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There is so much hubris online about Chinese R&D. Every conversation about Chinese research papers seems to devolve into accusations of scientific fraud, as if

There is so much hubris online about Chinese R&D. Every conversation about Chinese research papers seems to devolve into accusations of scientific fraud, as if academics aren’t driven by the same incentives and companies can’t tell the difference between real and fake research. The fact is, there are some extremely talented researchers in China, and cutting them off from a specific technology is frankly too little too late. Either the US needs to cool their jingoistic jets a bit or they need to seriously consider whether direct competition is sustainable. Yes, the US has undoubtedly the best higher education system in the world now, but this is largely driven by immigration from China and India. Will this still be the case in 30 years when India and China’s economies have matured and high paying tech jobs can be found elsewhere? Right now the immigration system for technically minded immigrants makes no sense. Rather than providing a path to citizenship, the US is sending some of the most talented individuals back to their old countries, where they’ll be developing the economy of those countries rather than that of the US. It’s a terrible strategy that any country not hindered by two year election cycle myopia would rectify.

deleted 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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piva00 3y ago
> Right now the immigration system for technically minded immigrants makes no sense. Rather than providing a path to citizenship, the US is sending some of the most talented individuals back to their old countries, where they’ll be developing the economy of those countries rather than that of the US. It’s a terrible strategy that any country not hindered by two year election cycle myopia would rectify. It's terrible for the US but at least in terms of fairness to the societies who trained, and exported these minds it's pretty damn good. The US companies extract the value they need/want from these individuals, after their tenure they go back and help to develop their societies which paid for their education/training. It's fair enough, the US is a place for business, that's just business.
supermatt 3y ago
> the US has undoubtedly the best higher education system in the world I doubt that, as do the times higher education rankings on all but perceived reputation - i.e. US universities are more "famous" in that when scholars were asked to name 15 good universities, they often included US ones. Although some US universities are highly rated, and mostly in the top 10 for certain metrics and subject matter, they certainly are not "undoubtedly the best". Thats not to say they are bad, but clearly your judgement is clouded.
- qeternity 3y ago
  > as do the times higher education rankings on all but perceived reputation The rankings are literally perceived reputation. All you need to do is look at where people want to go to university. And that is overwhelmingly in the US.
  - lancewiggs 3y ago
    The rankings are made by people (employers, academics) who often went to those same universities. I suspect what's happening in China is invisible to many of them.
  - yorwba 3y ago
    If you want to find out which higher education system is the best—as opposed to the most popular—, asking people who haven't even studied there is a terrible idea. The education space is full of scams using perceived reputation to prey on students who don't know better. The US even set up a fake university without classes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Farmington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Farmington and people still signed up because they couldn't tell the difference. If you want to evaluate education quality, look at people who've gone through the system and how they're doing afterwards.
  - anonzzzies 3y ago
    Well as the US has some not forced patriotism that we (in the EU) simply don’t have, the loudest shouters will have studied in the US.
  - 3y ago
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>Will this still be the case in 30 years when India and China’s economies have matured and high paying tech jobs can be found elsewhere? Even EU can't compete with the US on funding and high tech skilled wages(except London and Switzerland which aren't in the EU), what makes you think India and China can? > where they’ll be developing the economy of those countries rather than that of the US To develop companies that can threaten the established US ones you need more than educated capable brains, you need massive amounts of VC funding, which even the EU doesn't hand out, let alone see India and China match not only enough money to catch up with the US, but also to overtake it. Returning Indian and Chinese engineers and scientists means nothing if there isn't tens of billions waiting for them in funding when they get home.
- xvilka 3y ago
  China salaries are surprisingly high for skilled specialists (IT, robotics, biotech, etc), if you factor in cost of living and taxes, they would be higher than EU ones even now.
  - reacharavindh 3y ago
    As an Indian techie who moved away in 2011 and still living in the West(US & EU), I was recently shocked by this revelation. A fellow Indian engineer who moved to Amsterdam recently scoffed about the economic state of affairs here, and said he was able to save so much more while living similar lifestyle back in India. I blindly asked “how could it possibly be?!, with Indian salaries..” and we got down to details. Boy was he right. The purchase power of an Indian techie is so much more than one even in Amsterdam. Although he, and I chose to move and live in Netherlands for many reasons(cleaner air, cleaner/saner/safer/more equal society, etc.), the case still holds true purely by numbers that a techie working in tier-1 companies in India earns more(after expenses and taxes) than the same metric in EU. As like most things in life, to each their own. But, I was surprised to learn of this shift in balance.
    - saiya-jin 3y ago
