The Sunway system, which can perform about 1,000 trillion calculations per second — a petaflop — will probably rank among the 20 fastest computers in the world. More significantly, it is composed of 8,700 ShenWei SW1600 microprocessors, designed at a Chinese computer institute and manufactured in Shanghai.

Currently, the Chinese are about three generations behind the state-of-art chip making technologies used by world leaders such as the United States, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

“This is a bit of a surprise,” said Jack Dongarra, a computer scientist at the University of Tennessee and a leader of the Top500 project, a list of the world’s fastest computers.

Last fall, another Chinese-based supercomputer, the Tianhe-1A, created an international sensation when it was briefly ranked as the world’s fastest, before it was displaced in the spring by a rival Japanese machine, the K Computer, designed by Fujitsu. [Another Chinese machine, Dawning Nebulae, had briefly taken the #2 spot that summer.] But the Tianhe was built from processor chips made by American companies, Intel and Nvidia, though its internal switching system was designed by Chinese engineers. Similarly, the K computer was based on Sparc chips, originally designed at Sun Microsystems in Silicon Valley.

But the Tianhe-1A, critics say, was a mere lunge for the supercomputing crown, crunching numbers at a furious rate but to little practical purpose. “I am not saying it is utterly useless,” said one unnamed professor, providing Shanghaiist with its Quote of the Day. “It can play video games.” The machine’s value or lack of it was among the topics discussed in a recent three-part NPR series on China’s quest for a scientific renaissance (via CDT). See also the Financial Times piece from which the Tianhe quote comes, ‘Innovation: Autocratic directives fail to spark creativity‘.

© zhou shuren for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anti-dumping, China trade surge, currency, imports, renewable energy, solar power, subsidies
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One of the most feared men in the worldwide pearl industry these days is a muscular, Ferrari-driving 40-year-old who is doing the improbable: growing pearls that are nearing the highest quality and may be affordable for middle-class Americans.

The man, Zhan Weijian, runs a large company in the emerging capital of the world’s freshwater pearl farming industry, and it is far from Tahiti and other traditional saltwater pearl havens in the Pacific. Mr. Zhan works here in east-central China, where his white pearls cost a fraction of the saltwater variety.

Wholesale prices for half-inch white pearls have fallen about 30 percent in the last several years, as the influx of high-quality Chinese farmed pearls — grown in former rice fields — has the industry in turmoil.

© compco for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: China trade surge, U.S. China business competition
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On July Fourth, we think about our country and its future. But these days it’s impossible to think about America and its future role in the world without also thinking about China. This was the subject of a combative discussion this week at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

The agent provocateur was Niall Ferguson of Harvard. China and the U.S., he argued, used to have a symbiotic relationship and formed a tightly integrated unit that he calls Chimerica.

In this unit, China did the making, and the United States did the buying. China did the saving, while the U.S. did the spending. Between 1995 and 2005, the U.S. savings rate declined from about 5 percent to zero, while the Chinese savings rate rose from 30 percent to nearly 45 percent.

This savings diversion allowed the Chinese to plow huge amounts of capital into the U.S. and dollar-denominated assets. Cheap Chinese labor kept American inflation low. Chinese efforts to keep the renminbi from appreciating against the dollar kept our currency strong and allowed us to borrow at low interest rates.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: China trade surge, U.S. China business competition, US trade deficit
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China’s manufacturing expanded in June, adding to signs the world’s third-largest economy is rebounding from the collapse in global trade, but few new jobs were created, according to two surveys released Wednesday.

Brokerage CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets said its purchasing managers index rose to 51.8 from May’s 51.2 on a 100-point scale where numbers above 50 show activity expanding. The state-sanctioned China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing said its own PMI edged up slightly to 53.2 from May’s 53.1.

“This PMI indicates the economy is midway through a recovery, despite some slowdown in infrastructure momentum,” Credit Suisse economist Dong Tao said in a report.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: China trade surge, manufactures, manufacturing
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Chinese manufacturers of everything from tricycles to truck winches said Wednesday at the opening of Asia’s biggest trade fair that their orders were starting to recover from a steep plunge over the winter but that demand from Europe and particularly the United States remained anemic.

That anecdotal evidence of some uptick in trade came as a senior Chinese government economic forecaster, Fan Jianping, said the economy had grown at an annual pace of “around 6 percent” in the first quarter. That would be the slowest pace since quarterly records began in 1992, indicating that strong consumer spending and heavy government investments had failed to offset a nose dive in exports.

The figure given by Mr. Fan — the official statistic is to be released Thursday — was roughly in line with economists’ expectations. It means that the Chinese economy grew much faster over the winter than any other major world economy, although more slowly than many in China have come to expect and slower than the 6.8 percent pace in the fourth quarter.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: China trade surge, export, manufactures
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Prior to this week’s economic talks with the U.S., the Chinese government unveiled the Outline of National Intellectual Property Rights — a new strategy to tackle the many issues surrounding IPR. This new strategy will improve IPR protection in China and attract greater intellectual resources from abroad.

Moreover, the implementation of this strategy — a milestone in the institution of China’s IPR regime — will boost innovation at home and turn China’s abundant human resources into intellectual resources, with a positive and far-reaching impact on economic and social development in China.

China entered its new historical stage of reform and opening-up in 1978. It wasn’t until then that China began to introduce the concept of intellectual property rights and put in place an IPR regime. Since then, China has promulgated and enforced a host of IPR laws and regulations, including the Trademark Law, the Patent Law, the Copyright Law, the Law Against Unfair Competition, the Rules for Computer Software Protection and the Regulations on the Protection of the Right of Communication Through Information Network.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: China trade surge, trade
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China’s trade surplus soared 22.7% in January as the economy continued to boom despite efforts to cool the rate of growth, official figures have shown.

The surplus – the gap between what China exports and what it imports – grew to $22.7bn (£11.5bn) last month, compared with $15.9bn a year earlier.

China’s exports in January increased 26.7% to $109.7bn, the biggest year-on-year rise in six months.

Imports rose 27.6% to $90.2bn, the biggest increase in almost two years.

© Kate Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: China trade surge, currency, rising costs
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While beneficial to billions of people, the China trade surge has created unprecedented complexity, additional costs and potential choke points in thousands of international supply chains that touch the country, according to Brian Lutt, president of APL Logistics. Lutt recently warned delegates at the Transpacific Maritime Asia Conference in Shenzhen that these challenges will be magnified as China looks to spread wealth beyond the coast.

“Getting products to market from China quickly, reliably and cost-effectively already keeps logistics providers and their customers up at night,” said Lutt. “But the main production and consumption zones are still clustered in the east of the country. So, the challenges we face today will be multiplied many times once China’s vast hinterland is unlocked.” [Full Text]

[Image: The DP World Hong Kong terminals are busier than ever., by Les Stone by DP World.]

© Kate Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: China trade surge, supply chain
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