Fidel Castro Awarded China’s Confucius Prize and President Xi Named ‘Person of the Year 2014’ by Russia
About time some institution honoured him, if only for surviving the more than 600 assassination attempts by the CIA. Not to mention standing up to the Americans for over half a century and his people bearing the brunt of crippling trade sanctions. The US should suspend the sanctions immediately as the UN General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly for (for the nth time) and start the process to normalize relations. But, alas, that’s not going to happen any time soon given the ferocity of the fiercely anti-communist Cuban-American lobby in Florida.
Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro is this year’s winner of the Confucius Peace Prize, China’s alternative to the Nobel Prize. The committee that sponsors the prize praised 88-year-old Castro for peacefully resolving international conflicts. The Confucius prize was launched in 2010 as an alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize, Prior recipients include former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
– AP
Chinese President Xi Jinping was named as “Person of the Year 2014” by the Russian Biographical Institute for the “strengthening of economic and political ties with the Russia”, which reflects the rising influence of China and its leader. It is the first time the institute has given the award to a leader of a country that doesn’t belong to the Commonwealth of Independent States.
The Russian Biographical Institute, founded in 1992, is a nongovernmental and noncommercial organization based in Moscow. Its Person of the Year award acknowledges the recipients involved as being guided by the principles of social, spiritual and moral responsibility. In all, the institute handed out awards to 42 individuals, companies and institutions in areas including culture, science, charity, medicine and health, and national defense.
– China Daily
Alibaba Infographic
Although Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, along with payment option Alipay, counterpart to Paypal, and its online marketplace Tmall, aren’t yet household words in North America like eBay or Amazon, its impact around the world will be epochal not only in terms of exponential growth in e-commerce but potentially even more important, further ground-breaking innovation in online marketing and sales.
Here’s an infographic on Alibaba released by Issa Asad, CEO of QLink Wireless and best-selling author, on the importance of Alibaba and dynamic e-commerce growth in China. On Singles Day November 11, otherwise known as ‘double 11’), China’s consumers day, the shopping frenzy netted for Alibaba over US$9 billion in transactions.
Recall meeting founder Jack Ma in 2000 when his company was starting out and thinking it’s just another .com start-up and it will be a big slug for them going forward. Well, look at it now! Had I known what a phenomenon it would become, would have bought as much Alibaba stock as I could.
Founded by Jack Ma in 1999, Alibaba is the world’s largest e-commerce marketplace and provides C2C, B2C and B2B sales services. The company also owns Tmall, which is similar to US Amazon. With 70,000 brands and 180 million buyers, Alibaba is larger than both Amazon and eBay. It is still growing thanks to China’s high-speed e-commerce market, which is currently outpacing other emerging markets like Brazil and India.
In September 2014, Alibaba made its first significant appearance in American headlines when its IPO shattered world records and raised more than $25 billion.
E-commerce spending in China is expected to reach $400 billion in 2014. By 2020, China’s e-commerce market is expected to be twice as large as the UK, the United States, Japan, Germany and France combined, with $1,847 billion in total revenue.
– PRNewswire
China’s Advanced Weapons Race with America
During the Cold War, the US bankrupted the Soviet Union in a no-holds-barred arms race that inevitably ended in the latter’s demise. America’s then reigned supreme for the next two decades, confident in maintaining one to two or more generation technological advantage over rivals in advanced weaponry.
Following the Gulf War and magnified by the decimation of Saddam Hussein’s Soviet-equipped forces in 2003, two decades of concerted effort have transformed China’s formerly obsolete equipment. The campaign is now bearing fruit in the form of advanced surface ships, submarines, tanks, missiles, radars, 5th-generation stealth fighters, and the list goes on.
Before his resignation, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced, in spite of a shrinking R & D budget, the US is launching a major drive to develop the next generation of high-tech weapons in order to keep ‘adversaries’ like China and Russia at a safe distance. Last month’s release of a major report on China’s growing military might by a congressionally-funded commission heavily plowed on the anti-China rhetoric stating the country’s armaments modernization gives it an “increasing number of opportunities to provoke incidents at sea and in the air that could lead to a crisis or conflict.”
