China said it was not afraid of any sanctions the United States might impose over the South China Sea issue, and accused Washington of stirring up trouble in the region and driving a wedge between regional countries.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying made the remark at a daily news briefing after Reuters reported that David Stilwell, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, warned that Washington could respond with sanctions against Chinese officials and enterprises involved in the South China Sea issue.
Stilwell spoke one day after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said “Beijing’s claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea are completely unlawful”.
Urging Washington to reconsider its policies, Hua said, “As the world’s most developed and powerful country, the only superpower, the US arbitrarily talks about sanctions, which is very pathetic.”
Hua said that Stilwell’s remarks again showed that the US wishes nothing but chaos in the South China Sea and makes the utmost efforts to sow discord between China and other regional countries.
The US has dispatched advanced military aircraft and warships to flex its muscles in the South China Sea, while it also issued a statement to undermine the efforts of regional countries to jointly maintain peace and stability.
Such practices will only make the world more aware of US hypocrisy and hegemony, she said.
According to the US military, a US Navy destroyer carried out a freedom of navigation operation on Tuesday near the Nansha Islands in the South China Sea.
China will continue to firmly safeguard its sovereignty, security and rights on the South China Sea issue and maintain friendly cooperation with regional countries, Hua said. — China Daily/ANN
It will be a shame for regional countries to be
manipulated by such an extraterritorial power, abandon our fundamental
interests, fall into radical nationalist sentiments, and let Washington
reap the benefits of our disputes.
Asian countries should be firm not to turn territorial
disputes into the overriding melody of regional development. This will
test the wisdom of regional countries.
An arms race and intimidation will return to
international relations. Age-old contradictions will be reinforced in
the loss of a world order. Favorable opinions toward each other's
society will be reduced. The passion for studying and traveling abroad
will cool down. The lives of many people will change.
Hong Kongers and the West have
forgotten that Hong Kong was a forced ‘concession’ territory from China
at gunpoint. The colonial history books that Hong Kongers want to
preserve portray China as corrupt, evil and oppressive, as if Britain
occupied Hong Kong for democratic purposes.
New frontier: A November 2019 file photo presented on Monday showing China’s Mars lander's hovering, obstacle avoidance and deceleration capabilities being tested at a facility in Huailai, Hebei province. China is scheduled to launch its Mars rover and an orbiter around July 23 in a mission named Tianwen, or ‘Questions for Heaven’. – AP
IF you have been too preoccupied with all the awful stuff happening on Earth, you might have missed something that is shaping up. Up, as in up in space.
I did and it was only recently I caught up somewhat with the New Space Race. That was when I stumbled across the January graduation ceremony of the first class of 13 astronaut candidates comprising seven men and six women under the Artemis programme.
This is the long-awaited successor to the 1960s and 1970s Apollo missions by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa). Artemis – goddess of the moon and twin sister of Apollo – is Nasa’s plan to finally return to Earth’s closest celestial body.
The first man to land on the moon was, of course, Neil Armstrong on July 20,1969, and that historic occasion marked the winner of the first space race between the United States and Russia (or USSR as it was then called).
I still remember the excitement of watching RTM’s delayed telecast of the very grainy footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing. I was all of 10 years old.
The subsequent Apollo missions were very much part of my teenage years, but with the exception of the near disaster of Apollo 13, none of them came close to the global excitement over Apollo 11’s achievement.
That feat will be exactly 51 years old come Monday. Since Dec 14,1972, when Apollo 17 landed, no humans have visited the Moon.
While the six Moon missions did deliver much scientific data and 382kg of lunar soil samples, the race to the moon was essentially a politically-motivated contest to prove American technological prowess over Russian and once achieved, the enormously expensive one-upmanship (total cost was US$20bil) was over.
Nasa went on to do other great stuff like Skylab, the space shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS), which is still going strong after 20 years.
Without a doubt, for the last 50 years, the United States has held dominance in space exploration. But its pole position is now being challenged in the new space race.
