China: the New Advanced Technology Research Hotbed 452
securitas writes "The New York Times' Chris Buckley reports that China is the new hotbed of advanced technology research and development for hundreds of global technology companies. The list includes household names like Oracle (which 'opened a lab in Beijing to tailor its Linux operating software to suit its Asian customers'), Motorola, Siemens, IBM, Intel, General Electric, Nokia and others. Microsoft Research Asia hopes Google-surpassing technology comes from a group of '10 researchers ... working on new ways to drill deep into the Internet and select and organize the information found there.' Growth of the R&D sector in China is so rapid that 'within five years China could overtake Britain, Germany and Japan as a base for corporate research, leaving it second only to the United States.'"
Reg Free Link - No Karma Whoring (Score:5, Informative)
OK, now let's argue over whether or not Slashdot counts as a "Blog", and whether or not we should be using the New York Times Link Generator [blogspace.com] to create links so that people can RTFA!
Yes, BugMeNot works too, but if you're going to provide an article to Slashdot, at least make it so everyone can read it without jumping through hoops...
Figures. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:RIP (Score:1, Informative)
- Smart people - Top tier universities like Stanford and Berkeley provide the intellectual resources.
- Lots of money - Look where the top VC firms are, and you'll see that most of them are on sandhill road, just yards away from Stanford's campus. And when you outgrow the VCs, there are plenty of investment banks up 101 in SF.
- A nice climate - And this is what'll keep the two groups mentioned above here.
When you look at the returns that high tech delivers to both the investors and the entrepreneurs, the cost of living in the area is meaningless. It's no accident that practically every large wave of high tech innovation had its leading companies here (Genentech, Intel, Yahoo, Electronic Arts, HP).Sure, old maturing industries (notably software) will move on to places where it's cheaper to manufacture that kind of stuff. But good riddence. With the falling margins in such maturing industries do we really want them here anymore?
Re:Comparative stats (Score:3, Informative)
Pop. Growth
How are we ever going to catch up with such a low rate of population growth. I volunteer to do my part in helping improve our numbers,
Re:Comparative stats (Score:3, Informative)
Landline phones: ~20% vs ~60%
Cellphones: ~25% vs ~50%
Re:Money goes where... (Score:2, Informative)
Second, banking system went through MAJOR reforms among other things. Hundreads of billions of USD were injected into the 4 major banks to write off bad loans, and for the first time, Bankruptcy laws and personal loans are allowed and taking off like crazy so that the bad loans will be repaid as much as possible
Third, the energy crisis is overstated. 60% efficiency was the operational efficiency of most foreignlly invested plants back in the late 90s (around '99). The problem isn't lacking of energy as a whole, but rather routing power to the general public. Combined with the nuclear plant strategy (Clinton and Jiang's agreement, China stop selling Nukes to Iran and other countries, US aid China in nuclear power), China's problem isn't as big as some make it out to be
Fourth, the poor people and everyone and their cat knows how corrupted the government is, but at least the poor people have no way to organize. In all 5000 years of Chinese history and 8 major empires, none except arguably the Ming was formed by pesant revolt, and that's due to the fact that Yuan wasn't a Han government. It simply won't happen.
Fifth, China is too entrenched in WTO and other capitalistic reforms to nationalize those investments. The greatest legacy of the Jiang administration was the WTO bit, which probably came closest to a revolution because most didn't and still don't recognize the long term impact of it. Jiang's biggest achievement was to use Zhu as Preimer, who will go down in Chinese history books to be one of the greatest leaders of China (along with Zhou, Deng, and Mao...)
China is a rapidly changing place, and the speed of evolution is WAY too fast for most people to keep up. Until China's wings gets strong enough, which will be heavily dependent on Korea, HK, and Taiwan's technological advancements, we will infact get rid of the westerners...
Re:its about time... (Score:5, Informative)
How about
- movable type [about.com]
- the printing press [fact-index.com]
- paper [about.com] (as well as paper money)
- meritocratic civil service [bartleby.com]
- 'gaussian' elimination [thefreedictionary.com]
- so-called 'arabic' numerals [wikipedia.org] and the base-10 number system
- gunpowder and rocketry [about.com]
- the post office
- restaurants
- umbrellas
- porcelain [asianartmall.com] (also called, simply, 'china' or 'china-ware')
- ketsup [essortment.com]
- silk [silk-road.com]
- rice [riceweb.org]
- and soybean [netfirms.com] (including tofu and soy-sauce)
for starters?Re:Is "insourcing" a word? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually not. The economy was booming, but largely to the fact that the government was spending massive amounts of money on projects, like building the Autobahn, rearmament, representative buildings and events. All money, which they actually didn't have, but lend. Mostly from countries, which they later invaded.
IRC, Speer himself, later Minister for Economy under the Nazi-Regime, noted, that this economic policy could only have one goal: war.
Otherwise, it could be expected that the massive spending would lead to an economic collapse, since the money in circulation had no corresponding economic value.
Re:Any link to China-Linux here? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:its about time... (Score:1, Informative)
From the websites you mentioned:
"Arabic" numerals were developed in India. It is highly speculative that they were even inspired by something in China.
Rice: "If these assumptions are correct, then domestication most likely took place in the area of the Korat or in some sheltered basin area of northern Thailand, in one of the longitudinal valleys of Myanmar's Shan Upland, in southwestern China, or in Assam. " From this how did you conclude rice developed in china?
post office, restaurants & umbrellas??? That's very speculative.
You did forget the compass which was invented in China.
Also the I think there was the water clock or something like that which was an important chinese invention.
I agree that there is an euro-centric tendency to claim everything was invented in Europe. But balacing that with a Sino-centric is hardly any better.
US foreign aid is a myth (Score:2, Informative)
The average american donates LESS than the average citizen of most developed nations in terms of percentage of salary. The total donated is more, yes, but that's only because you have higher salaries.
http://www.foreignaidwatch.org/print.php?sid=79
Now look at this list. Who exactly is the recipient of your "foreign aid"? The biggest amount of money goes to buy Israel new tanks to destroy Palestinian villages with, or to Egypt as a guarantee that they leave Israel alone, and so on and so forth. Looking at that list, I see very little humanitarian aid coming from the US, it's all kickbacks to allies and 3rd world dictatorships that choose to support you.
But your (false) beliefs are understandable.
http://cfrterrorism.org/policy/f
"A 2001 poll sponsored by the University of Maryland showed that most Americans think the United States spends about 24 percent of its annual budget on foreign aid--more than 24 times the actual figure."
It must be nice thinking you're the center of the world.