You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'East Asia' tag.
Erle Frayne Argonza
Gracious day to everyone!
From China comes a news item highlighting the gap between technology innovations and the business community. The observation is that the gap is a yawning one. This gap has been observed among other Asians that proceeded with the industrialization development track couples of decades back.
The new is contained below.
[Writ 07 October 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
Chinese innovation ‘too isolated’
Jia Hepeng
23 September 2008 | EN | 中文
Flickr/Pere Tubert Juhe
[ZHENGZHOU AND BEIJING] For China to become a world leader in innovation, it should address regional differences and promote corporate input, according to a report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The report, released this month (11 September), acknowledges that with spending on research and development (R&D) matching that of Germany, China is already a global player in science and technology.
But the country lags in innovation capability and performance compared to OECD countries with a similar level of R&D investment, although China ranked second in global publications levels in 2006.
According to the report, China’s innovation system is not fully developed and inadequately integrated. It describes the system as an “archipelago”, a large number of “innovative islands” with insufficient links between them.
Current regional patterns of R&D and innovation create too great a physical separation between knowledge producers and potential users, the authors say.
In addition, although foreign investment in China has increasingly contributed to innovation, the domestic business sector has been slow to make productive use of accumulated R&D investment, human resources for science and technology, and related infrastructure, the report indicates.
The Chinese government is looking to address this. For example, a recent study found that of 22 Chinese biotechnology firms investigated, all had received government funding (see Regulations ‘hinder’ China biotech investment).
But besides funding companies directly, “it is important for China to improve the framework conditions for innovation, which will contribute to building an innovation culture and provide the conditions and incentives for firms to shift their attention to innovation,” Gang Zhang of the OECD Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry and one of the report’s authors, told SciDev.Net.
And Feng Jun, president of Beijing Huaqi Information Digital Technology, a leading Chinese technology company, says the government has distributed its funding too evenly among companies, instead of focusing on a few to gain key breakthroughs.
Link to the executive summary of OECD report
Erle Frayne Argonza
We peoples of Southeast Asia have been caught up in the cycles of droughts and heavy rains for as long as our memories can recall. The El Nino comes every now and then, bringing either a rainy season or too dry a spell for an entire crop season, thus endangering our own agricultural production.
Biotechnology innovations incidentally are very dynamic in the region, or in East Asia as a whole. The breeding of maize varieties that are resistant to drought has been among the forefront of research & development. Below is a news caption of the R&D efforts in maize by exemplar countries Philippines, Indonesia, and China.
Happy reading!
[31 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
A-maizing: Asia’s drought-resistant maize varieties
Source: CIMMYT
16 June 2008 | EN | 中文
Flickr/thisfrenchlife
Maize is a staple crop in South-East Asia, both as a food and animal feed. But the farmers that grow the crop often live in drought-prone areas, where poor soil and disease exacerbate poor harvests.
To counter this, the Asian Maize Network was created, funded by the Asian Development Bank and led by CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre).
The network, running from 2005–2008, brings together scientists from China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam to develop drought-tolerant maize varieties — and deliver them to farmers.
Genetic material from drought-tolerant varieties was supplied by CIMMYT and funds put into setting up testing programmes in all five countries.
The first varieties have already been released for further testing in individual countries, and many more are in the pipeline, with the eventual aim of providing them to poor farmers at affordable prices.
The scientists involved say the project has helped them both in terms of capacity and partnership building. Many agree that the training and working with researchers from other countries has given them a new perspective on their work.
“I’m motivated to see that what I’m doing will really help farmers,” says one.
Erle Frayne Argonza
I’m sure everybody still recalls the near-cataclysm that struck China recently that buried towns and villages and led to thousands of deaths. China and the planet is still mourning for all those beloved fellows swallowed up by turbulent Earth.
That event challenged China to predict earthquakes more accurately. Quake prediction follows uncertainty principles, which do not cohere with the uniformitarian paradigm of geology. Any move today to reverse the situation of relatively unpredictable quakes is very welcome.
Happy reading!
[24 July 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila. Thanks to SciDev database news.]
Chinese scientists call for better quake prediction
Jia Hepeng
3 June 2008 | EN | 中文
The seismic signal from the Sichuan earthquake
Flickr/MacEsc
[BEIJING] Scientists in China are calling for improvements in earthquake prediction, including the establishment of an early-warning system and methods for scientists to share quake information.
The calls come after the Sichuan earthquake — the country’s most serious earthquake in 30 years — hit on 12 May (see China displays openness in earthquake response).
Ni Sidao, a professor of geophysics at the University of Science and Technology of China, says that although current scientific methods cannot accurately predict an earthquake, an early-warning system could alert people to leave for open spaces before buildings are destroyed.
Ni made his remarks last week (25 May) alongside other scientists at the China Science and Humanities Forum in Beijing, operated by the Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
He said that P waves — early-arriving non-destructive seismic waves — can be used to detect and calculate the scale of an earthquake within ten seconds with the aid of computers.
