure the supply chain for their customers, but that the competition puts the squeeze on the research-and-development budgets of other types of companies.
Sloots at Southern Cross predicted that the nations which connected directly to the massive next-generation cable – Samoa, Kiribati and Tokelau – would be able to function as connecting points for intra-Pacific cables.
“There’s a blossoming effect in capability once certain islands are connected,” Sloots said.
There is also the push to locate an exchange point within the Pacific so that internet data no longer has to travel to a hub in Tokyo or Los Angeles and back to Pacific nations when processing – a move that could ultimately lower the cost of broadband internet service for consumers in the Pacific.
Perhaps the most effective outcome could be for Pacific nations to cut the cord and receive their internet by satellite.
The Asian Development Bank has agreed to give a US$50 million loan to Singapore’s Kacific Broadband Satellites International to provide up to two billion people across the Asia-Pacific region with affordable satellite-based internet.
The project is to be launched into orbit by SpaceX next week and aims to begin providing service by early next year.
BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) — Ask the silver-haired residents of the elderly care community Yinheyuan in central Beijing what they know about artificial intelligence (AI), and they will probably throw the question to the smart speakers within their reach.
These smart speakers, capable of interacting with users with voice-recognition technologies, are also part of the answer. Via voice command, senior residents can control lights, TVs and other home appliances, order food or ask for help.
AI is no longer a technical term used exclusively by professionals in China. Both young and old are enjoying the benefits of the growing smart economy.
After personal computers (PC), PC internet and mobile internet, the growth focus of China’s digital economy is shifting to smart technologies like AI, said Baidu Chairman and CEO Robin Li at the World Internet Conference in October.
In the smart economy era, Li predicted a declining reliance on cellphones and a rising popularity of other smart devices. AI chips, cloud computing services, among others, would become the new digital infrastructure, while innovative businesses will flourish as transport, health, education and other sectors go smart.
Wearable devices, smart home appliances, autonomous driving and smart cities are among the fastest-growing fields in the smart economy.
China is the largest smart speaker market in the world, accounting for 36 percent of global shipments in the third quarter of 2019, according to global market firm Strategy Analytics. It found in a July and August survey that 63 percent of Chinese people without a smart speaker planned to buy one within the following year. Another 22 percent planned to make a purchase later on.
Chinese firms are stepping up investment in 5G, AI and the Internet of Things to gain a foothold in the emerging field. By end-June, China had over 1,200 AI-related enterprises, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Baidu launched its autonomous driving open platform ApollBo in 2017 to coordinate cross-sector efforts in this field. It has launched several L4 autonomous driving vehicles in partnership with leading automobile companies, and a fleet of Apollo-powered robotaxis are now taking test runs in central China’s Changsha.
Nurturing a smart economy is also on the government agenda. China has passed a guideline to boost the integration of AI and the real economy this year, and plans to build some 20 national AI innovative development pilot zones by 2023.
The country’s AI sector is forecast to be worth more than 160 billion yuan (about 22.83 billion U.S. dollars) in 2020, spurring related sectors to exceed 1 trillion yuan, said Lin Nianxiu, deputy director with the National Development and Reform Commission, citing industrial data.
Lin said China would focus on 100 firms dedicated to AI technologies and relevant applications, improve the industrial ecosystem, facilitate the deep integration of AI and the real economy, and intensify its international collaboration on AI technology, standards, industries, laws and regulations and ethics.
TAIYUAN, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) — China and Brazil will continue to develop more satellites together and deepen aerospace cooperation, said Chinese and Brazilian officials after a new satellite jointly produced by the two countries was sent into space on Friday.
The launch of the China-Brazil Earth Resource Satellite-4A (CBERS-4A) also marks the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Brazil.
The two countries will expand the application of the CBERS satellite data in their own countries and those participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, said Wu Yanhua, deputy director of the China National Space Administration (CNSA).
China and Brazil have devised a 10-year plan to collaborate in developing remote-sensing, meteorological and communication satellites. The cooperation could also be expanded to deep space exploration, lunar exploration, manned space and aerospace education, said Wu.
In 1988, the two countries signed an agreement to start the China-Brazil earth resource satellite program. They shared the costs and separately developed its systems. Both sides brought different advantages to the table and were highly complementary.