Despite such inflammatory and alarmist words, Chinese military experts readily admit while there has been a “blowout” (expansion) of new weaponry introduced over the past few years, a trend that should continue well into the next decade, a huge gap remains between the capabilities of the US versus China, not to mention the “blank areas” in certain major weapons systems. But, it also needs to mentioned that China’s 2014 defense budget of 808 billion RMB (US$132 billion) is a fraction (21%) of the Pentagon’s $630 billion. (The US budget is almost 4% of GDP and China’s around 2%.)
Last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping likewise called on the People’s Liberation Army to step up its weapons R & D. “Advanced weaponry is the embodiment of a modern army…Equipment systems are now in a period of strategic opportunities and at a key point for rapid development…The equipment must be innovative, practical and forward-looking to meet the demands of actual combat and fill in the weak spots of China’s existing equipment”, he said, quoted by the Xinhua News Agency.
So what has Pentagon analysts (and the US media) in such a tizzy?
Without going into the plethora of conventional and strategic nuclear weapons currently in various stages of development and deployment such as J-20 and J-31 stealth aircraft and the multitude of cruise and ICBM missiles, this post focuses on next generation weapons the Chinese are currently working on that are not far behind the US. They include hypersonic weapons, laser cannons, and 6th generation fighters, among others along with notable ‘blank areas’ such as the US Navy’s electromagnetic rail gun.
Hypersonic weapons: Tested for the first time last January and again in August, the Chinese hypersonic strike vehicle, the HGV (also dubbed the WU-14 by foreign military enthusiasts) reportedly can travel at Mach 10 or 12,359 km/hr. At that speed, HGV can easily evade US anti-ballistic missile countermeasures. The US’s test of a similar vehicle three weeks later was aborted and intentionally exploded shortly after takeoff. Weapons experts indicate China and the US are developing a similar range of weapons, including boost-glide, hypersonic glide, and eventually air-breathing scram jet vehicles. The US is farther along in R & D but the Chinese program may be better funded with greater inputs of resources, they say.
Anti-drone lasers: Early last month, the China Academy of Engineering Physics announced its laser defense system had shot down more than 30 small low-flying drones within a two-kilometer radius, a perfect record, it touted. The laser will either be installed on or transported in vehicles to help with security at major urban events and the Academy is developing systems with greater power and range, reported Xinhua. Meanwhile, over the summer, the US supposedly deployed its first prototype defense laser in the Persian Gulf for testing under real conditions.
6th generation fighters: They will be super-stealth, manned or unmanned, hypersonic, equipped with highly-sensitive avionics, and carrying various types of directed energy weapons such as lasers. A new drone developed by the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC) is set to debut in 2020 and Chengdu Aircraft Corporation (CAC) is also busy designing drones and planes. Taken together, China’s 6th generation fighters will be a big family consisting of heavy fighters, medium range fighters and unmanned drones like “Dark Sword”. In this area, needless to say, the US maintains a huge edge.
Electromagnetic rail gun: As far as this author is aware, the Chinese are only in the preliminary stages of R &D and the US is way ahead with two single-shot prototypes funded by the Navy. The gun has already undergone extensive tests on land and for sea trials, it will be mounted on the USNS Millinocket, a high speed vessel, in 2016. However, the gun’s power wears out barrels quickly and only three vessels, DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyers, can generate sufficient electricity to power them consistently.
