The academic degree committee under the State Council, China’s cabinet, has voted through a proposal to establish an integrated circuit (IC) university program, which will be designated a first-level discipline, in a move which industry observers said represents the country’s latest effort to nurture homegrown talent in the semiconductor industry amid a US-led crackdown on China’s tech rise.
The degree’s establishment will be officially announced after it is approved by the State Council.
The microelectronics and solid electronics university program, which involves semiconductor courses, is currently designated a second-class discipline.
Analysts said the establishment and first-class designation of the IC program will allow more universities to open colleges to train IC students, so as to make up for a drain in China’s talent pool. Also, IC-related subjects will have access to more resources and funding.
Tibetans perform Reba dance 热巴舞(丁青热巴) , a centuries-old Tibetan tradition to pray for good luck and harvest in Qamdo, Southwest China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. Reba dance was recognized as a national-level intangible cultural heritage of China.
Reba dance is a kind of dance performed by Tibetan “Reba” artists. Reba is a comprehensive art form featuring tambourine and incorporated with rap music, Xie (song and dance), acrobatics, Qigong (Chinese breath exercise) and Reba play. It is performed by groups of traveling artists who make a living as performers (normally, a family is the basic unit). According to historical records, Reba is founded by Milarepa, the second patriarch of the Kagyu sect of Tibet Buddhism in the 11th century. Reba is inherited from the “witchcraft” and “Totem Dance” of Bon, a Tibetan primitive religion. It enjoys long history, abundant contents, unique style, excellent skills, interesting lines and fancy mask and absorbs essences of ancient Zhangzhung Culture, religious culture and folk art. Therefore, it is a treasure among brilliant ancient culture and art of Tibetan and possesses high artistic value and research value. Reba Dance is distributed in Qamdo, Gonpo and Nagchu of Tibet and such Tibetan inhabited regions as Yunnan, Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu.
Dengqen Reba is a kind of drum dance and a comprehensive art form incorporated with rap music, song and dance, acrobatics and Qigong (Chinese breath exercise). Originated from Khyungpo Dengqen, Dengqen Reba is said to be created by Khyungpo Mila Thopaga, or Milarepa. It is said that Qamdo enjoys a tropical climate where elephants roamed. People killed the elephants and spread their skin onto the ground. They then danced on the elephant skin as a form of god worship, and from this Reba dance was born. Dengqen County can be seen as the cradle of Reba dance.
A ceremony marking the completion of the BeiDou-3 Navigation Satellite System BDS-3 was held at the Great Hall of the People. Check out a brief history of China’s global navigation system decades in the making.
China aims to make the application of the BeiDou Satellite Navigation System (BDS) the best among all other navigation systems, and be more inclusive to provide value-added services including short messaging, satellite based augmentation and international search-and-rescue services, the spokesperson of BDS and director general of China Satellite Navigation Office Ran Chengqi said Monday.
So far, BDS has been applied in industries such as transportation, public security, disaster relief, farming and urban governance, as well as being integrated into China’s key basic infrastructure construction including electricity, finance and telecom, Ran said at a press briefing Monday in Beijing.
In particular, BDS-based high-precision applications played a positive role in China’s fights against COVID-19 and the recent flooding in southern China. BDS has been applied in China-Europe freight train transportation, the construction and operation of high-speed trains between Beijing and Zhangjiakou, North China’s Hebei Province as well as civil aviation, Ran said.
“We will further promote the integration of BDS with newly emerging technologies, such as 5G, mobile communication, big data and the mobile internet, which will create new economic growth points,” Ran said.
Chinese leaders launched the full global service of the BeiDou-3 on Friday. BDS is China’s largest space-based system and one of four global navigation networks, alongside the US’ GPS, Russia’s GLONASS and the European Union’s Galileo.
BeiDou is able to tell others where the user is located, a strong advantage compared with GPS, Huang Haihui, vice president of the UniStrong Science & Technology Co, told the Global Times Monday.
This application is particularly useful in search and rescue missions that can return a feedback to the people calling for help, Huang cited the example of obtaining the location of oceangoing vessels when they are in distress.
“This is China’s own system meaning it’s independently controllable, so there is no need to worry about the navigation usage in some special areas such as national defense,” he noted.
Ran said that more than 500 types of equipment components have been made in China and the domestic production rate of the BDS-3’s key components is 100 percent.
BDS’ global positioning accuracy is better than 10 meters, with a timing accuracy better than 20 nanoseconds, and its performance in the Asia-Pacific region is even better.
