China's nanotech revolution ("rivaling even the capacities of the United States")

Prior to 2000, the Chinese media made practically no mention of the concept of "nanotechnology" (nami jishu) or its potential for revolutionizing China's high tech industry. Today, however, dozens of major Chinese research centers and hundreds of enterprises engage in the production of nanotechnologies, which has quickly become a multibillion-Yuan industry. Concentrated in China's major economic centers such as Beijing, Shenyang, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Hong Kong, these urban hubs account for some 90 percent of all nanotech Research and Development.

The rapid development of China's nanotech industry is due in large part to the intervention of the central government. Apparently added to a list of priority technologies at the end of the 1990s, nanotech has enjoyed state funding since then through National 863 Hi-Tech R&D Plan. The plan provided huge investments for nanotech projects from both the central and local governments. It seems that the Chinese leadership had plans to transform their nanotech industry by 2010 – with the hope of making it comparable to China's microelectronics, telecom, and other high-tech industries.

Remarkably, developments within the industry have been both civilian and military in purpose, though the latter has, of course, enjoyed a higher degree of priority. Strategists within China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) understand perfectly well the significance of nanotechnologies in military reforms within the United States over the last twelve years. With this in mind, China has actively cooperated with leading nanotech companies in the United States and Europe. It seems reasonable to assume, also, that such cooperation is well underway with the Russian Federation.

In July 2001, Shanghai Nanotech Promotion Center (SNPC) was established to focus on R&D and the industrialization of tools needed for nanotech research. (Shanghai had already started work on a $217 million Stone Nanotechnology Port in May of that year.) [1] Also in July, the Shanghai city government announced that it would soon open a nanotech base, uniting three, state-level research centers, several laboratories focusing on nano-materials, and eleven additional companies specializing in the commercialization of R&D products.

The first phase of construction, near East China Science and Technology (S&T) University, was finished within the month, and 76,000 square meters immediately became available for nanotech firms. Plans had been made for an additional 200,000 square meter facility at the same location, but in August, the Shanghai Municipal S&T Commission announced the city would concentrate its resources to focus on research and industrialization over the next four years (2001 to 2005). The intent of the project was to dramatically improve China's nanotech R&D and commercialization, particularly in nano-materials, nano-electronic components and nano-biological/medical technologies. The Shanghai S&T Commission stated that it would also set up a nanotech incubator program. At that time (July 2001), there were already twenty institutions engaged in nanotech development in Shanghai. [2]

Less than a year later, in May 2002, the Shanghai S&T Commission announced its intent to provide further investment opportunities and preferential treatment to nanotech-related companies. Zhu Jiping, Director of the Commission, was quoted as saying: "In 2001, Shanghai government invested 30 million Yuan in nanotech – nano-biology, nano-medicine and nano-electronics; this laid solid foundation for nano-sector. We are now pushing nanotech development to 2nd stage – nanotech products industrialization. Shanghai's government will accelerate the application of nanotech in different industries, especially automotive products."

This push to accelerate Shanghai's nanotech production was echoed by Shanghai Nanotech Promotion Center's (SNPC) new director Niu Xiaoming: "At this second stage, SNPC will help companies in the nano-sector to improve their advanced technologies. SNPC strives to establish an information network linking all professionals in the sector. Currently six nanotech R&D centers – built in such leading Shanghai universities as Jiaotong University, Fudan University, East China University, East China Normal University, Shanghai University and East China S&T University – are exchanging their latest nanotech results through this network." [3] By mid-2002, Shanghai had developed an extensive nanotech infrastructure, which led to the rapid development of nanotechnologies throughout 2003 and 2004.

At the same time as Shanghai was experiencing its nanotech boom, Beijing was also investing heavily in this new industry. The Center for Nanotechnologies at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing opened in 2000. Uniting over a dozen CAS institutes and several university laboratories, the aim of the center was to upgrade scientific cooperation while accelerating nanotech industrial development in Beijing. Just one year later, in December 2001, Beijing's Tsinghua University announced a new approach to the production of carbon nano-tubes at a rate of 15 kilograms per hour, 60 times faster than the speed at which they had originally been produced. [4]

In November 2002, CAS launched a joint project with the U.S. company, Veeco Instruments Inc. The CAS Institute of Chemistry and Veeco agreed to cooperate in the running of a nanometer technology center aimed at providing access to Veeco-made nanotech instruments to Chinese researchers, including atomic force and scanning-tunneling microscopes. The center would also provide the Institute of Chemistry's molecular nanotech R&D division with "super-advanced" measuring and controlling devices. The Institute's chief researcher, Chen Wang, has worked closely with CAS vice president Bai Chunli to ensure support for his work on molecular nanotechnologies.