In 1999, the first China-Brazil earth resource satellite was successfully launched, giving each country their first transmission-type remote-sensing satellite. It was rated one of the top 10 scientific and technological advances of the year in China.
It was also the first satellite jointly developed by China and another country, and was a model for space technology cooperation among developing countries.
The partnership has lasted more than 30 years. The two countries have sent six satellites into space, and the resolution of the images has gradually improved.
The China-Brazil earth resource satellites have provided more than 6 million images to users in the two countries, and the data have been widely used in agriculture, forestry, water conservation, land and resources, environmental protection, and disaster prevention and mitigation, helping the Brazilian government monitor the Amazon rainforest and the country’s environmental changes, according to the CNSA.
The remote-sensing data are also provided to developing countries for free, and have helped monitor disasters such as forest fires in Australia, floods in Pakistan, and an earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
China has also helped train Brazilian personnel, and scientists and technologists of the two countries have conducted many exchanges over the past 30 years.
“The space cooperation between China and Brazil has been very successful, and sets a good example for space cooperation among developing countries,” Wu said.
Brazilian Minister of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication Marcos Cesar Pontes said the cooperation has contributed to international economic and social development.
This is the third instalment in a four-part series examining the brewing US-China tech war over the development and deployment of artificial intelligence tech
The US is home to five of the world’s top 10 universities in the AI field, which includes computer vision and machine learning, while China has three
For those Chinese with long-term plans to stay in the US, a major obstacle lies in getting work visas, especially in the current trade war environment. Illustration: Perry Tse
After working in the United States for more than a decade, Zheng Yefeng felt he had hit a glass ceiling. He also saw that the gap in artificial intelligence between China and the US was narrowing.
Last year Zheng, who worked as a researcher at Siemens Healthcare in New Jersey, made a decision that addressed both problems. He accepted an offer to head up the medical research and development team at Tencent’s YouTu artificial intelligence lab in Shenzhen, known as China’s Silicon Valley.
“There was almost no room for promotion if I stayed in the US,” he said, expressing a common dilemma faced by experienced Chinese tech workers in America.
With the US-China trade war leading to tighter scrutiny of Chinese nationals working in the US tech industry, people like Zheng are moving back to China to work in the burgeoning AI sector, especially after Beijing designated AI a national priority. The technology’s varied applications have attracted billions of dollars of venture capital investment, created highly valued start-ups like SenseTime and ByteDance, and sparked a talent war among companies.
That has created an odd symbiotic relationship between the two countries vying for AI supremacy. The US, with its superior higher education system, is the training ground for Chinese AI scientists like Zheng, who obtained a PhD from the University of Maryland after earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees at China’s premier Tsinghua University.
“Many professors in China have great academic ability, but in terms of the number [of top professors], the US is ahead,” said Luo Guojie, who himself accepted an offer from Peking University to become an assistant professor after studying computer science in the US.
Among international students majoring in computer science and maths in US universities, Chinese nationals were the third largest group behind Indians and Nepalese in the 2018-2019 academic year, representing 19.9 per cent, according to the Institute of International Education.
[To build] the best universities is not easy. The university is a free speech space, whereas in China, this is not the case Gunther Marten, a senior official with the European Union delegation to China
The South China Morning Post spoke with several Chinese AI engineers who decided to stay and work in the US after their studies. They only agreed to give their surnames because of the sensitivity of the issues being discussed.
A 25-year-old Beijinger surnamed Lin graduated from one of China’s best engineering schools in the capital before heading to a US university for a master’s degree in computer science in 2017. Like some of his peers, he found the teaching methods in China to be outdated.
“It’s hard to imagine that a final exam of a coding course still asked you to hand write code, instead of running and testing it on a computer,” said Lin, who now works as a software engineer for Google in Silicon Valley.
“Although we still had to take writing tests [in the US], we had many practical opportunities in the lab and could do our own projects,” he added.
A Facebook software engineer surnamed Zhuang had a similar experience at his university in Shanghai.
“Many engineering students [in China] still get old-school textbooks and insufficient laboratory training,” he said. “Engineering practices for AI have been through a fast iteration over the past few decades, which means many Chinese students are not exposed to the most updated knowledge in the field, at least not in the classroom.”
Zhuang also noted out that many classes in China are taught in Chinese, meaning engineering graduates are not fluent in English, the preferred language of the global AI research community.