      The biggest shock my indian colleagues percieved when coming for few weeks into Europe - wow, you guys dont have home slaves err maids that you pay like half a dollar a day and abuse err 'employ' to no end? You actually clean your home, do the dirty parts of raising kids, do errands? Why are you living so poor? Their star-struck eyes about Switzerland very quickly sobered up, life aint a Bollywood movie. I've spent 6 months backpacking all over india, seeing all the dirty underbelly some decade and half ago, interacting mostly with poor and poorer. Life-changing, extremely intense, beautiful and harsh experience. Those indians getting to the west are mostly from those top layers like brahmins, not your usual poor hard working common indians - 'american dream' is hard to achieve anywhere, but is nigh impossible there, regardless of talents and hard work put in. Everybody knows it, and profit from it as much as they can. Young brahmin couple telling me its fine that 5 year old kids work in fireworks factories instead of going to school, at least they bring some money home. Small kids with various medical situations begging on streets. Some sights and their utter unfairness still haunt me to this day. I know damn well how extremely, ridiculously unfair indian society is, to the core, for millenias. Upper castes dont give a nanofraction of a fuck about poorer people, their suffering. Yes, you can live there like a king on IT salary, maybe not in central Bangalore or Pune, but India is bigger than Europe in more than 1 way. Yet once you stop being poor, money is of little concern. Things like clean air, water and nature, safety, not having 50 C during summer, free good healthcare if not in US, free good education or social services are things we often take for granted, so do the immigrants over time. Life with some poor immitation of that is not that great, and it doesnt matter how high are the walls you build around yourself to shield yourself from the crap behind them, it simply ain't a great life. So, comparing how much one earns, or saves is largely meaningless in longer scale. You decide which system overall you want to live in and often raise your kids, the rest are details.
senttoschool 3y ago
I find it funny how US nationalists keep bringing up that China can't innovate and can only steal/copy. Have they looked inside a tech company office before? Have they seen how many Chinese immigrants/second generation Chinese Americans power high-tech US tech companies? Do they think that only the Chinese people in the US can innovate? And that once they're in China, they lose that ability? Or have they read a science paper recently? China's universities dominate the Nature Index for high quality science output: https://www.nature.com/nature-index/annual-tables/2023/institution/all/all/global https://www.nature.com/nature-index/annual-tables/2023/insti... Heck, just read any science paper from top US universities. There's a good chance that one or more Chinese names are on it.
- derekja 3y ago
  I had always read that (perhaps over-hopefully) as referring to the structural incentives of the Chinese economic system not leading to innovation rather than a racist statement that Asians can't innovate. Neither statement seems completely accurate but the former is considerably less offensive.
- zpeti 3y ago
  > Have they seen how many Chinese immigrants/second generation Chinese Americans power high-tech US tech companies? But this is the whole point. They might be Chinese immigrants but they are adding value to US companies. Your later point on top US university papers - same thing. The US has been doing this for 200 years. So many ambitious and talented people migrate there, because their home countries don’t allow them to succeed for all kinds of reasons. In the broad scheme of things, it doesn’t matter if they are immigrants or not, they are boosting the US economy. Just like how almost no scientists working on the atomic bomb with oppenheimer were from the US, and they didn’t build nuclear bombs for European countries…
- est 3y ago
  > And that once they're in China, they lose that ability? They partially do. The communism power structure is always a debuff. Loyality > Skills.
fabian2k 3y ago
The scientific fraud doesn't mean the scientists are bad. It means the incentives for scientists in China are much more misaligned than in many western countries. My understanding is that the number of publications plays a much stricter and more formal role in China, which in the end means you get the output you measure. So you get more papers because that's the main thing that counts. This doesn't say anything about how much good science is underneath all this.
- yogthos 3y ago
  What evidence is there for the notion that the incentives in China are more misaligned than in western countries? Seeing the rapid technological progress China has achieved in a very short time seems to suggest the opposite.
- est 3y ago
  > The scientific fraud doesn't mean the scientists are bad. Scientific fraud means only one thing: R&D are getting excessively funded there.
rich_sasha 3y ago
I suspect all absolutist attitudes are wrong. Will China be devastated by sanctions? Clearly not. Affected? Yes. Are they able to develop a competitive industry? Surely yes. Easily surpass US? Surely not.
- pokepim 3y ago
  [dead]
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  Easily not. But the US has issues. We just have to see, in 1000 years, who manages better. This decade staring is boring. You cannot move mountains in decades.
  - rich_sasha 3y ago
    I think that's the right perspective. And in fact, as many a strategy game buff knows, it is rarely a single move or "feature". Even chip industry doesn't exist in a vacuum, it needs trained employees, good management, good regulation... It is all about who can build and maintain a more productive ecosystem, at the end of which is the output of high quality chips.
  - csomar 3y ago
    > You cannot move mountains in decades. Didn't China just do that in the last few decades? 1000 years is just too long in this age. I'd be looking for the next 10 years.
drcongo 3y ago
"let the market decide"
nova22033 3y ago
Either the US needs to cool their jingoistic jets Right...Famously non-jingoistic China isn't a problem..
- est 3y ago
  China isn't a problem, losing profit is.
roenxi 3y ago
Hubris is the right word. There are two things here I think are worth noting: 1) The US just challenged the world's leading manufacturing power to manufacture new things. That plan is not going to work. They're up against a culture that builds, builds smart and builds quickly. 2) There is actual racism in the US that is tipping the research scales towards China [0]. Between that and the concerning trends in political destabilisation the states are relying on China making a lot of mistakes as a nation if they intend to keep ahead. The whole US model was importing the bright sparks from other cultures and supporting them with freedom and strong property rights. [0] https://news.stanford.edu/2021/11/18/stanford-community-members-decry-racial-profiling-chinese-scientists/ https://news.stanford.edu/2021/11/18/stanford-community-memb... - just one in a disturbing number of articles I've been seeing.
