By Fred Reed
May 12, 2021 "Information
Clearing House" - - "UNZ"
- First,
America increasingly relies on strong-arm tactics
instead of competence. For example, in the de facto
5G competition, Washington cannot offer Europe a
better product at a better price, so it forbids
European countries to buy from China. The US cannot
compete with China in manufacturing, so it resorts
to a trade war. The US cannot make the crucial EUV
lithography equipment to make advanced
semiconductors, as neither can China, but it can
forbid ASML, the Dutch company, from selling to
China. Similarly, the US cannot compete with Russia
in the price of natural gas to Europe, so by means
of sanctions it seeks to keep Europe from buying
from Russia. This is not reassuring.
Second, the Chinese are a
commercial people, agile, fast to market, cutthroat,
known for this throughout Asia. America is a
bureaucratized military empire, torpid by
comparison. America has legacy control over a few
important technologies, most notably the crucial
semiconductor field and the international financial
system. Washington is using these to try to cripple
China’s advance.
A consequence has been a
realization by the Chinese that America is not a
competitor but an enemy, and a subsequent explosion
of investment and R&D aimed at reducing dependence
on American technology. There is the well-known 1.4
trillion-dollar five-year plan to this end. One now
encounters a flood of stories about advances in tech
“to which China has intellectual-property rights” or
similar wording.
They seem deadly serious
about this. Given that Biden couldn’t tell a
transistor from an ox cart, I wonder whether he
realizes that every time the US pushes China to
become independent in x, American firms lose the
Chinese market for X, and later get to compete with
Chinese X in the international market. Anyway, give
Trump his due. He lit this fuse.
A few snippets
The above beast, developed
entirely in China, is the first to use
high-temperature superconducting magnets to keep the
train floating just above the rails. HTSC magnets
are a Big Deal because they can achieve
superconductivity using liquid nitrogen as coolant
instead of liquid helium for classic
superconductivity, this costing, say the Chinese, a
fiftieth of the price of using helium. The use of
HTSC is very, very slick. The train will extensively
use carbon-fiber materials to keep weight down,
suggesting that the Chinese cannot distinguish
between a train and an airplane.
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Asia Times “China’s Hydrogen Dream is taking
Shape in Shandong”
“A detailed pilot plan
being worked out to transform Shandong, a
regional industrial powerhouse, into a “hydrogen
society” holds out much hope of delivering on
the green promise.”
The article, hard to
summarize in a sentence, is worth reading. As so
often, the Chinese do things, try things, while the
US talks, riots, imposes sanctions, sucks its thumb,
and spends grimly on intercontinental nuclear
bombers.
“Huawei
is Developing Smart Roads Instead of Smart Cars”
“Multiple sensors,
cameras, and radars embedded in the road,
traffic lights, and street signs help the bus to
drive safely, while it in turn transmits
information back to this network-“
“Quantum
Cryptography Network Spans 4,600 Km in China”
Quantum Key Distribution,
QKD, allows unhackable communications. China read Ed
Snowden’s book on NSA’s snooping, realized it had a
problem, and set out to correct it. If this spreads
to other countries—see below—much of the world could
go black to American intel agencies.
The Chinese may have thought
of this.
“…colleagues will further
expand the network by working with partners in
Austria, Italy, Russia and Canada. The team is
also developing low-cost satellites and ground
stations for QKD.”
The last sentence is
interesting. If China begins selling genuinely
secure commo gear abroad, it is going to make a lot
of intel agencies very unhappy. Did I mention that
the Chinese are a commercial people?
Further:
“Chinese
scientists achieve quantum information masking,
paving way for encrypted communication application.”
My knowledge of this might
rise to the level of blank ignorance after a good
night’s sleep and three cups of coffee. However, the
achievement made the American technical press, and
suggests Chinese seriousness about gaining privacy.
The video below shows how
China constructs high-speed rail lines as if
painting a stripe on a highway. Since they can’t
innovate, they have to get by with inventing things.
China to Europe rail freight: “Over 10,000
trains and 927,000 containers were forwarded via the
China-EU-China route in 2020, China Railways has
announced. The current volume of traffic has grown
by 98.3% year-to-year, covering 21 countries and 92
cities in Europe.”
America makes aircraft
carriers. China sells stuff.
NikkeiAsia: “What China’s Rapidly Expanding
Nuclear Industry Means for the West”
One Chinese reactor in
Pakistan just went live, with another expected in a
few months. Says Nikkei, “The Karachi reactor is
just the latest of these to come onstream, with the
World Nuclear Organization listing a dozen different
projects at the development or planning stage across
a dozen countries from Argentina to Egypt in its
recent survey. Many more are under discussion.”