This time it’s between the US and – no surprise – China, which also has its eye on the moon and beyond.
When China sent its first yuhangyuan (meaning “space navigator”) into orbit in the early 2000s, the West chuckled. They wondered what they would do during the flight and a think tank analyst guessed they would do some “physical exercises” and “space medicine-type things”.
No one is laughing now. In January last year, China landed its Chang’e 4 lunar lander on the far side of the moon, the first ever by any nation. (Chang’e is the Chinese moon goddess.)
From there, the Jade Rabbit 2 rover was able to transmit data back to Earth via a satellite that had been previously deployed around the moon for this purpose.
With that successful landing, China proved it has become a force to be reckoned with, which was President Xi Jinping’s declared intention in 2016 – to make China a “space giant” with the Moon as the vital centrepiece.
On May 5, China successfully launched its Long March-5B rocket, which is designed to ultimately transport astronauts into space. That was quickly followed by back-to-back launches of Earth-imaging satellites.
It might have faced a setback when its Kuaizhou-11 rocket carrying low-orbit remote sensing satellites failed to launch on July 10, but that won’t derail China’s plans to launch 60 spacecraft in over 40 launches this year.
What’s more, China plans to have its own space station in operation by the end of 2022. While Nasa partners with several other national space agencies on the International Space Station and welcomes newbie astronauts from many countries, including Malaysia, no yuhangyuan has been allowed on board.
China’s space station will orbit the moon to give it what is known as cislunar domination. Cislunar refers to the space between the earth and the moon and the moon’s orbit. If China succeeds, it will have the space equivalent of the Silk Road, because once cislunar is secured, it can develop a sustainable presence on the moon for in-space manufacturing, mineral extraction, and space-based solar power (SBSP) technology. From that, it can leap into deep space exploration and stage manned missions to Mars.
Nasa’s Artemis programme too has big plans for a permanent station orbiting the moon called the Gateway that would be instrumental to its ambition to send its first manned mission to Mars.
To do that, President Donald Trump proposed a US$4.7bil (RM20bil) budget submission for Nasa for 2021 so that Artemis can ensure “the next man and the first woman on the moon will be American astronauts (by 2024) – using this as a launching pad to ensure America is the first nation to plant its flag on Mars” by 2033.
But the Democrat-controlled Congress isn’t playing ball and wants to push the return-to-moon target date to 2028 because they don’t want it to be a Trump triumph.
This is the rare Trump initiative I actually like and how that will pan out, like his re-election, remains to be seen. But the space race is definitely on. There are other serious players, namely India and the newest – and I must say surprising – contender, the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Russia, while maintaining a presence with its participation in the ISS, is by all accounts no longer a serious contender as its space agency Roscosmos is beset with corruption and mismanagement.
In 2014, India’s Space Research Organisation beat China in putting out a satellite in orbit around Mars, becoming the fourth national space agency to reach Mars. In the pipeline is the launch of its first crewed orbital space craft named Gaganyaan by 2022.
Today the UAE will launch its first mission to Mars: A spacecraft called Hope that will orbit the Red Planet to study its atmosphere and weather.
Undoubtedly, there are great bragging rights for a nation that has the means to undertake space exploration, truly the final frontier.
To be fair, the US has been very magnanimous in freely sharing Nasa’s inventions and innovations with the rest of the world. These include baby formula, scratch resistant lenses, artificial limbs, camera phones, athletic shoes, wireless headsets, water purification systems, the computer mouse and freeze-dried food. Just check out inventions we use every day that were actually created for space exploration on usatoday.com or bit.ly/spacethings.
I do wonder whether China will be as magnanimous?
YouTuber and former Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer Mark Rober aptly sums up what he considers the five best reasons for space exploration in his video, “Is Nasa a waste of money?”
The one that seems the most far-fetched yet most compelling is finding habitable planets that humans can live on to prevent humanity’s extinction. Earth could be destroyed by a meteor strike or by our own human doing, a possibility which has become more real with the Covid-19 pandemic and worsening climate change.