The US is home to five of the world’s top 10 universities in the AI field, which includes computer vision and machine learning, while China has three. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pennsylvania ranks No 1 while China’s Tsinghua University is No 2, according to CSrankings, which bases the list on papers published since 2009.
US tech chief: China is threatening US’ lead in global AI race
With its top institutions and an open culture that encourages freedom of speech, including unfettered internet access, the US has become a magnet for the brightest AI students the world over.
In 2018, 62.8 per cent of PhD degrees and 65.4 per cent of master’s degrees in computer science, information science and computer engineering programmes in the US were granted to “non-resident aliens”, according to a survey by the Computing Research Association.
“[To build] the best universities is not easy,” Gunther Marten, a senior official with the European Union delegation to China, said on the sidelines of the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen in October. “The university is a free speech space, whereas in China, this is not the case.”
When these US-educated AI scientists finish studying, most take advantage of a rule allowing them to stay in the country for three years to gain work experience.
Of the foreign nationals taking part in last year’s Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), a major machine learning event for AI professionals, 87 per cent of those whose papers made it to the oral presentation stage went to work for American universities or research institutes after earning their PhD, according to MacroPolo, a think tank under the Paulson Institute.
“China has many great universities and companies, especially in certain subfields of AI such as computer vision, but many people remain hesitant to move to China due to the political environment, quality of life concerns and workplace issues,” said Remco Zwetsloot, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET).
China’s PhD students miserable, yet hopeful: survey
Some of the US-trained Chinese AI engineers told the Post they were scared off by China’s “996” working culture: 9am to 9pm, six days a week. Tech firms in China typically expect their employees to work long hours to prove their dedication.
Lin, the Beijinger who now works for Google, used to be an intern at one of China’s largest internet giants. “I worked from the time I woke up until going to bed,” he said, “At Google, I’ve been confused because many people here only work till 5pm but Google is still a global leader.” Lin said he would be happy to return to China if the 996 work culture eases.
Graduates throw their caps in the air as they pose for a group photo during the 2019 commencement ceremony of Tsinghua University in Beijing. Tsinghua ranks as China’s top university for AI. Photo: Xinhua
Chen, a female postgraduate student at Carnegie Mellon, who recently accepted a job offer from Google, once interned at Beijing-based AI unicorn SenseTime, where she worked from 10am to between 8pm and 10pm most days.
A SenseTime spokesperson said the company has adopted flexible working hours for its employees.
Besides a better work-life balance, Chinese graduates look for jobs in Silicon Valley because of the higher pay.
“If you include pre-tax income, many of us get offers that pay more than 1 million yuan (US$142,000) a year but in China the salaries offered to the best batch of fresh undergraduates are about 200,000 to 300,000 yuan (US$28,000 to US$43,000),” Chen said.
Still, for those Chinese with long-term plans to stay in the US, a major obstacle lies in getting work visas, especially in the current trade war environment. Most AI-related workers are on H-1B visas that allow US companies to employ non-US nationals with expertise in specialised fields such as IT, finance and engineering.
However, the number of non-immigrant H-1B visas granted has started to fall since 2016, when it peaked at 180,000, according to the US Department of State, and US tech companies have complained that a policy shift by the Trump administration has made the approval process longer and more complicated.
In 2017, President Donald Trump requested an overhaul of the H-1B visa programme, saying he did not want it to enable US tech companies to hire cheaper foreign workers at the expense of American jobs. He also wants to give priority to highly skilled people and restrict those wanting to move to the US because of family connections.
Science graduates from overseas countries can stay in the US with their student visas for up to three years while competing for the hard to get work visas, which are granted based on undisclosed mechanisms. Overseas students already working in the US can apply for so-called green cards, which offer permanent residency.
After working for a major US tech company for almost three years on a student visa, one Chinese software engineer, who spoke to the Post on condition of anonymity, said she was relocated to the US firm’s Beijing office last year after failing to obtain a H-1B work visa.
“While there might be individual cases, it seems like the current tensions have not – at least as of a few months ago – led to noticeable changes in the overall number of Chinese students staying in the US after graduating,” said CSET’s Zwetsloot.
Some Chinese AI scientists use Twitter to announce their decision to stay. Chen Tianqi, who just obtained a PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle, and Jun-Yan Zhu, a CMU and UC Berkeley alumnus currently working at Adobe, each tweeted that they would join Carnegie Mellon as assistant professors next year.
