Taiwan / China conflict tech impact

I normally don’t write about politics. But this article in the New Yorker about the history and the potential chance of conflict between China and Taiwan was well written and had some interesting points that I was oblivious about. e.g.

• Until 1971 Taiwan actually occupied China’s permanent seat at the United Nations
• “In two weeks, Taiwan would go start to go dark” (in the event of a war). “No electricity, no phones, no Internet”
• China is the world’s largest importer of food, especially from the United States
• 70% of the world’s most advanced chips are manufactured in Taiwan (well I knew this one!).

Interesting read. And something else to be worried about!

China leads in top papers for math and computing

Hardly a day goes by when’s there not an article or two about the increasing dominance of China in technology. It’s often instructive to think about the root causes for that. One of those has to be the increasing quality of China’s researchers. The Economist has a nicely written article on the rise of the top Chinese universities – particularly Tsinghua. A few points that caught my eye:

• In 2006-2009 Tsinghua was 66th in the ranking table for maths and computing research. Now it’s at the top. That’s a fast rise. 
• Chinese universities give our bonuses to their researchers for getting a paper published in a top journal equivalent to about 20x their annual salary. Wow – that’s in incentive. 
• Tsinghua and Peking universities are neighbors modeled about Oxford and Cambridge. 

Worth a read. Emphasizes the need for long range planning and investments. 

Ecommerce in China

Nicely written report in the New Yorker this week about the growth of ecommerce in China (seen mostly through the lens of JD.com). A few things that caught my eye:

• Drones being used for real for delivery. “..for a few weeks, these landings had drawn big crowds, but that people soon had got used to them”. This is in rural China.
• Buyers of big-ticket items are five to ten years younger than their Western counterparts. “Most of them experience, and learn about, luxury brands over the phone”.
• None of the drone trainees for JD.com had driven a car. Yet, they are flying drones.

Well worth a read.