In addition, says Nikkei,
China intends to have the whole industry from
technology to materials indigenous to China and
outside of American sanctions. See above, about
driving China to make things.
First China-Built DRAM Chip Reaches Market DRAM,
dynamic random-access memory, appears in almost
everything electronic and is a juicy market. Chang
Xin Memory, which makes it, redesigned it slightly
to remove American technology. If Chang Sin can ramp
up volume, which has yet to be established, guess
what foreign companies won’t sell much of in China
any more.
Even in my short two weeks
recently in China, I saw that the Chinese do not
believe in vertical motion. An American,
encountering a mountain, would, sensibly enough, go
up and over. This is not the Chinese way. They go
through. Similarly, on finding a valley, they do not
go down and up. They go across. There may be some
genetic abnormality behind this, or maybe
interbreeding with space aliens. But it results in
hellacious bridges.
“Is
China Emerging as the World Leader in AI?”
“Summary. China is
quickly closing the once formidable lead the
U.S. maintained on AI research. Chinese
researchers now publish more papers on AI and
secure more patents than U.S. researchers do.
The country seems poised to become a leader in
AI-empowered…”
Some argue that Chinese
patents are of low quality. Maybe so. But don’t bet
the college funds.
“China
begins construction of world’s longest
superconducting cable project”
“China’s first 35 kV
high-temperature superconducting cable
demonstration project has started construction
by State Grid in Shanghai and it is expected to
be completed by the end of the year. This is the
world’s largest transmission capacity, the
longest distance, 2000A current the highest
commercial 35 kV superconducting cable project.”
Regarding the 5G War Trump
could have bought 5G from Huawei, gotten a
sweetheart deal, great prices, factories in America,
and so on. Instead he banned Huawei from the US and
then twisted arms of the vassal states of Europe.
Thus neither America or Europe has the service, but
China is rolling it out fast. Brilliant, Don. This
gives China a running start on smart factories,
smart cities, autonomous vehicles, and the like.
“An almost entirely automated port in China,
during unload of a container ship. “
America talks about 5G, China
uses it.
NikkeiAsia: “The port is an example of how
operator China Merchants Group has been working to
automate and mechanize more operations using
ultrafast fifth-generation wireless technology. By
developing innovative ways to run the port as
efficiently as possible, the company aims to
accelerate overseas expansion.”
Aviation Week “Face It: The J-20 is a Fifth
Generation Fighter”
Says AvWeek: “Clearly,
Chengdu’s engineers understand the foundation of
fifth-generation design: the ability to attain
situational awareness through advanced fused sensors
while denying situational awareness to the adversary
through stealth and electronic warfare. The J-20
features an ambitious integrated avionics suite
consisting of multispectral sensors that provide
360-deg. coverage. This includes a large active,
electronically scanned array radar designed by the
14th Research Institute, electro-optical distributed
aperture system, electro-optical targeting system,
electronic support measures system and possibly
side-array radars.
“In a 2017 CNTV
interview, J-20 pilot Zhang Hao said: “Thanks to
the multiple sensors onboard the aircraft and
the very advanced data fusion, the level of
automation of J-20 is very high. . . . The
battlefield has become more and more transparent
for us.”
Most of the story is visible
only if you have a subscription to AvWeek.
Asia Times: Tesla loses lead to local upstart
in China’s EV market .
The headline is kidding. The
car that is outselling Tesla is a $4,200 el cheapo
for short-haul shopping and picking up the kids in
the city.
Sexy as a truss ad,
but…useful. I’m telling you, put the college funds
in this company, not truss ads. Made by an SAIC-GM
partnership, majority owned by China, where it was
designed and made. Will be sold internationally.
“Unlike Tesla, which requires
purpose-built charging stations, the
Mini can be plugged into a home power system to
charge, which takes about nine hours. It has a range
of about 120 kilometers and a top speed of 100
kilometers per hour, according to the carmaker’s
promotional materials.” Designed and put into
production in one year. (Did I mention that the
Chinese are a commercial people?)
China’s Y-20 strategic transport aircraft
gets key indigenous engine: reports Chinese design.
How close it is to being ready for prime time is not
clear, but it is flying. An inability to make
high-end engines has been a problem for China.
The WS’20 is a high-bypass
turbofan of Chinese design.
Finally,
Global Times”, Beijing’s news site: “China’s
trade volume increases 37% y-o-y in April, marking
11 consecutive months of positive growth”
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