To achieve the goal of turning China into “the world’s primary AI innovation centre” by 2030, according to a 2017 blueprint issued the State Council, the central government has stepped up efforts to attract US-educated talent.
The Thousand Talents Plan has seen more than 6,000 overseas Chinese students and academics return since its was established in 2008, but because of escalating tensions with the US, Beijing has played down the initiative.
Longer term, Beijing’s willingness to invest significant sums into the AI sector could see more Chinese return for the better employment opportunities. Between 2013 and the first quarter of 2018, China attracted 60 per cent of global investment in AI, according to a Tsinghua University report.
China’s spending on AI may be far lower than people think
Chinese authorities are investing heavily in the sector, with the city of Shanghai setting up a 10 billion yuan (US$142 million) AI fund in August and Beijing city government announcing in April it would provide a 340 million yuan (US$48 million) grant to the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence.
“More and more senior people like me have come back, and some start their own businesses,” said Zheng, the Siemens Healthcare researcher who joined Tencent. “It’s easier for Chinese to seek venture capital in China than in other countries.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping poses for a group photo with foreign delegates attending the 2019 New Economy Forum before meeting with them at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 22, 2019. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)
BEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Friday realizing the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation is by no means to seek hegemony.
Saying he has full confidence in China’s prospects for development, Xi noted China does not intend to replace any power, rather, its aim is to “regain the dignity and status it deserves.”
The president made the remarks when meeting with foreign delegates attending the 2019 New Economy Forum held in Beijing.
China, with a 5,000-year-old history of civilization, is home to the four great inventions that had contributed tremendously to the progress of human civilization. The country had become a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society since the Opium Wars, but the Chinese people had never yielded and spared no effort in seeking a path to national rejuvenation, Xi stressed.
Earth-shattering changes have taken place since the founding of the People’s Republic of China 70 years ago, and the humiliating history of China as a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country will never be repeated, he said.
“The fundamental reason is that we have found a correct path that suits China’s national conditions, conforms to the trends of the times and enjoys the support of the people. The path is socialism with Chinese characteristics,” Xi said.
With full confidence, the Chinese people will unswervingly follow this path, he added.
Xi noted that innovation is a major theme of the current times, as the world is undergoing changes rarely seen in a century, featuring a new round of technological revolution and rapid industrial transformation.
The common challenges facing humanity call for concerted efforts of all countries. No country can become an independent innovation center or enjoy fruits of innovation alone, Xi said. “Innovation should benefit the world rather than being encaved.”
He said China is willing to carry out cooperation in innovation with other countries including the United States, so as to better benefit the people of the two countries and the world.
Despite great achievements, China will continue to adhere to the traditional concept of “harmony in diversity,” stick to the path of peaceful development, and strive for mutually beneficial cooperation with other countries, Xi told the foreign delegates.
China will stick to the reform and opening-up through bold innovations and with a manner of “feeling the rocks on the riverbed when crossing the river,” he said.
“The more resistance we are confronted with, the more determined we will be to open up,” Xi said. “I have full confidence in China’s prospects of development.”
During the meeting, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Egyptian Tourism Minister Dalia al-Mashat, former Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, and Credit Suisse Group AG CEO Tidjane Thiam exchanged views, and expressed their support for innovation cooperation.
The 2019 New Economy Forum, which focused on development trends and social impacts of innovation, gathered more than 500 delegates from more than 60 countries around the world.
Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, meets with Kazakhstan’s First Deputy Prime Minister Alikhan Smailov, who also co-chaired the 9th meeting of the China-Kazakhstan Cooperation Committee, in Beijing, capital of China, Nov. 4, 2019. (Xinhua/Yan Yan)
BEIJING, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) — Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng met with Kazakhstan’s First Deputy Prime Minister Alikhan Smailov Monday in Beijing, who also co-chaired the 9th meeting of the China-Kazakhstan Cooperation Committee.
Han, also a Standing Committee member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said the development of bilateral ties had been healthy and steady to become a model of relations between neighboring countries.
Earlier this year, China and Kazakhstan upgraded their relations to a permanent comprehensive strategic partnership, which Han said marked a new phase of bilateral relations.
The China-Kazakhstan Cooperation Committee, as an intergovernmental mechanism, makes overall planning for, coordinates and guides bilateral cooperation.