But space exploration is no longer the sole domain of governments. Increasingly, private sector entities like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Roger Zhang Changwu’s LandSpace have become important players and collaborators.
Still, instead of Artemis versus Chang’e, I wish the US and China can resolve their differences and work together on their space ambitions for the good of humankind instead of turning space into the latest battleground for economic and military supremacy.
I had a glimpse of the future of space exploration in 1995. That was when I visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston and saw the prototype design for the ISS.
That was in my lifetime, as was the 1969 moon landing. I may live long enough to see the first woman to walk on the Moon but perhaps not the Mars manned mission.
That saddens me but it also thrills me to know that it will happen. Bon voyage, astronauts and yuhangyuan!
The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.
Washington's withdrawal from the WHO is the worst among
its retreat from various international organizations and treaties. The
world should hold Washington accountable for betraying the common
interests of humanity.
WHO to send experts to China for cooperation on COVID-19 origin-tracing
After consultation between the two sides, the Chinese government has agreed that the World Health Organization (WHO) will send experts to Beijing to exchange ideas with Chinese scientists and medical experts on science-based cooperation to trace the origin of the COVID-19 virus, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Wednesday.
Noting that WHO experts will be traveling to China to prepare scientific plans for identifying the zoonotic source of the disease, Zhao told a daily press briefing that experts from both sides will develop the scope and Terms of Reference for a WHO-led international mission.
"Virus source tracing is a scientific issue that should be studied by scientists through international research and cooperation across the globe," Zhao said, adding that it is also the view of WHO that it is an ongoing process probably concerning many countries and localities, and WHO will conduct similar trips to other countries and regions in light of the actual need.
Zhao said that the WHO and China have maintained communication and cooperation since the start of the pandemic.
Identifying the origin of emerging viral disease has proven complex in past epidemics in different countries. A well planned series of scientific researches will advance the understanding of animal reservoirs and the route of transmission to humans. The process is an evolving endeavor which may lead to further international scientific research and collaboration globally, Zhao said.
Asian countries should be firm not to turn territorial
disputes into the overriding melody of regional development. This will
test the wisdom of regional countries.
A staff member, wearing a face mask following the Covid-19 outbreak, is
looking at a robot at the venue for the World Artificial Intelligence
Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China. Prompted by the need to contain
Covid-19, the world is now looking toward AI-based techniques to aid the
anti-pandemic fight. - Reuters
SHANGHAI, July 11 (Xinhua): Due to Covid-19, the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) 2020 in Shanghai this week adopted a hybrid model where offline exhibitions and online displays took place simultaneously to showcase the latest artificial intelligence (AI) applications and frontier development.
More than 500 AI experts and executives, including Nobel laureates and Turing Award winners, attended this year's WAIC held from Thursday to Saturday with the theme of "Intelligent Connectivity, Indivisible Community."
AI has already demonstrated its potential to transform societies, economies and industries, but this is just the beginning, according to experts at the conference. WAIC plays a critical role in bringing people together to learn from one another and identify ways of collaborating to achieve more.
AI TECHNOLOGIES FIGHT EPIDEMIC
In recent years, AI has begun to play a significant role in many sectors. Prompted by the need to contain Covid-19, people around the world are looking toward AI-based techniques to aid the anti-pandemic fight.
Companies such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, SenseTime and iFlytek have been among the first to join the fight. Data modelling, crowd screening, and tracing contacts of confirmed Covid-19 cases have been widely used to help control the spread of the coronavirus.
SenseTime, an AI-technology firm with its China headquarters and Global R&D headquarters in Shanghai that specializes in computer vision and deep learning, participated in this year's event.
During the outbreak of Covid-19, SenseTime collaborated with several hospitals and medical institutions across China to assist COVID-19 diagnoses. The company upgraded its diagnosis application, which dramatically improved the effectiveness, accuracy, and speed of the current analysis of CT scans with the help of AI algorithms.
