Myth: “American Universities Are Being Overtaken.” (concerning research and development)
ANSWER: “NOT SO FAST.”
Wildavsky says, Asia’s share of the world’s research and development (R&D) spending grew from 27 to 32% from 2002 to 2007, led mostly by China, India, and South Korea.
However, R&D spending worldwide massively surged in the last decade from $790 billion to $1.1 trillion, up 45 percent, and in 2007, the U.S. spent $373 billion (up from $277 billion in 2002) on R&D, which was very high by global standards totaling more than all Asian countries’ combined ($352 billion was spent on R&D in Asia).
Myth: “THE WORLD WILL CATCH UP”
ANSWER: “Maybe, but don’t count on it anytime soon.”
While the global academic marketplace is without doubt growing more competitive, the United States doesn’t have just a few elite schools as most of its foreign competition does, and the U.S. spends about 2.9 percent of its GDP on postsecondary education, about twice the percentage spent by China, the European Union, and Japan in 2006.
If this three part series of posts sparked a curiosity to learn more on this topic, I urge you to take the time and click over to Foreign Policy magazine‘s Website and read all of FP’s Think Again: Education written by Ben Wildavsky. It’s always nice to discover the facts before you form an opinion or believe someone that does not know what they are talking about. After reading Wildavsky’s piece in FP, it is obvious that America’s schools are not failing and have never been failing and are actually either holding their own or slowly improving.
That doesn’t mean the US should stop working at improving the public education system. It means that many of the opinions and claims you may read or hear are probably wrong and the key to improving education in the US rests with the parents and not the teachers.
Considering the handicaps and competition teachers in the U.S. public schools face from the average child/adolescent’s poor lifestyles choices while eating horrible diets along with lack of proper sleep and spending far too much time dividing his or her daily hours (more than 10 hours a day on average) watching TV, playing video games, social networking on sites such as Facebook, and sending endless text messages instead of reading and studying, the evidence says American teachers are doing an incredible job.
When critics accuse the Chinese of stealing technology from the West, consider that China was the most technologically advanced nation in the world for more than two thousand years until the middle of the 19th century.
One example of China’s technological abilities was when the first seismograph was invented in 132 AD.
When Zhang Heng‘s device measured an earthquake in 134 AD, he predicted the location.
Han Ministers did not believe the scientist. Then a courier arrived and reported that an earthquake had taken place where Zhang said it did.
In 1951, Chinese scientists from China’s National Museum worked on recreating Zhang Heng’s seismograph. Since there was a limited amount of information, it took until 2007 to complete the reconstruction.
In comparison, it wasn’t until the 18th century (AD), about seventeen hundred years later, that there was any record that Western scientists even worked on developing a seismograph.
The Compass
The Chinese were the first to notice that the lodestone pointed one way, which led to the invention of the compass. The first compass was on a square slab, which had markings for the cardinal points and the constellations. The needle was a spoon-shaped device, with a handle always pointing south.
Archeologists have not been able to discover the exact time the ancient Chinese discovered magnets. However, it was first recorded in the Guanzi, a book written between 722 – 481 BC.
Later in the 8th century AD, magnetized needles would become common navigational devices on ships.
The first person given credit for using the compass in this way was Zheng He (1371 – 1435 AD), who went on the voyages made famous in a book by Louise Levathes, When China Ruled the Seas.
Since the Chinese value education above business and the military, it makes sense that Chinese invented and used devices such as the compass and the seismograph centuries before the West did.
The Compass was also considered a symbol of wisdom. About the 12th century, through trading, the technology spread to Arabia and then reached Europe.
Paper
Imagine the rise of civilization without paper.
In fact, without paper to print books that spread ideas, would men have walked on the moon?
Papermaking is one of the four significant inventions from ancient China. Almost 2,000 years ago, Chinese discovered how to make paper.
In 105 AD, Cai Lon invented a way to make paper and submitted his discovery to the Han emperor.
This method soon spread to the rest of China, and the emperor rewarded Cai Lon by making him a member of the nobility.
The basic principles of papermaking invented by Cai Lon are still in use today.
To make paper was a six-step process, and properly manufactured paper lasts for centuries.
In fact, Buddhism arrived in China about the time of the invention of paper and this helped spread Buddhist ideas, which contributed to the spread of civilization.
By the 12th century, more than a thousand years later, the paper making process reached Europe, which may have contributed to the Renaissance of the 12th century and what followed.
The Printing Press
Six hundred years after paper was invented, the Chinese invented printing and the first printed books were Buddhist scripture during the Tang Dynasty (618 – 906 AD). The most basic printing techniques are older. Engraving came later and the carving, printing technique originated during the Tang Dynasty.
When we talk about paper and printing, we are talking about collecting knowledge, preserving and sharing it.
In fact, Ancient Chinese culture was preserved due to the invention of paper and these printing methods, which wouldn’t reach Europe until after 1300 AD, centuries later.
Once there were mass produced paper books being printed to share Buddhist ideas, the religion spread through China into Korea and Japan. The same happened in the West with the Gutenberg Bible and the spread of Christianity in the 1450s.
In China, for a thousand years, printing techniques improved until there were multi-colored printings.
Then during the Sung Dynasty (960 -1276 AD), the printing board was invented, which used clay characters. One character was carved into a small block of clay. Then the clay was put in a kiln to heat into a solid block. This method was efficient for printing thousands of sheets. These blocks would be placed together to create sentences and paragraphs of Chinese characters.
Later, the characters were carved into wood and over time, printing developed into an art.
