This Nano Whiz Is Thinking Big [China's Nanotech Play]

Business Week Online ^ | 8/22/2005 | Bruce Einhorn

[ZeitgeistSurfer]

American-trained scientists like Han Jie are playing an important role in Beijing's efforts to boost China's accomplishments in both science and technology. Han, a 48-year-old nanotech expert who has worked at NASA and at IBM in the U.S., returned to his native China last year and is now the director of the new National Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology in Shanghai. A key part of China's effort to build a nanotech base that can be on the cutting edge of an emerging industry, the center is focusing on practical applications rather than pure research in nanoelectronics and nanobiotechnology.

[ZeitgeistSurfer]

Behind the words of this mild-mannered article is a powerful threat to the US leadership in emerging technologies. We train them here, they suck out all the knowledge they can (note the NASA experience) and then they go back to China. The last paragraph is the killer.

[PeterPrinciple]

"When I worked at NASA, I just stayed in the lab and [worked] on needs of NASA, the Defense Dept., and the Energy Dept. -- not some projects that came out of your real experience," he says. "In China, I really want to solve the problem right away. I build technology today. I hope tomorrow it can be used."

One of the problems I see in the US is that too many things are centralized (education, politics, media, ).

One of the reactions to centralization is to eventually decentralize. It is interesting to think of China and this example. We are behind the curve ball but I hope and pray that we are on the road to decentralization also.

I now fondly remember the local justice of the peace who administered local justice. It was determined by lawyers they weren't qualified so it moved up to state jurisdiction and then federal. Mistakes were made locally was the excuse, well mistakes are made on the federal level also.........I prefer the local mistakes.

[ccmay]

the center is focusing on practical applications rather than pure research

i.e., they are focused on stealing the fruits of American genius, as usual. Pygmies on the shoulders of giants.

-ccm

[Bobalu]

Sort of funny..

It's nanotech and the rise of desktop assemblers that will
someday turn China's vast army of low-wage workers into
an enormous mob of unemployable malcontents with mouths to
feed.

Nano is the beginning of the end for China....
Why buy from China what you can make for yourself at home?