Screening large crowds is another area where AI shows its potential, particularly in public spaces such as the metro. AI firm Megvii, another exhibitor at WAIC, launched a remote temperature measurement system in subway stations in Beijing to help screen out passengers with a high fever. Compared with manual detection, the system can examine up to 300 people in one minute without disrupting passenger flows.
Shen Xiangyang, a professor from Tsinghua University, said during the conference that AI technology could play a significant role in remote diagnoses, vaccine development, virus analysis and global coordination.
With the widespread application of AI products and technologies in the battle against the epidemic, Li Yong, director general of the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, said that the technological innovation of AI should go beyond national boundaries to avoid widening the technological gap between developed and developing countries.
AI is also changing the way of scientific research and pharmaceutical manufacture in the healthcare sector.
"Health systems face incredible challenges due to aging populations, increased patient expectations, and the growing prevalence of chronic conditions. Covid-19 has only intensified those challenges," said Pascal Soriot, executive director and CEO of AstraZeneca. "If AI is to play its full part in overcoming them, I believe we need to embrace the opportunity, collaborate, and pursue it together."
NEW ENGINE FOR ECONOMIC RECOVERY
The Covid-19 pandemic has led to rising demand for online services, which at the same time created many new scenarios for AI applications. Many experts attending the WAIC saw AI as a new engine to stimulate growth in the post-coronavirus era.
Zhu Min, chairman of the National Institute of Financial Research at Tsinghua University, was upbeat about the prospects of the AI industry. "Our lives underwent fundamental changes when we moved from offline to online activities, making teleworking, online entertainment, shopping, and conferencing part of our daily lives. This provides a broad space for AI development in the future."
China has seen a quickly evolving AI ecosystem in recent years. Many Chinese cities have stepped up efforts in building AI clusters.
Shanghai built the AIsland of the Zhangjiang Science City in the Pudong New Area, an AI cluster for both major AI players and start-ups. Covering an area of 66,000 square meters, the AIsland has attracted about 90 companies, including Microsoft and IBM.
Besides a rapidly expanding AI market, AI companies were also buoyed by a friendly policy environment. In this year's government work report, China called for support on the construction of new types of infrastructure, which is widely regarded as a positive policy signal for cutting-edge technologies such as 5G, AI, and the Internet of Things.
New infrastructure will hopefully start the trend of AI in all aspects of life in China, said Li Yanhong, CEO of Baidu, at the opening ceremony of the WAIC.
The continuous efforts in promoting the AI industry and the construction of new types of infrastructure will boost economic activities following the pandemic, experts said.
Kai-Fu Lee, chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures, was confident of the potential of the collaboration between AI and traditional industries, noting that more traditional industries ranging from manufacturing, medical care to the education sector will focus on improving efficiency in the next decade.
Right before the WAIC 2020, the Shanghai AI Tower was unveiled in the city's Xuhui District, marking another milestone of international AI cooperation.
Twenty leading global AI companies including Microsoft, Huawei, and Alibaba have clustered in the twin buildings on the waterfront along the Huangpu River.
Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma, who is also co-chair of the UN Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation, underlined cross-border collaboration and the unity of mankind during a virtual speech at the opening ceremony of the conference.
"We should take responsibility instead of being worried because the virus does not need a passport or sees no national borders. Technology should also have no borders," said Ma.
"We have no other choice, so the sooner we start to cooperate, unify, and embrace each other, the sooner we will win," he added. - XInhua
China is at the forefront of a huge revolution in AI. Already, the United States realises it is no longer the leader.
Whenever Trump (left) is put in a corner, his tactic is to blame China!
(President Xi right). The latest being his wish to distract from his
Administration’s failure to contain the disease, Covid-19.
Venture capitalists and experts Stella Ji Xin, Wei Jiang and Rebecca
Fannin discuss what’s at stake as the standoff deepens, exploring the
growing list of what could go wrong as a tech war looms.
