I read The dragon’s DNA in The Economist last night before sleep, and after waking up, I read a piece in the May Smithsonian about how one born-again man used a minority Christian fundamentalist movement to bring about Prohibition. If the nation’s voters had been given a choice at the polls, Prohibition would have failed.
Because I read the two pieces close together, I made a connection. The Economist piece is about a company in China, BGI (Beijing Genomics Institute) and is about China soon dominating DNA research. BGI is about to have more DNA-sequencing capacity than the United States possibly making China the leader in this field.
Meanwhile, in the US, research in genetics is hampered by minority groups similar to the one the Smithsonian talks about in The Man Who Turned Off The Taps. Wayne B. Wheeler, who’s responsible for bringing about prohibition touched every American life, and he did this by using political blackmail—something organized, born-again Christians and the Tea Bag people are doing today.
It is obvious that political minority dictatorships in the US send jobs to China. Instead of China, the US could be the leader in genetic research. Allowing minorities to use political blackmail to achieve political and religious agendas is wrong. No wonder the Chinese have kicked religions out of China every few centuries and killed those who didn’t leave fast enough.
Lloyd Lofthouse,
Award winning author of Hart’s concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
China is not standing still or playing by Western rules, which are designed to let the West win. Instead, China is moving forward claiming solar power, wind power, high-speed rail, future footprints on the moon and a host of other titles. Soon, China may be adding the supercomputing record to that list.
The New York Times reported that a Chinese supercomputer was recently ranked as the world’s second fastest machine. China is serious with science. To make this happen, China is graduating more top rated scientists, technicians and engineers than America.
Cray Jaguar Supercomputer
Although the world’s fastest computer is the Cray Jaguar supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, China may soon take that title as well. China has a microprocessor that has been designed and manufactured in China and should be out near the end of 2010. A number of experts in the field say this new Chinese microprocessor may be the machine that will claim the title of the world’s fastest computer.
In fact, China is no stranger to innovations. Centuries ago, China invented the printing press, paper, the compass, the crossbow, gunpowder and the multi-stage rocket.
Soon after the Copenhagen Climate Conference, China announced to the world that they would cut Greenhouse gases by 40%. I read at AutoBlogGreen, that one step to achieve that pledge has already been put in place—China is offering a $7,300 (in US dollars—the exchange rate today was 6.8279 yuan for each dollar) rebate for Chinese who buy plug in hybrids and $8,800 (US) for a fully-electric vehicle.
One such car is the BYD F6DM, a plug-in hybrid. Top speed should be 100 mph (160 kph, speed should be 100 mph (160 kph), with a range of 62 miles (100 km) in all-electric mode and 267 miles (430 km) total after the gas engine kicks in. A fully electric version called the F6E is planned for 2009. […] the lithium iron phosphate battery is said to be safer, less expensive, without heavy metals, completely recyclable and should be rechargeable to 70% in 10-minute at special charging stations. It can also be recharged more slowly with a home charging station, of course.” To learn more visit Tree Hugger.com
A recent survey shows that nearly 5-6 times more Chinese residents would consider buying an electric car or plug-in hybrid than citizen in the U.S., Germany, Japan and the UK… In the U.S. less than 1 in 4 (depending on who you ask) would consider buying an electric car right now. Source: gas2.0
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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In 1610, Galileo published Sidereus Nuncius, the Starry Messenger, about discoveries he made with his new telescope. He was attacked for his theory because it seemed to contradict Scripture. Because of this, in 1633, Galileo was tried and convicted of heresy.
Fifteen hundred years prior to Galileo’s discovery that the earth was round and orbited the sun, there is evidence that Chinese mathematicians had calculated the size of the earth on the basis that it must have been spherical (round). However, similar to Galileo, the Chinese people would continue to believe the earth was flat for centuries. It is possible that when Qin Shi Huangdi (259 – 210 BC), China’s first emperor, had the great book burning, he burned the evidence of earlier Chinese mathematical texts.
Chinese astronomer
In addition, older Chinese creation myths included details that accounted for the tilt of the earth and other astronomical facts. Several existing, ancient Chinese applied mathematics texts prove the Chinese were the first to use some of the most basic and advanced mathematical principles and concepts utilized in modern times. Two of these texts are the Chou Pei and Chiu Chang.
Learn more about China’s first Emperor Qin Shi Haungdi by reading and watching this nine part series on his life.
This Blog explored (with Tom Carter’s guest post) how Harlequin Romance Invaded China without mentioning that romance literature in China has a history reaching back before the Dream of the Red Chamber (1715-1763), which has a tragic Romeo and Juliet love story between its covers.
As a child, I read many historical texts on Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, the Napoleonic Wars, the British Empire, and historical fiction on similar subjects.
Then as an adolescent in middle and then high school I devoured science fiction and fantasy novels often one or two a day.
Today, I mostly read mysteries and literature but find my science fiction fantasy fix from film productions such as The Lord of the Rings, TV’s Stargate and Star Trek franchises in addition to George Lucas‘s Star Wars Saga.