Commenting on China’s development of super high-tech weapons, Igor Korotchenko, Director of the Center for the Analysis of World Arms Trade, said: “The Chinese military’s development plans…are taking place in the context of its rivalry with the US. Therefore, the negative commentary which may be found in the American media is a reflection of the fact that the US is coming to realize the extent of the growth in China’s military capabilities, and is alarmed by it.” (quoted by Sputnik of spacewar.com)
Thus, slowly but surely, China (and Russia) is chipping away at US weapons predominance with the days of multi-generational gaps in technology long gone. By their own assessment, Chinese military experts admit they are still about 20-25 years behind. However, by the 2040s, the playing field will have evened out much more.
China is Dominating in Patents: Thomson Reuters Study
The long-chanted mantra among Western skeptics, naysayers and Sinophobes is: “China can copy and produce but cannot innovate”. Well, according to Thomson Reuters’ intellectual property (IP) analysis division, Western dominance in that area is quickly coming to an end and China’s has a grand strategy in place to become a dominant player in many fields by the end of the decade.
Recall a book a couple years back argued that contrary to Western perceptions, China is getting good at ‘small’ (minor) innovations but still has a ways to go in terms of ‘game-changing’ innovations/inventions like Apple’s iPhone. That’s currently quite true in the hyper-competitive Chinese marketplace where Chinese companies battle it out to satisfy changing consumer tastes and in setting trends. Within a few years, the kinks in China’s IP development will be steadily hammered out and we’ll be seeing grand Chinese innovations that will surely transform consumer tastes around the world.
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Key points outlined in the analysis include:
- China Is Undisputed Patent Leader: China continues to overshadow other countries in published patent applications, publishing 629,612 patents in 2013, over 200,000 more than the U.S. This push is driven by a five-year plan in which the country has set out to reach two million applications for patents for inventions, utility models and designs by 2015.
- Pharma Driving Patenting Boom, But Quality of IP is Suspect: China has nearly 80 percent of world share in patents for alkaloid/plant extracts, and around 60 percent of global share of pharmaceutical activity, general patents. However, these filings are held by thousands of individual inventors with a handful of patents each, rather than portfolios maintained by universities or corporate entities that would be seen stateside. As a result, the quality of the IP is likely to be unstable.
- Domestic Innovation on the Rise, Foreign Filing Fails to Keep Up: Overall, 80 percent of China’s patents were filed domestically in 2013, leaving China’s foreign growth flat. The number of inventions filed abroad from China has grown from 13,005 in 2008 to 33,222 in 2013, however overall patenting has grown from 239,663 in 2008 to 629,612 in 2013, therefore the proportion has remained the same at 5.3 percent.
- Burgeoning Chinese Multinationals: While China as a whole is doing substantially less international patent filing than other regions of the world, a few leaders have emerged in the global patent landscape, including Huawei, ZTE Corp, Shenzhen Huaxing Optoelectronic, Alibaba Group, BOE Technology Group, Lenovo, Tencent, BYD, SMIC and Sany. Huawei was named to the Thomson Reuters 2014 Top 100 Global Innovators list last month.
- Planning the Next Five Years: The Chinese National Patent Development Strategy highlights the country’s plans through 2020, including seven strategic industries positioned for growth: biotechnology, alternative energy, clean energy vehicles, energy conservation, high-end equipment manufacturing, broadband infrastructure, and high-end semiconductors.
“Over the past decade, China has asserted itself as one of the preeminent players in intellectual property activity,” said Bob Stembridge, senior patent analyst, Thomson Reuters IP & Science. “By developing an IP strategy that accounts for China’s continued foray into the innovation landscape, firms can glean an advantage in this emerging market.”
The new Thomson Reuters study Chinese Corporate Trends and Globalization for IP can be downloaded from: http://ip.thomsonreuters.com/sites/default/files/chinas-innovation-quotient.pdf
Chinese Built Electric Buses a Hit in Edmonton and Eastern Canada
Good to see Changsha made Stealth electric buses making inroads among public transit authorities across Canada. Win-win for both sides. If the trend continues, most probable given the positive reviews, perhaps a further step would be to assemble them in Canada and create solid jobs going forward.
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Edmonton+should+plan+electric+buses+report+recommends/10416549/story.html