Han said since the last meeting of the committee, the two countries had deepened the synergy of their development strategies, accelerated trade, investment and industrial cooperation, strengthened financial cooperation, and continuously enhanced cooperation in security, environmental protection, energy, technology and mining.
Noting the solid foundation, huge potential and broad prospects of bilateral cooperation, Han said the two countries should promote cooperation in industrial capacity, transportation, agriculture and energy.
He called on the two sides to jointly implement the synergy between the Silk Road Economic Belt and Kazakhstan’s “Bright Road” new economic policy, strengthen innovation-driven cooperation and carry out digital industry, blockchain and biotechnology cooperation to create new growth points.
He said the two sides should carry out more facilitation measures to constantly optimize the business environment and guarantee the rights and interests of enterprises from both countries.
Smailov said Kazakhstan is ready to work with China to promote cooperation in trade, finance, energy, agriculture, transportation, logistics and infrastructure to benefit the two peoples.
Chinese academics and young scientists join global scientific elite to explore frontiers of research
International joint laboratory announced at Shanghai forum
More than three dozen Nobel Prize winners for science were among the gathering in Shanghai for the second annual forum of the World Laureates Association. Photo: Xinhua
Shanghai hosted one of the largest gatherings of Nobel laureates in the world last week, with 44 Nobel Prize-winning scientists in the city for a government-sponsored forum with the lofty goal of discussing science and technology for the “common destiny of mankind”.
The four-day forum, which brought together young Chinese scientists and the cream of the international scientific crop, was a signal of China’s ambitions for its own researchers to take their place at the forefront of development and bring home their own prizes.
Experts agreed the event – the second in an annual “World Laureates Forum” – was hardly a public relations stunt, but a testament to China’s deep-seated, steadfast desire to learn from the world’s top scientists and join them, and their home countries, as leaders on the frontier of science and produce regular home-grown contenders for top prizes.
“The Nobel Prize is the holy grail for China, and it is still quite elusive for Chinese indigenous scientists to be awarded this prestigious recognition,” said Chengxin Pan, an associate professor of international relations at Australia’s Deakin University. “You could say China has a Nobel Prize complex.”
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Becoming a leader in the sciences was more than just an issue of driving economic expansion through technology and innovation, it was a matter of national preservation with deep roots in Chinese history, Pan said.
“China sees the lack of power, lack of scientific achievements and modern technology as largely responsible for the backwardness and humiliation it suffered during much of the 19th century and early 20th century,” he said.
“They need to make up for lagging behind by engaging with the top leading scientists in the world, wherever they are from.”
To that end, celebrated theoretical physicists, organic chemists, neuroscientists and biologists joined Chinese academics and youth scientists for the conference organised by the Shanghai city government and an association of top global scientists known as the World Laureates Association.
Among them were 2019 Nobel Prize for physics laureates Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, as well as winners of other top prizes including the Wolf Prize, Lasker Award, and Fields Medal for mathematics. Discussions included the latest breakthroughs in disease prevention and drug development, sustainability and new energy, aerospace and black holes, as well as what drives their scientific curiosity.
Swiss professor Michel Mayor, astrophysicist and director of the Geneva Observatory, was one of the co-winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize in physics and among the attendees at the forum in Shanghai. Photo: EPA-EFE
The event, which culminated with the announcement of an international joint research laboratory for the world’s top scientists, to be established in Shanghai, was lauded by President Xi Jinping in an open letter to the attendees.
“China attaches great importance to the development of the frontier fields of science and technology,” Xi said, stressing China’s willingness to “work with all countries of the world” to “address the challenges of our age”.
The high calibre meeting was a rare opportunity for China to broadcast its message of commitment to scientific advancement, at a time when the reputation of its universities, academics and hi-tech companies have been taking a broad hit as part of a blowback from the US-China trade and tech wars, as well as suspicion among Western countries of China’s geopolitical aims.
In the past year, a number of major global Chinese tech companies, including Huawei and Hikvision, have been blacklisted in the US, while US tech giants like Google and Apple noticeably skipped out on China’s annual state-run World Internet Conference last month. Academic ties between Chinese and Western universities have also been called into question over suspicions of espionage, fraud, and intellectual property theft.
“China is saying we are still open for business and, at this juncture, we more warmly welcome foreign scientists and collaboration between countries in science and technology,” said Zhu Tian, an economics professor at the Chinese Europe International Business School in Shanghai.