CHINA bashing has become a bipartisan passion in the West, especially the United States.
Whenever Trump is put in a corner, his tactic is to blame China!
The latest being his wish to distract from his Administration’s failure to contain the disease, Covid-19 – such that America, despite having had months to prepare for it, now has the most Covid-19 cases and deaths in the world – far, far more than China.
Where recent pandemics – including the 2014 African Ebola outbreak – saw productive Sino-American co-operation, this one has taken the already poor relations between the United States and China to new lows. As I see it, they are likely to worsen, despite some efforts on both sides to rein in the rhetoric.
Chips war
Essentially, the conflict that matters most between the United States and China is the 21st century fight over technology– from AI (artificial intelligence) to 5G (network equipment). The real battleground is in chips or SCs (semiconductors) where US industrial leadership and China’s superpower ambitions directly clash.
Firms from the United States and their allies (including South Korea and Taiwan) dominate the most advanced areas of the industry.
China, by contrast, remains reliant on the outside world for supplies of high-end chips.
It spends more on semiconductor imports than it does on oil.
As far as I know, the list of top 12 SC firms by sales does not contain a single Chinese name. Well before Trump arrived on the scene, China made plain its intention to catch up.
Not surprisingly, China’s ambitions to create a cutting-edge industry worried Trump’s predecessor.
President Obama blocked and stymied the acquisition of chipmakers by the Chinese in 2015 and 2016. Other countries are alarmed, too.
Taiwan and South Korea have policies to stop sales of domestic chips firms and to dam flows of intellectual property. Since then, Trump has intensified the chips battle.
Three things have changed. First, the United States realised its edge in technology gives it power over China. Second, China’s incentives to become self-reliant in SCs attracted its tech giants to come on board: Alibaba, Baidu and Huawei, all ploughing money into making chips. And, China has showed that it can outcompete US firms.
China is destined to try to catch up; the United States is determined to stay ahead. Third, the SC supply chain is already too globalised for US to stop it.
Today, US has the edge over China in designing and making high-end chips. It can undoubtedly slow its rival.
But China’s progress will be hard to stop. Firms like Huawei have the proven ability to innovate; it spurred China on to develop its domestic supercomputing industry.
Zhongguancun
China’s own Silicon Valley – Zhongguancun – has come of age.
Originally a byword for cheap knockoffs in the electronics market, it has since evolved into a sweeping quadrant of north-western Beijing that includes its two leading universities, Peking and Tsinghua.
Zhongguancun is now a concept as much as a place for “self-dependent innovation of high-quality” economic development, to accelerate a shift from assembling tech products to creating them.
Surrounded by the world’s largest, fastest growing market for such goods, Zhongguancun is creating new apps, services and devices more speedily and cleverly than ever before.
Total venture-capital investment pouring into Chinese technology companies has grown rapidly, now reaching parity with the United States. New companies have ready access to capital and to refreshed flows of technically-minded graduates.
Indeed, China has long since moved beyond producing merely Chinese versions of Silicon Valley companies. The newest firms in Zhongguancun employ business models that do not exist yet in the United States.
Even in areas where Silicon Valley dominates globally (like social media), Zhongguancun can compete. But Zhongguancun’s real strength is in developing new applications and services in SCs and AI for the Chinese market, to be provided through smartphones.
Chinese digital services are often the first of their kind. The Chinese government has adopted a laissez-faire approach to such companies: “If there is no regulation, they let you run.”
To address one of Zhongguancun’s greatest weakness –a reliance on imported components and technology, firms are investing to make chips which manage charging devices wirelessly, or that fuse camera data into three-dimensional scans.
It is also investing in companies that design new materials – antibacteria ones for fabrics and mattresses, and ceramics for phones.
Zhongguancun is now set to blossom as a global, not just a regional, tech hub, to insulate China against protectionism.
The priority is to nurture its own suppliers. Chinese chip companies offer software for designing circuits, and handling licensing negotiations on behalf of its young tenants with other chip architecture firms.