- another_story 3y ago
  What does racism have to do with something that is so obviously an economic based power struggle? Preventing Chinese researchers is not racist. There seems to be no problems allowing any other Asians in. It's a uniquely China issue, and for good reason given the extent of the IP theft and threats against US interests.
- zbrozek 3y ago
  I assume you mean intellectual property rights, not physical property rights?
  - roenxi 3y ago
    No, I mean physical. China's lack of IP protections is one of the reasons they have managed to overtake the US in a few areas. Empowering people to block progress has never been a great plan for driving progress. Silicon Valley only holds together as an innovation engine because Stallman figured out how to hack copyright in a way that promotes a free-for-all. China is not a safe place to own things. Compare Elon Musk to Jack Ma. Both annoy the powers that be. One gets the call-him-a-nazi treatment from time to time and the other disappeared for a bit then fled to Japan. If Ma had built up his asset base in the US, he'd have been a lot better off.
yogthos 3y ago
China has actually passed US both in quantity and quality of research now. Vast majority of Chinese students who study in the west end up coming back to China, and some end up teaching at top Chinese universities. Many scientists are leaving the US for China as well now. Chinese education system also has the advantage of being far more accessible, and China has a much bigger population than US. There is absolutely no way for US to compete against a bigger and better educated population in China in terms of R&D. https://physicsworld.com/a/china-overtakes-the-us-in-terms-of-research-quality-finds-study/ https://physicsworld.com/a/china-overtakes-the-us-in-terms-o... https://english.news.cn/20220920/38d7b612ced14c5a9aa37216c721051a/c.html https://english.news.cn/20220920/38d7b612ced14c5a9aa37216c72... https://www.cato.org/blog/abandoning-us-more-scientists-go-china https://www.cato.org/blog/abandoning-us-more-scientists-go-c...
- coughupalung 3y ago
  From my experience, I don't think this is true (at least not in the way that matters). I finished my PhD in CS as few years ago from a good school and I am now a researcher in industry. In my time in grad school and industry, I have only seen one of the many Chinese nationals I met during my studies return to China. The Chinese researchers and interns I work with have no desire to return to China. The interns express concerns about job opportunities and quality of life if they were to return to China after finishing graduate school. I have never met any non-Chinese researchers who expressed interest in working in China either in industry or academia. Obviously this is anecdotal so take from that what you will. The computer graphics and machine learning communities in academia and industry are small (even with the ML/AI explosion), if this was happening in any significant amount it would be difficult to miss it. As for research output, I think there are definitely more top-tier papers from Chinese universities than in the past. It still seems like there are more Chinese surnames from Europe and NORAM universities than from Chinese ones. The big names in the field are still in European and NORAM universities. I wonder how these are articles you linked are counting numbers. It's hard to understand how something like this could be happening completely under the radar.
  - yogthos 3y ago
cjbenedikt 3y ago
"the US has undoubtedly the best higher education system in the world now"...Are you sure about that? It is almost impossible to find undergraduate education for electrochemistry, for example https://www.acs.org/education/students/highschool/collegeplanning/earningachemistrydegree.html https://www.acs.org/education/students/highschool/collegepla... Hence applicants for PhD level education come from all over the world just not the US. Elecgtrochemistry is the backbone for battery, fuel cell or electrolyzer development. For companies, startups in particular, this becomes a challenge when you need to hire qualified team members, you invest in them and after two or three years they have to leave the country and you start from scratch. In the UK if your team member works on an employer (!) sponsored visa for 5 years s/he becomes a UK resident.
tooltalk 3y ago
a few points: 1. this speaks nothing to China's R&D. 2. SMIC's 7nm was developed in 2020, largely made possible by former TSMC engineers, like Mong Sang Liang, former head of TSMC's R&D, and now co-CEO of SMIC. China already had all the tools and lithos required for 7/5nm at this point. 3. main challenge was not of "if," but how fast they would improve efficiency, cost-effectiveness and yield rates at scale without ASML's EUVs. 4. most key executives at TSMC hold advanced graduate degrees from US universities and were trained at various US tech companies before returning to Taiwan (eg, Morris Chang, C. C. Wei). And they still send their kids to US universities. 5. US sanction was too little, too late. the most cutting edge 3nm would be difficult without EUV's, but Mong Sang Liang stated that 5nm was almost complete back in 2020.
- sandGorgon 3y ago
  did they build their own litho machines ? Breaking ASML monopoly here ?
  - tooltalk 3y ago
    see #1. China doesn't really have their supply-chain of their own. SMIC's 7nm in particular runs on ASML DUV's. China's most advanced litho maker is SMEE. It was reported that their most cutting-edge node 28nm would be mass-produced this year, but don't hold your breath -- they've been saying it for at least a couple of years now.
  - tooltalk 3y ago
    SMIC's 7/5nm use ASML's Twinscan NXT:2000i deep ultraviolet DUV. According to SCMP, SMIC can import them until 2024 as the new restriction in the Netherland/Japan doesn't kick in until then.
    - rfoo 3y ago
      Rumor says it uses 1980Di.
_8j50 3y ago
Will immigration to China or India for education be as pleasant and rewarding as with the US? Especially with internships at local companies and industry interaction,etc... is needed? Also, US tech companies would need to collapse basically, else the demand for talent will finance/incentivize continued quality of US higher education (as will china fears and national security concerns). I don't think many people care if education focused migrants to the US decreased, so long as that need for workers is still met some other way.

