China’s Quantum Communication Has Little to Do with Quantum Computing
In 2018,the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) published the article Quantum Hegemony?, warning:
As China shifts its most sensitive military, governmental, and commercial communications to quantum networks, this transition could enhance information security, perhaps frustrating U.S. cyber espionage and signals intelligence capabilities, though these systems will likely remain susceptible to exploitation nonetheless.
Indeed, according to an announcement in 2016,
China will establish its quantum networking standard and a platform of networks led by carriers in 2019. This quantum network will support consumer online payment and transfer. It is expected to roll out nationwide by 2023.
However, on Sep.30, 2019, one day before China’s National Day Parade, Xu Ling-yu, a retired research fellow from UCLA, published an essay, Quantum Communication: Descending from the Altar (link to Chinese), and disclosed China had halted all construction of inter-provincial quantum communication trunk lines. Therefore, the aforementioned project was deemed a failure. He believes:
China’s Quantum communication engineering has nothing to do with quantum entanglement. It is only a hardware technology that uses quantum polarization state as key distribution.
According to Xu, the so-called Quantum Key Distribution (QKQ), the backbone theory that supports China’s grand quantum communication project has three fatal flaws, including low code rates (the most important indicator of key distribution), incompatible with the internet, and unsecured trusted relay.
“That is why the US and the UK are focusing on the development of quantum computers rather than ‘quantum communications’,” Xu concludes in a separate essay (link to Chinese).
Splinternet in Motion: is TikTok a Security Threat?
While TikTok’s security flaws were found and whether or not TikTok posts national security threat is still being investigated, David Carroll, an associate professor Parsons School of Design, compared TikTok to Cambridge Analytica on piracy threat and requested TikTok to answer his inquiries. In response to David’s probe, TikTok’s spokesperson answered:
… there’s a difference between data being physically processed in China and data being processed by systems designed and operated by one of our China registered entities. As a general practice, TikTok is not a service offered in China and as a result, there has not been personal or un-aggregated data physically processed there.
David believes what TikTok answers demonstrates the nature of the emerging “splinternet”,
where democratic and authoritarian states are disconnecting and fracturing from the global vision of the hyperconnected internet. That liminal feeling is the new uncanny data sovereignty in the age of surveillance capitalism.
World Gatherings Go Viral
Forget World Expo. China’s Canton Fair is now the world’s largest trade fair. However, due to the virus outbreak, Canton Fair is suspending activities until further notice. How big is Canton Fair? Christopher Balding, an associate professor at the Fulbright University Vietnam, comments
This (Canton Fair suspension) would be huge if true. To put this in perspective this is an enormous conference space. It is 16 TIMES larger than the entire White House grounds. It is packed with exporters every year with every hotel room in southern China booked. HUGE if true.
Fergus Meiklejohn, an app developer and filmmaker, warns
Look for disruption to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (Feb 24-27, 2020). The Chinese are huge spenders at these events.
🐵 A contrast commentator adds:
What about Tokyo Olympics ( Jul 24 – Aug 9, 2020) ?
2025: Made in Where?
While coronavirus crisis tests just how reliant the world is on Chinese manufacturers, here is how regions brace the wave.
- Wuhan: all out to keep semiconductor and steel production rolling
As Nikkei describes, the city of Wuhan has been called the “Chicago of the East” for its industrial and transportation importance in China.
Tsinghua Unigroup (清华紫光), a major semiconductor company, was the first Chinese business to launch mass production of 3D NAND flash memory there.
China’s leading panel maker, BOE Technology Group (京东方科技) has a cutting-edge factory there.
Smartphone maker Xiaomi (小米) has an artificial intelligence development center in there.
General Motors, Honda Motor and France’s Groupe PSA have joint venture factories in Wuhan. More than 500 car parts manufacturers operate in Wuhan.
How China’s grand plan MIC 2025 (Made in China 2025) cooperates with Wuhan’s lockdown? Nikkei reports
In a sign of where Beijing’s priorities lie, key producers of steel, chemicals and semiconductors remain in operation, as do electric utilities, thanks to strong local government support, according to a spokesperson at a state-owned enterprise in Wuhan.
Government goes all out to keep semiconductor and steel production rolling.
- Bengaluru: the next electronic components manufacturing hub?
According to Business Standard, Wistron looks to invest $1 bn to set up PCB manufacturing unit in Bengaluru.
Wistron, one of the leading Taiwanese contract manufacturers, is looking at relocating a printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing plant from China to Bengaluru, entailing an investment of around $1 billion (about Rs 64 billion).