Both satellite distribution and the number of BeiDou satellites gives it an advantage in accuracy, stability, reliability and usability, Huang said, adding that wider applications for BeiDou could be in precision farming and autonomous driving at port wharfs.
The output of China’s satellite navigation and location-based services industry has been growing more than 20 percent annually on average, reaching 345 billion yuan ($49.47 billion) in 2019, and is expected to exceed 400 billion yuan in 2020, Ran said.
BDS and navigation-relate shares surged on Monday, with UniStrong and BDStar Navigation gaining by the daily 10 percent limit.
After Guardian Australia submitted an application under freedom of information laws for a file thought to be titled “Timeline of coronavirus outbreak and PRC coverup”, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed it had found one document matching the request.
But Dfat decided the document was exempt from being disclosed “as its release would divulge material that was communicated in confidence by or on behalf of a foreign government or organisation” to the Australian government.
It is believed the 15-page document was authored by the US Department of State this year and distributed to officials in like-minded countries – including Australia – to spark debate about how the People’s Republic of China had handled the initial outbreak.
China’s domestically developed 20-megawatt turbo generator unit has been put into actual use for the first time. It is widely expected to be used on China’s future warships to support the advanced integrated electric propulsion (IEP) technology that would enable the use of high energy weapons, including electromagnetic railguns and lasers.
The ship-use 20-megawatt turbo generator unit, independently developed by the No. 704 Institute of state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) 中船重工704研究所 , was recently put into application.
In China, a record 8.7 million-strong college graduates, almost equal to the population of Switzerland, are finishing school and looking for jobs in the middle of the epidemic. This is the story of one of them.
All empires or great Powers in history have their day in the sun, and the United States is no exception. Considering the current situation within the United States and its loss of global dominance, especially in economic terms, it can be argued that this day seems to be drawing near.
Reality shows that the United States is experiencing a clear decline, especially in the context of the new coronavirus pandemic and the havoc it is causing around the world. However, American leaders still want to “show muscle” in front of other major powers such as China and Russia, which some analysts see as a sign of American fear and weakness.
The weakness and fear of the US elite and the external lobby that supports them can be seen in their insistence on forming alliances to contain China’s “threats” to their interests and security. So far, the conflict between China and the United States has been limited to the areas of trade, diplomacy, technology, and communications, but everything points to a direct military confrontation.
Of course, the U.S. position on China is not surprising. China’s interests are spread throughout the world, a situation that would obviously be scorned by the American elite and political management. Even during the neo-coronavirus pandemic, China was one of the few countries that still managed to sustain economic growth, while the United States experienced a significant economic decline.
China’s influence in the world is so great that, in the US “backyard” of Latin America, for example, China has seen a phenomenal increase in investment there.
Given the gloomy outlook for the United States at home and abroad, it is clear that it can no longer maintain its former hegemony. That is why the United States has advocated all sorts of threats and sanctions, even against some of its historical allies that have engaged in large-scale trade with major powers like China and Russia for economic gain.
These countries are, of course, reacting to US arrogance by gradually weaning themselves off their dependence on the dollar and gradually transferring this strategy to global trade and finance and amassing vast amounts of gold. In addition, ironically, China has managed to get some U.S. companies to invest heavily in its territory due to factors such as cheap labor.
This is why the US political elite and its external lobbying team have been calling for an international alliance to counter the Chinese “threat”. One of the illustrations of their attempts to provoke a military conflict between the United States and China is the blaming of China for the neo-coronavirus pandemic.
The possibility of military conflict is not unreasonable, since, after all, almost all wars in history have been conflicts between politico-territorial entities motivated by the need to defend their own interests or the interests of their own economic elites. Thus, the immediate confrontation is exacerbated by the desperation of the United States.
Like any declining empire, the United States had serious internal and external problems and wished to avoid the imminent collapse of the dollar, which had been the world financial benchmark, and the consequent collapse of the entire economy.
The decline of United States is certain. Time is on China’s side, China will avoid war as much as possible. Trump is desperate and will try anything.
Aerial photo taken on July 30, 2020 shows a worker checking blue bricks at a factory in Chu’an Town of Renqiu City, north China’s Hebei Province. “Blue Brick” with a long history is one of the main building materials of ancient Chinese architecture. The brick factory in Chu’an Town, which was built on the basis of an ancient brick kiln in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), develops the traditional craftsmanship and mainly produces blue bricks and other building materials for antique buildings at present.