The latest crop of start-ups has set their sights on foreign markets. They see the trade war not as a threat, but as an opportunity – to fill the gaps in Chinese supply chains and then compete in the West.
So far, very few Chinese tech companies have managed to go global, Huawei and Bytedance being the most prominent. And Huawei, in particular, is already under threat due to security fears in the West.
AI supremacy
China is at the forefront of a huge revolution in AI. Already, the United States realises it is no longer the leader. Today, fundamental AI innovation no longer matters, since the big intellectual breakthroughs have indeed occurred.
What matters most is effective implementation, not innovation. China has many advantages: (i) work of leading AI researchers is readily available online; (ii) its ceaseless “trial and error” approach is well suited to the effective rolling out of the fruits of AI; (iii) the dense urban settlements have created a huge demand for delivery and other services; (iv) its backwardness allowed businesses to leapfrog; (v) China has scale; (vi) there is a supportive government; and (vii) the Chinese is far more relaxed about privacy.
As I see it, China is fast catching-up in SC production. It’s already ahead in potential users, but has only about half the number of AI experts and companies.
What then are we to do
Not so long ago, all Top 10 technology companies were American.
Today, four among them are Chinese, including Huawei whose revenues amounted to less than US$28bil in 2009; they reached US$107bil in 2019. Telecoms and wireless technology are at the forefront of the competitive sparring between the United States and China.
In a world where everything is dual-use technology, it is difficult to distinguish what is commercial and civilian; what is strategic and military.
To have the technological edge is existential for both nations.
5G is a big deal, both in itself and because of its multiplier effect on a range of other technologies, including autonomous vehicles, the Internet of things, smart cities, virtual reality and, battlefields.
The first movers will set global standards. That in turn brings-in billions in revenues, substantial job creation and leadership in any other technologies that require ever swifter transmission of data.
The United States is determined that China will not dominate in 5G. The country that owns 5G will own many innovations and global standards.
As I see it, the United States will not dominate. Chinese equipment is cheaper and in many cases, superior.
No question US has lost its edge. Huawei today has become a national champion of China, mainly because of its huge investments – US$180bil over the past five years and has 10 times as many base stations as the United States.
Sanctions by US against Huawei is likely only to accelerate China’s efforts to achieve self-sufficiency.
To me, Western panic over Huawei is overblown. 5G will not yet profoundly alter consumers’ lives. True, it promises faster connections; but often only in optimal conditions. I know similar down-speeds can be achieved by extending 4G. Outside China, South Korea and a few other Asian countries, the uptake of 5G is likely to be slow.
Sure, 5G is more than just a faster way to stream. The extra processing oomph will allow base stations on networks’ “edge” to guide self-driving cars, or robots on factory floors.
5G will not just power telecoms but much of economic activity, making wireless networks into critical infrastructure.
Its wireless connectivity brings with it the next-generation Wi-Fi, constellations of low-orbit satellites and, soon 6G.
So, Chinese dominance of this wireless tapestry spooks many Western security hawks.
If Huawei is allowed to build even parts of these networks, it could wreak havoc in the event of a conflict between China and the West.
For all his China-bashing, Trump appears to have since demurred, instead heeding the concerns of America’s tech bosses, who warn that such a move can hurt their industry.
As I see it, the 5G race is not about out-innovating China but hobbling it. In the end, Trump faces a clear choice in doing something altogether very American: help usher in innovation that lets many companies thrive at a time when cheaper and better connectivity is precisely what a post-pandemic world really needs. But will he?
By Lin See Yan
The views expressed are the writer’s own.
Hong Kongers and the West have
forgotten that Hong Kong was a forced ‘concession’ territory from China
at gunpoint. The colonial history books that Hong Kongers want to
preserve portray China as corrupt, evil and oppressive, as if Britain
occupied Hong Kong for democratic purposes.
ASEAN won't be cannon fodder for US
Asia wise enough not to fall into US traps