deleted 3y ago

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deleted 3y ago

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piva00 3y ago

> Right now the immigration system for technically minded immigrants makes no sense. Rather than providing a path to citizenship, the US is sending some of the most talented individuals back to their old countries, where they’ll be developing the economy of those countries rather than that of the US. It’s a terrible strategy that any country not hindered by two year election cycle myopia would rectify. It's terrible for the US but at least in terms of fairness to the societies who trained, and exported these minds it's pretty damn good. The US companies extract the value they need/want from these individuals, after their tenure they go back and help to develop their societies which paid for their education/training. It's fair enough, the US is a place for business, that's just business.

supermatt 3y ago

> the US has undoubtedly the best higher education system in the world I doubt that, as do the times higher education rankings on all but perceived reputation - i.e. US universities are more "famous" in that when scholars were asked to name 15 good universities, they often included US ones. Although some US universities are highly rated, and mostly in the top 10 for certain metrics and subject matter, they certainly are not "undoubtedly the best". Thats not to say they are bad, but clearly your judgement is clouded.

qeternity 3y ago
> as do the times higher education rankings on all but perceived reputation The rankings are literally perceived reputation. All you need to do is look at where people want to go to university. And that is overwhelmingly in the US.
- lancewiggs 3y ago
  The rankings are made by people (employers, academics) who often went to those same universities. I suspect what's happening in China is invisible to many of them.
- yorwba 3y ago
  If you want to find out which higher education system is the best—as opposed to the most popular—, asking people who haven't even studied there is a terrible idea. The education space is full of scams using perceived reputation to prey on students who don't know better. The US even set up a fake university without classes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Farmington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Farmington and people still signed up because they couldn't tell the difference. If you want to evaluate education quality, look at people who've gone through the system and how they're doing afterwards.
- anonzzzies 3y ago
  Well as the US has some not forced patriotism that we (in the EU) simply don’t have, the loudest shouters will have studied in the US.
- 3y ago