Recently, I’ve been watching the complete series of Earth 2 while reading mysteries and thrillers.
In fact, the future we live with today was predicted in the early pages of Western science-fiction literature and China has noticed that science fiction literature often predicts and precedes scientific innovations such as laptop computers, the Internet, the Amazon Kindle and even doors that open automatically.
The British Telegraph’s HG Wells on Google: which of his predictions came true? reminds us that H. G. Wells first mentioned genetic engineering in The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), lasers in The War of the Worlds (1898), the first moon landing in The First Men in the Moon (1901), nuclear power and weapons in the World Set Free (1914), and the Second World War in The Shape of Things to Come (1933).
Blog Tutor says, “At the time of their writing, these science fiction ideas often seemed impossible to fantastic to ever come true—and yet today’s technology seems to keep pace with the dreams of writers past.
“Although Cyberspace hasn’t quite reached the level of technology William Gibson predicted in 1986’s Burning Chrome, no one can deny that the Internet’s alternative worlds … are working towards the virtual…”
With that introduction, it may not come as a surprise that science fiction fits with China’s goals to catch up with and possibly surpass the West and reclaim its heritage and history of being the most powerful and technological advanced country and culture on the planet as it was for more than two thousand years before the 19th century and the Opium Wars.
In fact, we learn from The Race is On that “China’s Government actively encourages its citizens to read Science Fiction… Mark Charan Newton calls this the “Cult of Science Fiction – that is, the faith in dreaming up Big Ideas… So perhaps the Chinese are onto something with their focus on science fiction: a genre that weds the scientific to the artistic.”
The history of science fiction in China predates the CCP’s encouragement today, and that interest started in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — a cultural phenomenon that emerged from Western Europe’s Industrial Revolution. One site I visited while researching this topic even dated science fiction to ancient China.
In Sci-fi books? China’s got tons of those, Asia Obscura.com says, “When it comes to sci-fi movies, China’s really falling behind. One that really did impress me, though, was the very first to be produced in China: 1980′s gorgeous, fun, and campy ‘Death Ray on Coral Island’ (珊瑚岛上的死光).
“In ‘Death Ray,’ a good-hearted team of Chinese scientists, based in what appears to be San Francisco, finally succeed in completing their fabulous futuristic invention. That is, until the sinister back-stabbing Americans, played with Bond-villainous glee by Chinese actors in whiteface and prosthetic noses, decide to steal the invention for their evil plots…”, which reveals another perspective of the US.
Then Foreign Policy.com introduces us to The Prosperous Time: China 2013, written by 58-year-old Hong Kong novelist Chen Guanzhong, who has lived and worked in Beijing for much of his life.
“China 2013 presents an ambivalent vision of China’s near future: outwardly triumphant (a Chinese company has even bought out Starbucks), and yet tightly controlled”, which may be a prediction that China’s one party republic is here to stay.
Even after 1949 with the founding of the People’s Republic of China, science fiction literature continued to flourish. During this period, the genre adopted a popular science approach and directed the majority of its stories towards younger readers.
However, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), science fiction stagnated and then revived after March 1978 when the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council convened a national scientific congress in Beijing, proclaiming to China, “Science’s spring has come.”
Scientific enthusiasm and popular science followed, greatly promoting the development of science fiction in China.
From China.org we learn, “The monthly circulation of Science Fiction World, one of China’s most popular magazines, has exceeded 500,000, dwarfing all international counterparts. Yang Xiao, head of the magazine’s editorial board, said 70 percent of its readers were students who shared single copies of the journal between dozens of friends because they could not afford their own. Millions of Chinese young people were affected by science fiction, said Yang, who hailed the rise of the modernist genre among the people who would decide the nation’s future.”
Another sign of the progress of science fiction literature in China first took place August 25, 2007 at the Chengdu International SF/F Conference. Over two days, authors from America, Canada, Britain, Russia, Japan, and China, and over twenty-thousand science fiction fans arrived in Chengdu for the event, which in turn increased the influence of SF in China due to media coverage.
Then from Chinese Science Fiction.org, we discover the second Chengdu Science Fiction and Fantasy conference was held November 12, 2011 in Chengdu.
Meanwhile, China continues with plans to build a space station, and then a productive mining colony of rare-earth minerals on the moon with a future exploration of Mars on the books, while the United States space program languishes.
The cause of this development is due to the US national debt and the costs of the war on Islamic terrorism, which may have been caused by what Henry Kissinger calls, “American exceptionalism is missionary. It holds that the United States has an obligation to spread its values to every part of the world” even if the world isn’t interested resulting in this resistance from the Middle East.
In addition, many young people in the United States with a high sense of self-esteem do not read books while watching too much TV has been scientifically linked to lack of a development in part of the brain where imagination blossoms.
Note: You may read more on this topic [written by British thriller writer O. C. Heaton] over at A Rush of Green.
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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse 
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