3. China's science and technical talent pool is vast


The technical labor pool in China is so large that Shanghai-based offshore outsourcing company Bleum Inc. can use an IQ test to screen applicants, with a cutoff score for new computer science graduates in China of 140. Less than 1% of the population has a score that high.

Bleum has started hiring a U.S. workforce but sets an IQ score of 125 as a screening threshold because of the smaller labor pool. The company employs 1,000 people in China.

One data point to note: In 2005, the U.S. awarded 137,500 engineering degrees, while China awarded 351,500, according to a workforce study last year.


4. The U.S. is failing at science and math education


A stark assessment of the U.S. failure in science and math education was made by U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas) at a Senate hearing in May, when she compared the performance of students in Texas to those in China.

"In my home state of Texas, only 41% of the high school graduates are ready for college-level math (algebra), and only 24% are ready for college-level science (biology)," said Hutchinson.

"Furthermore, only 2% of all U.S. 9th-grade boys and 1% of girls will go on to attain an undergraduate science or engineering degree. In contrast to these troubling numbers, Mr. Chairman, 42% of all college undergraduates in China earn science or engineering degrees," she said.



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When a list of the world's 500 fastest computers is revealed on Nov. 15, it may contain a surprise. China, currently known to own the second-fastest computer, may reach the top spot. "Of the Top 10 machines today, China has two," says Jack Dongarra, director of the innovative computing laboratory at the University of Tennessee. "I know for sure they're going to have a third one in November."

"China gets it. These machines are useful for industry and it will help them maintain and continue on the current track of industrial growth," Dongarra says. More than half of the world's fastest computers are used by industry. Known as supercomputers, they are critical for research and simulation in areas such as climate modeling, genomics, alternative energy, and seismic imaging.

China's rise in supercomputing power has been swift. At the beginning of the decade, it had few, if any, supercomputers. By 2002, the country had begun to invest in them. In June, China surpassed Japan in computing power. It is currently third, behind the U.S. and second-ranked European Union. "China is poised to overtake the EU countries. The real question is when they overtake the U.S.," says Dongarra.


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Very quietly, China has become the world's second-largest producer of scientific knowledge, surpassed only by the US, a status it has achieved at an awe-inspiring rate. If it continues on its current trajectory China will overtake the US before 2020 and the world will look very different as a result. The historical scientific dominance of North America and Europe will have to adjust to a new world order.

In the west, we are largely familiar with research systems in which money, people and output stay roughly the same from year to year. Research spending in Europe and North America has outpaced economic growth since 1945, but not by a dramatic amount.

Not so with China. Data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that between 1995 and 2006, China's gross expenditure on R&D (GERD) grew at an annual rate of 18 per cent. China now ranks third on GERD, just behind the US and Japan and ahead of any individual European Union state.

Universities have experienced similar growth. China's student population has reportedly reached 25 million, up from just 5 million nine years ago. China now has 1700 higher education institutions, around 100 of which make up the "Project 211" group. These elite institutions train four-fifths of PhD students, two-thirds of graduate students and one-third of undergraduates. They are home to 96 per cent of the country's key laboratories and consume 70 per cent of scientific research funding.


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China’s First Homegrown Jet–And Why It Matters





For the nine or 10 people besides me that follow China’s commercial aerospace sector, Reinhardt Krause posted an excellent summary on how China’s plan to build its first big passenger plane promises to reshape its fast-growing aviation market and what’s at stake for suppliers. Here’s my take on how it impacts Boeing and Airbus.

China’s next big thing, the home-grown C919, will be the first all new narrowbody in almost 30 years. Seating up to 190 passengers, the single aisle airliner packs a wallop on the status quo.

• –The C919 is a direct challenger to the Airbus A320 and the Boeing 737 families, dominant airline favorites even with their aging designs.
  


• The C919 will likely have the latest and greatest technology from offshore suppliers that are willing to put their IP at risk.
  


• Among other things, the C919 should be at least 15%-18% more fuel efficient, with a faster cruising speed (Mach 0.785) and longer range. It will also be wider than the 737 and A320.
  


• For pilots, the C919 will have basically the same fly-by-wire flight control system as Boeing’s upcoming 787, courtesy of Honeywell.
  

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. . . looks like the Chinese boat building industry needs some work:



Luxury Chinese Boat Launches, Sinks Immediately

China's Indigenous Supercomputing Strategy Bears First Fruit


If anyone wasn't taking China seriously as a contender for supercomputing supremacy, such doubts should have been dispelled last week when the New York Times reported that the nation has deployed its first petascale supercomputer built with domestically produced CPUs. And it's not just the processors that were homegrown. Based on a presentation delivered last month at the China's Annual Meeting of National High Performance Computing, most of major components of the new machine were designed and built with native engineering, including the liquid cooling technology, the system network, and the software stack.

Should vendors be worried? Certainly chipmakers like Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA should view this development with some trepidation. Likewise for HPC system vendors such as IBM, HP, Dell and others. China is a large and growing market for high performance computing infrastructure, and if they decide to take a homegrown approach to HPC technology, that could translate into hundreds of millions of dollars per year in lost revenue for these US-based companies.

As far as the broader picture of US (and European) competitiveness in HPC capability, there is also reason for concern. A number of industry insiders believe the Chinese are determined to beat the US and other nations in the race to exaflops. Convey co-founder and chief scientist Steve Wallach is one such individual. According to him, the dense packaging, impressive performance per watt metrics, and water cooled technology of the BlueLight system are signs of serious engineering prowess on the part of the Chinese engineers.


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