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

>Will this still be the case in 30 years when India and China’s economies have matured and high paying tech jobs can be found elsewhere? Even EU can't compete with the US on funding and high tech skilled wages(except London and Switzerland which aren't in the EU), what makes you think India and China can? > where they’ll be developing the economy of those countries rather than that of the US To develop companies that can threaten the established US ones you need more than educated capable brains, you need massive amounts of VC funding, which even the EU doesn't hand out, let alone see India and China match not only enough money to catch up with the US, but also to overtake it. Returning Indian and Chinese engineers and scientists means nothing if there isn't tens of billions waiting for them in funding when they get home.

xvilka 3y ago
China salaries are surprisingly high for skilled specialists (IT, robotics, biotech, etc), if you factor in cost of living and taxes, they would be higher than EU ones even now.
- reacharavindh 3y ago
  As an Indian techie who moved away in 2011 and still living in the West(US & EU), I was recently shocked by this revelation. A fellow Indian engineer who moved to Amsterdam recently scoffed about the economic state of affairs here, and said he was able to save so much more while living similar lifestyle back in India. I blindly asked “how could it possibly be?!, with Indian salaries..” and we got down to details. Boy was he right. The purchase power of an Indian techie is so much more than one even in Amsterdam. Although he, and I chose to move and live in Netherlands for many reasons(cleaner air, cleaner/saner/safer/more equal society, etc.), the case still holds true purely by numbers that a techie working in tier-1 companies in India earns more(after expenses and taxes) than the same metric in EU. As like most things in life, to each their own. But, I was surprised to learn of this shift in balance.
  - saiya-jin 3y ago
    The biggest shock my indian colleagues percieved when coming for few weeks into Europe - wow, you guys dont have home slaves err maids that you pay like half a dollar a day and abuse err 'employ' to no end? You actually clean your home, do the dirty parts of raising kids, do errands? Why are you living so poor? Their star-struck eyes about Switzerland very quickly sobered up, life aint a Bollywood movie. I've spent 6 months backpacking all over india, seeing all the dirty underbelly some decade and half ago, interacting mostly with poor and poorer. Life-changing, extremely intense, beautiful and harsh experience. Those indians getting to the west are mostly from those top layers like brahmins, not your usual poor hard working common indians - 'american dream' is hard to achieve anywhere, but is nigh impossible there, regardless of talents and hard work put in. Everybody knows it, and profit from it as much as they can. Young brahmin couple telling me its fine that 5 year old kids work in fireworks factories instead of going to school, at least they bring some money home. Small kids with various medical situations begging on streets. Some sights and their utter unfairness still haunt me to this day. I know damn well how extremely, ridiculously unfair indian society is, to the core, for millenias. Upper castes dont give a nanofraction of a fuck about poorer people, their suffering. Yes, you can live there like a king on IT salary, maybe not in central Bangalore or Pune, but India is bigger than Europe in more than 1 way. Yet once you stop being poor, money is of little concern. Things like clean air, water and nature, safety, not having 50 C during summer, free good healthcare if not in US, free good education or social services are things we often take for granted, so do the immigrants over time. Life with some poor immitation of that is not that great, and it doesnt matter how high are the walls you build around yourself to shield yourself from the crap behind them, it simply ain't a great life. So, comparing how much one earns, or saves is largely meaningless in longer scale. You decide which system overall you want to live in and often raise your kids, the rest are details.

senttoschool 3y ago

I find it funny how US nationalists keep bringing up that China can't innovate and can only steal/copy. Have they looked inside a tech company office before? Have they seen how many Chinese immigrants/second generation Chinese Americans power high-tech US tech companies? Do they think that only the Chinese people in the US can innovate? And that once they're in China, they lose that ability? Or have they read a science paper recently? China's universities dominate the Nature Index for high quality science output: https://www.nature.com/nature-index/annual-tables/2023/institution/all/all/global https://www.nature.com/nature-index/annual-tables/2023/insti... Heck, just read any science paper from top US universities. There's a good chance that one or more Chinese names are on it.