The partnership between CAS and Veeco came amidst great optimism regarding China's nanotech potential. "China will gain the leadership position in nanotech," remarked Veeco President Don Kania at the opening ceremony. This bold statement of confidence in Chinese nanotech superiority was affirmed by Bai Chunli, CAS vice-president and chief scientist of the National Coordinating Committee for Nanotech, who stated simply: "China enjoys the advantage in research of nanometer materials." By the time the center opened, China had more than 300 enterprises in the nanotech sector, with some 7,000 scientists engaged in nanotech R&D.

The CAS-Veeco center was just one part of China's plan to establish a national nanotech infrastructure. At the end of March 2003, CAS, Peking University and Tsinghua University announced a joint National Center for the nation's long-term nanotech development. Approved by the State Council, the Center will enjoy an early-stage state investment of 250 million Yuan ($30 million). The Central government has budgeted two billion Yuan (about $240 million) for nanotech projects between 2003 and 2007; another 2 to 3 billion Yuan is due from local governments. [5]

This heightened investment in nanotech has not been limited to Beijing, however. At the end of June 2001, CAS and China's Ministry of Science and Technology unveiled the Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science (SYNL). The newly established laboratory is expected to compete with its counterparts in the United States, Japan and Germany. [6] And, in November 2003, a Nanotech Park was established in Xian. Hong Kong has also developed a large complex of nanotech industries, while Zhejiang University in Hangzhou became the center of nanotech R&D and industrialization in the prosperous Zhejiang province.

At the present time, some thirty institutions are engaged in basic nanotech research. These include CAS Physical Institute, CAS Chemical Institute, CAS Solid Physics Institute (Hefei), Tsinghua University (Beijing), Beijing University, Hangzhou University, Nanjing University, and several universities in Shanghai. In addition, Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen have each created their own Nanotech Centers, uniting local R&D structures. In terms of basic nanotech R&D, China has reached the most advanced levels in the world, rivaling even the capacities of the United States.

Dr. Alexandr Nemets is a specialist in PLA development and Sino-Russian relations. He is the author of several books and articles on a wide variety of topics relating to China.

Notes: 1. Asiaport Daily News (www.smalltimes.com), Shanghai, July 19, 2001 2. Xinhua Agency, Shanghai, Aug. 7, 2001 3. China Daily, Beijing, May 13 2002, p.3 4. (Asiaport Daily News (www.smalltimes.com) HK, Dec 17, 2001 5. Renmin Ribao, November 21 2002 6. Renmin Ribao, June 29 2001

Just found this while surfing. This will give you an idea of just one of the current systems in the works.

JANE'S DEFENCE INDUSTRY - JULY 01, 2005

PROGRAMME UPDATE - Northrop Grumman begins J-UCAS construction

James Murphy

Key points:
*Northrop Grumman has begun construction of the X-47B Joint - Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) aircraft.
*The X-47B is competing with Boeing's X-45C under the DARPA-led operational assessment phase of the J-UCAS demonstration programme.

NORTHROP Grumman Corporation of San Diego, California, has started construction of its X-47B Joint - Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) aircraft.

Production will take place at the manufacturing facility of Northrop Grumman's team-mate GKN Aerospace, in St Louis, Missouri. GKN is responsible for the design and fabrication of the X-47B's forward fuselage.

Final assembly of the first aircraft will begin in mid-2005 at Northrop Grumman's facility in Palmdale, California.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Northrop Grumman a contract worth US$1.04 billion in October 2004 to transition the X-47B into the operational assessment and demonstration phase of the programme.

Northrop Grumman has been designing, developing and testing three X-47B air vehicles, three mission-control systems and a common operating system since 2004. This phase is expected to last until 2009.

Boeing is also developing another unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV), called the X-45C, under the same DARPA-led operational assessment phase of the J-UCAS demonstration programme.

The J-UCAS programme is intended to field a stealthy UCAV with integrated sensors, navigation and communications capable of operating in the network-centric battlefield that is expected to emerge in the coming years.

Key missions envisioned for the UCAVs include suppression of enemy air defences, the ability to conduct surveillance deep into an enemy's denied airspace, and precision strike.

The vehicles, capable of operating from land bases or aircraft carriers, will have a combat radius of 1,500 n miles, a weapons payload of 2,025 kg, an electronic warning system and integrated synthetic-aperture radar.

This presumes that we could have kept them from getting 'off and running'. That started over 20 years ago when they gave up on pure communism and started opening their economy to investment and trade.

We could...and should have. At this point, the worst genie is likely out of the bottle, with their grad students at our universities technical departments by the legions, still manifestly fire-breathing Marxist Chinese warmongers.

They never "gave up" on "pure communism". Instead, they perceived a short-cut to catching up...and if we were foolish enough...surpassing the U.S. Their doctrine taught that communism is the final stage of capitalist evolution. And since their society had no capital to speak of, they needed to sucker in Western capitalists to give them modern technological/industrial capital...which would jump start their own. They would fully control these capital aggregates by setting up communist party front-operations, "companies" -requirng the Westerners "Partner" with... which they would later co-opt in a second (or third) revolution.