Without the Chinese invention of printing, Christianity, Islam and Buddhismmay not have spread to the extent that they have.
Gunpowder
Sulfur is the main ingredient for gunpowder, which was first developed during the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 AD).
During the Northern Sung Dynasty, in 1044 AD, the book “Essentials of Military Art” published several formulas for gunpowder production.
It is ironic that the Sung Dynasty (960 – 1276 AD) used a Tang Dynasty invention to defeat them.
Several ingredients for gunpowder were in wide use for medicinal purposes during the Spring and Autumn Period of China’s history (722 – 481 BC).
According to the famous book “Records of History”, Chang Sangjun shared secret prescriptions with Pien Ch’iao(around 500 BC), who promised not to give the secret away, and then he became famous as a doctor of Chinese medicine.
In fact, gunpowder was discovered by accident.
While mixing ingredients to find an elixir for immortality, Chinese scientists stumbled on the formula.
Fireworks and rockets were invented but were first used to scare away evil spirits.
The irony is that gunpowder, which has killed millions when used as weapons, was discovered during the search for immortality.
One theory says that the knowledge of gunpowder came to Europe along the Silk Road around the beginning of the 13th century, hundreds of years after being discovered in China.
It is also ironic, that Britain and France used advanced gunpowder weapons to defeat China during the 19th century during the Opium Wars.
Note: There were more inventions than this short list shows. If you read the comments for this post, you will discover a few more.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
My “old” friend said, “It isn’t the fact that China has crooks, every nation has them. However, the degree of corruption in China is simply breathtaking. But not unexpected due to the fact it’s an oligarchy with strict censorship of anything deemed inappropriate by the ones who are the most open to corruption.”
My reply was to refer him to Transparency International, which identifies itself as the global coalition against corruption. The results are worth reading and provide compelling evidence that my “old” friend may be wrong since many democracies, according to Transparency International, are more corrupt than China.
Transparency International’s 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index shows that nearly three quarters of the 178 countries in the index score below five, on a scale from 10 (highly clean) to 0 (highly corrupt).”
Of 178 countries ranked for corruption, China tied with seven for a rank of 78 and a score of 3.5. The countries China tied with were Colombia, Greece, Lesotho, Peru, Serbia and Thailand.
If you check the list of Electoral Democracies, you will discover that Greece, Peru, and Serbia are on it and many other electoral democracies have a lower rank than China.
For example, Argentina is ranked 105 with a score of 2.9.
India, often touted as the world’s largest democracy, is ranked 87th with a score of 3.3 and is home to a third of the world’s people that live in severe poverty.
In fact, according to Economy Watch, India’s underground economic corruption is believed to be 50% of the country’s GDP or $640 billion US dollars at the end of 2008.
Mexico is ranked 98 with a score of 3.1.
The Ukraine is ranked 134 with a score of 2.4.
The most telling evidence is Singapore, which did not make the Electoral Democracy list. However, Singapore shares 1st place with Denmark and New Zealand as the three countries with the least corruption in the world.
Qatar was ranked 19th and is an Emirate, which is similar to a monarchy or sultanate, but a government in which the supreme power is in the hands of an emir (the ruler of a Muslim state).
The US rank was 22 with a score of 7.1, which is a C- (good but not perfect).
The reason those 16,000 to 18,000 Chinese crooks fled China for mostly the US was because if caught, they would probably be executed.
In the US, all these crooks have to do is pay taxes then reap the rewards of their corruption in a land where more people go to prison than any country on earth. After all, Bonnie and Clyde are folk heroes in the US with a Hollywood movie.
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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Access to electricity is the key to developing a country into a modern state with the potential to grow a large, consumer driven middle class.
Poverty reduction is also linked to access to electricity.
In fact, to reduce poverty, China has introduced electricity access to over 900 million rural residents in over 50 years and has achieved an electricity access rate of as high as 98%. Source: Stanford.edu
August 15, 2010
In 1949 when the People’s Republic (PRC) was founded, there were only 33 small hydropower stations in rural China, with a total installed capacity of 3.63 megawatts, and total electricity consumption in rural areas was 20 million kilowatts. Today, there are thousands of hydropower stations, and the PRC has more than any country on the earth.
In 1979, China’s Xinhua state run news agency reported a serious electric power shortage. The agency said China produced about 150,000 million kilowatts of electricity a year and ranked about seventh among the world’s electric energy producers.
In the last post, China’s Goals to Go Green, we discovered that China now produces more electricity than the US.
To understand what China has accomplished since 1979 when it was ranked seventh among the world’s electricity producers instead of first, it helps to discover the time it took for America’s electrical grid to be built, which will be continued on June 20, 2011 in Turning on the Lights in China – Part 2
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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.
To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.
Until recently, the United States was the largest consumer of energy in the world.
To put that in perspective, Americans make up only 5% of the world’s population and yet consumed 20% of the energy the last year the US was number one.
Now, China, with about 20% of the world’s population, consumes more energy than the US.
A better idea might be to compare India to China since these countries have similar sized populations. Nation Master’s energy consumption chart shows India in 6th place with 568,000,000-megawatt hours consumed, while China used more than 7 times that number.
China’s goal is to have a middle class equal to America, which may reach as high as 66% of households.
Do a little math and you soon discover how much energy China may have to produce to support a middle class of about 858 million people, which is 66% of 1.3 billion.
In fact, China may need to produce about 16 billion-megawatt hours of electricity to achieve that goal.
Along with those numbers comes another staggering headache — pollution and a potential environmental disaster of epic proportions.
However, China is struggling to deal with this challenge by going green.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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