derekja 3y ago
I had always read that (perhaps over-hopefully) as referring to the structural incentives of the Chinese economic system not leading to innovation rather than a racist statement that Asians can't innovate. Neither statement seems completely accurate but the former is considerably less offensive.
zpeti 3y ago
> Have they seen how many Chinese immigrants/second generation Chinese Americans power high-tech US tech companies? But this is the whole point. They might be Chinese immigrants but they are adding value to US companies. Your later point on top US university papers - same thing. The US has been doing this for 200 years. So many ambitious and talented people migrate there, because their home countries don’t allow them to succeed for all kinds of reasons. In the broad scheme of things, it doesn’t matter if they are immigrants or not, they are boosting the US economy. Just like how almost no scientists working on the atomic bomb with oppenheimer were from the US, and they didn’t build nuclear bombs for European countries…
est 3y ago
> And that once they're in China, they lose that ability? They partially do. The communism power structure is always a debuff. Loyality > Skills.

fabian2k 3y ago

The scientific fraud doesn't mean the scientists are bad. It means the incentives for scientists in China are much more misaligned than in many western countries. My understanding is that the number of publications plays a much stricter and more formal role in China, which in the end means you get the output you measure. So you get more papers because that's the main thing that counts. This doesn't say anything about how much good science is underneath all this.

yogthos 3y ago
What evidence is there for the notion that the incentives in China are more misaligned than in western countries? Seeing the rapid technological progress China has achieved in a very short time seems to suggest the opposite.
est 3y ago
> The scientific fraud doesn't mean the scientists are bad. Scientific fraud means only one thing: R&D are getting excessively funded there.

rich_sasha 3y ago

I suspect all absolutist attitudes are wrong. Will China be devastated by sanctions? Clearly not. Affected? Yes. Are they able to develop a competitive industry? Surely yes. Easily surpass US? Surely not.

pokepim 3y ago
[dead]
anonzzzies 3y ago
Easily not. But the US has issues. We just have to see, in 1000 years, who manages better. This decade staring is boring. You cannot move mountains in decades.
- rich_sasha 3y ago
  I think that's the right perspective. And in fact, as many a strategy game buff knows, it is rarely a single move or "feature". Even chip industry doesn't exist in a vacuum, it needs trained employees, good management, good regulation... It is all about who can build and maintain a more productive ecosystem, at the end of which is the output of high quality chips.
- csomar 3y ago
  > You cannot move mountains in decades. Didn't China just do that in the last few decades? 1000 years is just too long in this age. I'd be looking for the next 10 years.

drcongo 3y ago

"let the market decide"

nova22033 3y ago

Either the US needs to cool their jingoistic jets Right...Famously non-jingoistic China isn't a problem..

est 3y ago
China isn't a problem, losing profit is.

roenxi 3y ago

Hubris is the right word. There are two things here I think are worth noting: 1) The US just challenged the world's leading manufacturing power to manufacture new things. That plan is not going to work. They're up against a culture that builds, builds smart and builds quickly. 2) There is actual racism in the US that is tipping the research scales towards China [0]. Between that and the concerning trends in political destabilisation the states are relying on China making a lot of mistakes as a nation if they intend to keep ahead. The whole US model was importing the bright sparks from other cultures and supporting them with freedom and strong property rights. [0] https://news.stanford.edu/2021/11/18/stanford-community-members-decry-racial-profiling-chinese-scientists/ https://news.stanford.edu/2021/11/18/stanford-community-memb... - just one in a disturbing number of articles I've been seeing.

another_story 3y ago
What does racism have to do with something that is so obviously an economic based power struggle? Preventing Chinese researchers is not racist. There seems to be no problems allowing any other Asians in. It's a uniquely China issue, and for good reason given the extent of the IP theft and threats against US interests.
zbrozek 3y ago
I assume you mean intellectual property rights, not physical property rights?
- roenxi 3y ago
  No, I mean physical. China's lack of IP protections is one of the reasons they have managed to overtake the US in a few areas. Empowering people to block progress has never been a great plan for driving progress. Silicon Valley only holds together as an innovation engine because Stallman figured out how to hack copyright in a way that promotes a free-for-all. China is not a safe place to own things. Compare Elon Musk to Jack Ma. Both annoy the powers that be. One gets the call-him-a-nazi treatment from time to time and the other disappeared for a bit then fled to Japan. If Ma had built up his asset base in the US, he'd have been a lot better off.