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The past decade has seen China advance rapidly in the sciences. A surge in government funding, along with successive top level strategies to build up science and tech – including the Made in China 2025 innovation blueprint – and a significant uptick in international collaborations, have propelled the nation on to the global scientific stage.
Recent developments, like the first successful landing of a probe on the far side of the moon earlier this year, the dominance of the 5G network technology created by China’s Huawei, and the opening of the world’s largest radio telescope in Guizhou in 2017, have also raised the country’s profile in emerging tech and science.
But, so far, China’s rising visibility as a scientific powerhouse has been largely driven by scale. A June report by the journal Nature found researchers affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences contributed the greatest number of “high-quality natural sciences research” to international journals compared with their peers at other institutions, while last month the journal found the top four “fastest rising” new universities for research output were all from mainland China.
“To some in the outside world, China is already a powerhouse in innovation … but in terms of the quality of innovations or scientific research, China still lags behind developed countries like the US, UK or Switzerland,” Zhu said.
Despite “making the fastest progress among all countries”, and significant leaps as a developing nation, “China is not at the frontier of technology or science yet,” he said, which is why international engagement, like the recent summit, is key to China’s growth.
“In order to catch up you have to know what is the frontier, you have to learn from those who are at the frontier.”
It is a point further underlined by the numerous blog posts and widely circulated articles in Chinese media about China’s meagre Nobel track record. Apart from one celebrated exception – 2015 Nobel laureate for medicine Tu Youyou – Chinese-born scientists who have won the prize did so for their work in overseas laboratories, or after changing citizenship.
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Tu was the People’s Republic of China’s first Nobel Prize winner in the sciences and the country’s first woman to win the prize in any category.
Among China’s other Nobel laureates in the sciences are 1957 physics prizewinners Li Zhengdao and Yang Chen-ning, who won their award while in the US, having left China before the Communist Party takeover in 1949. Both later became US citizens. In 2017,
relinquishing his US citizenship to become a Chinese citizen.
China has worked hard to reverse the damage of brain drain, for example with its flagship “Thousand Talents” programme, a high-profile, state-backed recruitment drive set up in 2008 to attract overseas Chinese students and academics back to China with generous funding.
But reaching the frontiers of science, and making Nobel-worthy advancements, will also require China to do some reshuffling of its domestic priorities, which have been heavy on producing innovations in applied sciences and tech, but lighter on the basics – like physics, chemistry, and biology – whose mysteries are probed by the leading labs around the developed world.
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“China in the past has been known as a place for incremental innovation, and not the place where really radical innovation and big breakthroughs have come from, but they don’t want to be tinkering at the margins, they want to be a major innovation powerhouse,” said Andrew Kennedy, an associate professor in the policy and governance programme at the Australian National University.
To change this, China has begun to raise investment in basic sciences, Kennedy said, pointing to National Bureau of Statistics figures which indicate an average spending increase of more than 20 per cent each year between 1995 to 2016. Even so, spending at the end of that period – some US$11.9 billion at market rates – still lagged well below the figure cited for the US in 2015, which rang up US$83.5 billion, he said.
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The gathering of science laureates itself was further indication of that shift to place more emphasis on basic sciences, the kinds of disciplines the laureates lead, and could be a major boost to that agenda, according to Naubahar Sharif, associate professor of social science and public policy at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
“This [event] is a rocket-propelled, massive injection of scientific power into one place, and China has ambitions to gear up their own scientists to this level,” Sharif said, “and I’m sure the local Chinese scientists have been prepped to take advantage of it.”
While China has work to do in pushing back on criticism of questionable practices in intellectual property transfer, or the extent to which they share their own advances with others, collaboration with leading scientists is a crucial part of China’s “long-haul” vision in the sciences, Sharif said.
“If you rub shoulders with the most prestigious scientists of your era, your local scientists will learn something, and there’s going to be knowledge exchange and making linkages and a start to partnerships,” he said.
“This is the way that getting to that frontier can be achieved.”
India has formally divided the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two new federally-administered territories.
In the new arrangement, Jammu and Kashmir is one territory, and Ladakh, which borders China, is separate.
The two new union territories are now ruled directly from the capital Delhi.
It’s part of a controversial move announced in August to tighten the Indian government’s control over the part of Kashmir it administers.