In the case of Sichuan, the later-arriving, destructive seismic waves (S waves) took 30 seconds to reach Beichuan — the most seriously hit county, 90 kilometres north of the epicentre — and nearly 100 seconds to reach Qingchuan County, 200 kilometres from the epicentre.
People in Beichuan could have had a ten-second warning of the earthquake with an early-warning system, allowing some to move outdoors and trains to stop to avoid derailing, said Ni.
But he admitted that current seismic monitoring stations in most parts of China are too isolated to form a warning network.
Ren Luchuan, a senior researcher at China Earthquake Networks Centre (CENC), welcomes Ni’s suggestions, but says such a system is very difficult to operate.
“[The time difference between P and S waves] is so short that it is very hard to establish a system to notify residents,” he told SciDev.Net, though he says such a system could be used for key sites such as nuclear power stations, which could close reactors.
Longer-term prediction seems to be just as fraught with problems.
In the latest issue of the Chinese language journal Science and Technology Review (28 May), Wu Lixin from the Chinese University of Mining and Technology, Beijing, and colleagues report an abnormal temperature rise in the thermal satellite images of the eastern front of Qinghai–Tibet plateau — the fault that caused the earthquake — 20 days before the Sichuan earthquake.
The authors suggested this rise could be caused by tectonic plate movement, and could be an indicator for earthquake prediction.
But Ren says many factors could cause the abnormal temperature increases, leading to uncertainty in using temperature change to predict earthquakes.
In a separate article published in the same issue, however, Wu writes that there should be more intensive, accurate and consistent analyses of thermal satellite images, and that these should be frequently checked against seismic wave monitoring.
In addition, Wu says an earthquake information sharing system should be established, so that general researchers can analyse or input data about abnormal observations into a system for professional seismologists to screen.
Bro. Erle Frayne D. Argonza
[Writ 11 April 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]
Most recently, Philippine economic growth reached impressive levels of 7.3% GDP and 8.4% GNP. GNP is measured by adding the Net Factor Income from Abroad or NFIA, comprising largely of remittances from overseas workers and overseas investments. There is surely cause for elation over these developments.
How far has Philippine development progressed? Quite far, to say the least. In 1946, when the USA granted independence on this ‘far-east’ colony, the Philippines was a backward, agrarian economy that was dependent on manufacturing imports to move on. It was also coming out of its war-torn phase, and had to embark on an ambitious recovery program first as part of its development program.
Today that post-colonial past is now a distant epoch of a long by-gone time. The work-force is dominated by the services sector which also contributes to 55% of the GDP, while industry contributes 30% more or less though a measly 16% of the work-force. Agriculture itself had quite modernized, though it now contributes to just around 15% of GDP and 36% of the work-force.
Urban population had already surpassed the 55% mark by the middle of this decades and is still surging ahead as urbanization makes radical, sweeping changes over vast expanses of rural villages and small towns. Manila, the primate city, is as huge as a mega-polis, contributes 1/3 to the national output and is now a highly reputable 1st World city. Philippine investments have been moving out of the country as part of wealth production overseas, aside from overseas labor, and in long run remittances from investments will exceed those from manpower. The domestic banking sector is so awash with cash, that it can fund the most ambitious development projects conceivable, thus cutting off RP’s dependence on foreign debts.
But RP still has a long way to go before reaching a 1st World status. Using the industry cycle—where an industry progresses from ‘take-off’, to ‘growth’ stage, then to ‘maturity’ stage, then to ‘overdeveloped’ or ‘decay’ stage—experts can easily assess that RP is already at the tail end of the ‘growth stage’. It took so long a time for this to happen, as this stage began in the 1970s yet. The ‘take-off’stage likewise took so long a time to conclude, as it started in 1948 yet, more or less, got bogged down for some time in the 1960s, before moving on to the next phase during the technocratic-militaristic order of the 1970s.
But RP had already moved forward, this had to be recognized most of all. It is now a 2nd World economy, still an ‘emerging market’ though already no longer the backward/agrarian ‘carabao economy’ that it used to be, and no longer rural but predominantly urban. And this news is sufficient cause for euphoric jubilation.
If only the late economist & sociologist Joseph Schumpeter were still alive today, the Philippine experience would make him happy. RP authenticates well his theory of cycles, particularly the long-wave Kondratieff cycle. This cycle contends that long-period growth takes place over a period of 55-60 years, with expansion at the beginning half and contraction at the last half.
RP began its ‘take-off’ in 1946 (alongside the war recovery), and the long-cycle period officially ended in December 2006. Using this theory then, I forecast as early as 1999 yet that RP will experience another period of long-term growth beginning in 2007, and I hit the mark so precisely that I am sure the theory of cycles is as valid as ever. Discounting aside the possible effects of external shocks that we have no control over, our long-term expansion will be till 2036.
Which means that RP will reach ‘maturity’ very soon, around 2015, and then attain ‘over-developed’ or 1st world status by the period 2025-2030. No matter how slow the carabao (water buffalo) may work, it will still deliver results. And RP, which is justly signified by the carabao, had demonstrated this to the world.
erleargonza
Recent Comments