yogthos 3y ago

China has actually passed US both in quantity and quality of research now. Vast majority of Chinese students who study in the west end up coming back to China, and some end up teaching at top Chinese universities. Many scientists are leaving the US for China as well now. Chinese education system also has the advantage of being far more accessible, and China has a much bigger population than US. There is absolutely no way for US to compete against a bigger and better educated population in China in terms of R&D. https://physicsworld.com/a/china-overtakes-the-us-in-terms-of-research-quality-finds-study/ https://physicsworld.com/a/china-overtakes-the-us-in-terms-o... https://english.news.cn/20220920/38d7b612ced14c5a9aa37216c721051a/c.html https://english.news.cn/20220920/38d7b612ced14c5a9aa37216c72... https://www.cato.org/blog/abandoning-us-more-scientists-go-china https://www.cato.org/blog/abandoning-us-more-scientists-go-c...

coughupalung 3y ago
From my experience, I don't think this is true (at least not in the way that matters). I finished my PhD in CS as few years ago from a good school and I am now a researcher in industry. In my time in grad school and industry, I have only seen one of the many Chinese nationals I met during my studies return to China. The Chinese researchers and interns I work with have no desire to return to China. The interns express concerns about job opportunities and quality of life if they were to return to China after finishing graduate school. I have never met any non-Chinese researchers who expressed interest in working in China either in industry or academia. Obviously this is anecdotal so take from that what you will. The computer graphics and machine learning communities in academia and industry are small (even with the ML/AI explosion), if this was happening in any significant amount it would be difficult to miss it. As for research output, I think there are definitely more top-tier papers from Chinese universities than in the past. It still seems like there are more Chinese surnames from Europe and NORAM universities than from Chinese ones. The big names in the field are still in European and NORAM universities. I wonder how these are articles you linked are counting numbers. It's hard to understand how something like this could be happening completely under the radar.
- yogthos 3y ago

cjbenedikt 3y ago

"the US has undoubtedly the best higher education system in the world now"...Are you sure about that? It is almost impossible to find undergraduate education for electrochemistry, for example https://www.acs.org/education/students/highschool/collegeplanning/earningachemistrydegree.html https://www.acs.org/education/students/highschool/collegepla... Hence applicants for PhD level education come from all over the world just not the US. Elecgtrochemistry is the backbone for battery, fuel cell or electrolyzer development. For companies, startups in particular, this becomes a challenge when you need to hire qualified team members, you invest in them and after two or three years they have to leave the country and you start from scratch. In the UK if your team member works on an employer (!) sponsored visa for 5 years s/he becomes a UK resident.

tooltalk 3y ago

a few points: 1. this speaks nothing to China's R&D. 2. SMIC's 7nm was developed in 2020, largely made possible by former TSMC engineers, like Mong Sang Liang, former head of TSMC's R&D, and now co-CEO of SMIC. China already had all the tools and lithos required for 7/5nm at this point. 3. main challenge was not of "if," but how fast they would improve efficiency, cost-effectiveness and yield rates at scale without ASML's EUVs. 4. most key executives at TSMC hold advanced graduate degrees from US universities and were trained at various US tech companies before returning to Taiwan (eg, Morris Chang, C. C. Wei). And they still send their kids to US universities. 5. US sanction was too little, too late. the most cutting edge 3nm would be difficult without EUV's, but Mong Sang Liang stated that 5nm was almost complete back in 2020.

sandGorgon 3y ago
did they build their own litho machines ? Breaking ASML monopoly here ?
- tooltalk 3y ago
  see #1. China doesn't really have their supply-chain of their own. SMIC's 7nm in particular runs on ASML DUV's. China's most advanced litho maker is SMEE. It was reported that their most cutting-edge node 28nm would be mass-produced this year, but don't hold your breath -- they've been saying it for at least a couple of years now.
- tooltalk 3y ago
  SMIC's 7/5nm use ASML's Twinscan NXT:2000i deep ultraviolet DUV. According to SCMP, SMIC can import them until 2024 as the new restriction in the Netherland/Japan doesn't kick in until then.
  - rfoo 3y ago
    Rumor says it uses 1980Di.

_8j50 3y ago

Will immigration to China or India for education be as pleasant and rewarding as with the US? Especially with internships at local companies and industry interaction,etc... is needed? Also, US tech companies would need to collapse basically, else the demand for talent will finance/incentivize continued quality of US higher education (as will china fears and national security concerns). I don't think many people care if education focused migrants to the US decreased, so long as that need for workers is still met some other way.