R K Mathur and Girish Chandra Murmu were sworn in as lieutenant governors of Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir respectively on Thursday.
“Now the real participation of co-operative federalism will be seen. New highways, new railway lines, new schools, new hospitals will take the development of the people of Jammu and Kashmir to new heights,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at a public rally in the western state of Gujarat.
Union territories have far less autonomy from the federal government than states do.
The former state has long been one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints and is a highly militarised area.
India and Pakistan both claim Kashmir in full, but control only parts of it.
How does this affect the people there?
Almost 98% of the state’s population will be in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, comprising two regions – the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, which has about eight million people, and the Hindu-majority Jammu, which has about six million.
The third region, the newly created union territory of Ladakh, is a high-altitude desert inhabited by 300,000 people, with almost equal numbers of Muslims and Buddhists.
Workers from the previous state government will continue to retain their jobs in the new territories, the government said.
What’s the background?
On 5 August, the government revoked Kashmir’s special status, sparking protests in the Muslim-majority valley.
Article 370, as the constitutional provision guaranteeing special status was known, allowed the region a certain amount of autonomy, including special privileges in property ownership, education and jobs. This provision had underpinned India’s often fraught relationship with Kashmir.
Before the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government announced its decision to scrap the special status, it put the region under lockdown – mobile phone networks, landlines and the internet were cut off; and regional political leaders were placed under house arrest.
Media caption The children being ‘tortured’ in Kashmir
The region also witnessed protests where security forces often clashed with civilians. Thousands of activists and others were believed to have been picked up from their homes in the days that followed the surprise move.
Almost three months later, the situation is still far from normal.
On Tuesday, militants killed five migrant labourers in Kulgam district. Just a day before, a truck driver from outside the region was killed in Anantnag district.
Earlier this month, the Indian government restored mobile services 72 days after they were suspended.
But internet services continue to be suspended and most businesses remain closed – some in protest against the government, and others for fear of reprisals from militants opposed to Indian rule.
BEIJING, Oct. 28 (Xinhua) — Premier Li Keqiang’s upcoming trip to Uzbekistan and Thailand is of great importance to cementing cooperation among both SCO members and East Asian states, as well as solidifying Chinese relations with Uzbekistan and Thailand, senior officials said at a press briefing Monday.
Premier Li is scheduled to attend the 18th meeting of the Council of Heads of Government (Prime Ministers) of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in the Uzbek capital Tashkent, pay an official visit to Uzbekistan, and attend the 22nd China-ASEAN (10+1) leaders’ meeting, the 22nd ASEAN-China, Japan and Republic of Korea (10+3) leaders’ meeting and the 14th East Asia Summit (EAS) in the Thai capital Bangkok before paying an official visit to Thailand, from Nov. 1 to 5.
During the SCO heads of government meeting, Li will explain Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and share the successful construction experience of the People’s Republic of China in the past 70 years, according to Assistant Foreign Minister Chen Xiaodong.
“Li will exchange in-depth views with the leaders of the participating countries on enhancing solidarity and mutual trust among member states, building the Belt and Road Initiative and cooperation in such fields as economy and trade, industrial capacity, connectivity, finance, investment and people-to-people exchanges,” Chen said.
Noting it will be Li’s first official visit to Uzbekistan, Chen said the premier will exchange views with the Uzbek side on implementing the important consensus of the two heads of state, promoting the development of bilateral relations and international and regional issues of common concern. The two sides will sign a series of cooperation agreements covering economy and trade, investment, science and technology, customs and other fields.
Regarding the East Asian leaders’ meeting on cooperation, Chen said the premier will expound on China’s policy proposals for East Asian cooperation and propose more than 20 new initiatives for deepening cooperation under various mechanisms.
The East Asian leaders’ meeting this year will strengthen consensus, deepen cooperation, improve regional economic integration, promote regional common prosperity and development, and send out a positive signal of adhering to multilateralism and free trade, building an open world economy, according to Assistant Minister of Commerce Li Chenggang.
Calling Thailand a traditional friendly neighbor and important partner for the Belt and Road cooperation, Chen said Premier Li’s official visit to Thailand is the second visit by the premier in six years.
During the visit, the premier will exchange in-depth views with the leaders of the Thai side on bilateral relations and cooperation. The two sides will issue a joint press statement between the two governments and sign cooperation documents in such fields as technology and e-commerce.
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