The move comes at a time when India has increased customs duties on several electronic components and PCs to aid value-added local electronics manufacturing.
The proposed plant is expected to provide employment to 3,000-4,000 people.
The unit would manufacture motherboards for low-cost personal computers (PC) that will be based on chipmaker Intel’s reference designs. Wistron could also manufacture Intel’s upcoming LTE (long-term evolution, a standard for high-speed wireless communication) on PC boards for which India could be a major market.
Both Qualcomm and Intel are heavily investing in developing chips that support LTE wireless data technologies, eyeing sales of PCs in emerging markets such as India.
- California and Vietnam: seeking diversified supply chain
According to SCMP, both California and other Asian manufactures are looking for alternatives to made in China.
With regions of China accounting for 80 per cent of exports on lockdown, factories around Asia are being forced into looking for alternative supplies, … while trade watchers as far afield as California wait for boats from China to stop arriving,
The US economy was buoyed overnight by positive manufacturing data,after the Institute for Supply Management’s purchasing managers’ index – a survey of American factory owners – rose by 3.1 per cent to 50.9 per cent.
Even Chinese manufacture who managed to move factories to Vietnam now see problems:
“We export raw materials from China to Vietnam”
“The logistics have barely been affected [yet] but the biggest problem for me now is that I am banned from re-entering Vietnam.”
When Analog Triumphs Digital …
- Hong Kong Protests
Earlier CONTRAST featured Hong Kong protesters used cash versus digital subway card to avoid government tracking. Protesters also left changes on the vending machine for fellow commuters.
- Taiwan Presidential Votes Counting
Besides machine scans, staffs also verbally announces each vote and anyone can come in and watch every single vote being counted, a way to avoid any suspicion of electoral fraud. A video of how the vote is counted can been watched here.
- Iran-U.S. Tension
Now we learned that hours after the U.S. strike which killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Trump administration used the encrypted fax at the Swiss Embassy in Iran to send an urgent back channel message to Tehran:
“Don’t escalate.”
- China City Quarantine
How to quarantine 50 million people while keep them fed? It turns out China resorts back to one of its planned economy methods and issued stamps to allocate residents needs to get out. Each printed pass allows one household to go out for needed errands every other day. See picture here.
Performing the Non-performing
In the U.S.-China Phase I deal, one clause went little noticed: China is to allow U.S. institutes to acquire non-performing loans directly from Chinese banks. However, even less known to the public, Warburg Pincus has been in the market years ahead of other institutions.
According to SCMP,
In 2014, Warburg Pincus LLC (would) invest close to $700 million in China Huarong Asset Management Co(中国华融), … in the biggest investment in the nation’s financial industry by a foreign buyout firm, Warburg Pincus bought the largest portion of a 21 percent stake that China’s biggest bad-loan manager sold to a group of investors for 14.5 billion yuan ($2.4 billion), said one of the people, who asked not to be identified as the matter is private.
In 2018, according China Huarong Asset Management’s website,
Former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and current President of Warburg Pincus met Wang ZhanFeng, Chairman of Huamrong ..to continously cultivate China’s non-performing assets market, actively take advantage of their experties in non-performing assets and their multi-license synergy, strive to develop various business development opportunities, while strengthening the core business of non-performing assets…
Later in December 2018, according to Asia Real Estate Intelligence
Warburg Pincus announced that it has formed a $1 billion joint venture with a Beijing-based asset management firm for investing in distressed and “special situations” real estate opportunities in mainland China.
Which American Sports First Played a Role in U.S.-China Relationship
It’s not NBA.
According to OZY, the first time China watched Super Bowl was 1986, when “Chicago Bears destroyed the New England Patriots 46-10 and the musical group Up with People perform their last halftime show”. The rainmaker was Lyric Hale, the then-20-something CEO of a small marketing firm that liaised between American advertisers and Chinese media. Shortly after she engineered the broadcast, she got a phone call from the White House and the rest is history.
According to RADII China,
Not only it was the first time American football was broadcasted in China, but also the first time an foreign leader had directly addressed China’s billion-strong public….The program opened with greetings from the US Ambassador to China Winston Lord, who read a letter from Reagan.
Extra care was taken to ease viewers into the world of touchdowns and tackles. New vocabulary was created. Footage was edited down to an hour. And what should have been expert banter was turned into a somewhat dry how-to guide, accompanied by diagrams of important plays.
How did China gasp this game, a 1986 article from The Christian Science Monitor reports:
“‘The object is to pull down as many of the opposite team’s men as possible,’ the Chinese announcer said early on.