A grandiose new version of Lenin's New Economic Program...when he declared his communist experiment over, and would no longer be doctrrinaire and would open up to Western investment. Even sucked ardent anti-communist Henry Ford in.

Deng Xiouping made clear to his fellow hardliner purists in the Party that in fact they were not giving up on their Communist objectives and ultimate control of everything...when he explained: "Whether you call the cat black or white is not important. What matters is if it still catches mice." This blood-curdling metaphor is faithfully enacted in the most current version of the Chinese Constitution, which makes clear that the Party/State rules in every aspect, even in the 'reformed' zones.

I believe that in order to protect our national security and sovereignty we can withdraw from the Chinese economy, and expel all Chinese students who do not publicly renounce their country's communism, and make their goods prohibitive. All of this will have tremendous cost on us. But also marvelous opportunities to restore American primacy and economic power which is slipping fast.

Anyways, for the last 35 years clearly, since Nixon went to China, we have been under an illusion as to who and what we are dealing with in China. And given them every benefit of the doubt and every break. Up to and inclusive of granting them MFN status, WTO entry, etc. Ignoring their civil rights violations, and systemmic oppressions and subjugations of neigbors and even their direct warmongering against us.

It is a policy of unadulterated and sickening appeasement. To take your George Washington text's proper meaning and apply it to that reality (see below for his FULL context which is clearly against your slant), that we are behaving in a delusory fashion to China, treating them as a friend, when they are not:

"The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

Yes, the phony free traders...i.e., "Foreign Intersts"... and the communist/globalists in our own Fifth Column have indeed led us astray, and we have inherited a hell of a mess.

First order of business, is to clearly understand however that the enemy was not completely defeated. Not at all here in the U.S. campuses, NPCs and Foundations, or the media...or in the People's Republic of China. It just went into camouflage and is biding its time while using our own hubris against us. And all wings of these communists conjoin together for their common purposes. U.S. communists apparently differ whether the capital of the world socialist government should be in New York...or Brussels...or Bejing. Bejing's communists are not squeamish about their choice.

When your quote from George Washington's Farewell Address was uttered...Sept. 17, 1796... there was not an implacable communist menace. But there has been in most of the last century, and it persists and waxes still today. I have no doubt George Washington would have never denied the need for "habitual" opposition to the grand conspiracy in order to preserve liberty in our own land. Here is his FULL TEXT:

Farewell Address, President George Washington

September 17, 1796

"Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and Morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great Nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt, that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages, which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its Virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?

In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential, than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The Nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the Government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The Government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of Nations has been the victim.

So likewise, a passionate attachment of one Nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite Nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest, in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter, without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite Nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the Nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained; and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, (who devote themselves to the favorite nation,) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the Public Councils! Such an attachment of a small or weak, towards a great and powerful nation, dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens,) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove, that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation, and excessive dislike of another, cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop."

I will grant you that the unwise executive order letting Israel have access to the candy store, so to speak, has proven unwise. But, I see you ignore the relevant points of George Washington, as applied to China, still. You make this amazing claim:

I don't presume, perhaps as you do, that the Chinese government can forever keep the lid on its people's liberty, particularly as they get a taste of ours.

They can...and will... if we don't help those people. The Soviet Union did not fall of its own accord. They were pushed. It's internal dissidents were enabled by a policy of CONFRONTATION by the U.S.

President Ronald Reagan operated a broad multi-faceted four-point attack on the Soviets.

Military (countering at strategic and tactical technology and deployment levels. And Marxist geopolitical insurgencies in our Hemisphere...and in the Middle East neutralized).
Economic (isolation of Soviets from all mature Western advanced and new technology, and Western capital sources, as well as oil and energy resources, from their grasp).
Political. (Renewed and fresh alliances both military and economic...Thatcher, NATO, etc.)
Idealogical/Spiritual/Moral. (The beacon of liberty...hope was held high. The enemy was properly named as evil, and his deeds held to account. And those of like understanding embraced. Dissidents, religious and civil. The Pope, etc.)

Nothing similar is in place today to topple the Chinese Communist Party. Have you read Constantine Menge's new book? The hope that the Chinese Communist party will soften just out of trade, of its own accord, is vanity. And the hope that the people of China will someday successfully revolt has been disappointed. Again and again. The degree of error by the West (most explicitly, GHWB) during the Tiannamen Square disaster has still not been properly appreciated by most conservatives yet.

You preach indefinite waiting. To what end? It took 70 years of slavery in Russia before Ronald Reagan came along to help them. The Maoists and successors have been in power now for over 50+ years. Don't assume if we let the PRC become a military/economic super power that it will become benign...or any less communist-minded. That flies in the face of actual history. Mark Steyn previously noted this same disconnect by the apologists.

Deng Xiouping: "What does it matter if you call the cat black or white. So long as it catches mice."

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