This is He’s talk from a conference on gene editing, in progress now in HK. (Should start at 1h09.) This article describes serious discussions between He and bioethicists over the last year. It’s important to note that CapEx required for this process is quite modest — not beyond the capability of a medium-sized IVF clinic. …
Very strange. This guy left his university a few years ago to concentrate on this research. Are his claims real? Genome-edited baby claim provokes international outcry (Nature News) The startling announcement by a Chinese scientist represents a controversial leap in the use of genome-editing. A Chinese scientist claims that he has helped make the world’s …
I am writing from Wolong Nature Reserve, near the tail end of a successful winter field season. Although I previously felt that I had had successful seasons in the past, this has been the most so and has put me close to having enough data to finish my dissertation research (assuming, fingers crossed, successful lab …
The US needs a national AI strategy. Many academic researchers that could contribute to AI research — including to fundamental new ideas and algorithms, mathematical frameworks for better understanding why some algorithms and architectures work better than others, etc. — are not able to get involved at the real frontier because they lack the kind …
Real talk from former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating on the strategic outlook for Australia in Asia, the rise of China, and the likely future military balance of power in the Pacific region. More from the Australian strategic viewpoint. Balance of power in the Western Pacific. From the YouTube transcript: 29:18 [Eventually… Total] Chinese GDP is twice as …
Some perspectives from a Berlin tech guy who has also worked in China. To some extent Europe is like the Midwest of the US: a source of human capital for SV and other places. Europe and the Midwest have strong universities and produce talented individuals, but lack a mature tech ecosystem which includes access to venture …
My friends are used to my frequent and sometimes infuriating habit of stopping whatever I am doing (be it walking, talking or driving) to look at and identify any birds. I have even been known to pull to the side of the road to ogle particularly interesting species, a habit I picked up from my …
Some gloomy remarks on the decline of the American Empire. 1. US foreign policy over the last decades has been disastrous — trillions of dollars and thousands of lives expended on Middle Eastern wars, culminating in utter defeat. This defeat is still not acknowledged among most of the media or what passes for intelligentsia in …
I pick up the story of my PhD from Nanchong, China, where I have traveled to take a brief break from lab work to have meetings and an interview with representatives from the China Science and Technology Exchange Center (CSTEC). This summer I am here in China on an East Asia and Pacific Institute Summer …
As glamorous and thrilling as fieldwork might sound, no field season is complete without a few tales, typically funnier after the fact. Here’s my attempt to impart some humor and share lessons learned after the emotional trauma subsided. Lesson #1: Try new things but acknowledge your limits The second day of our trip, I was …
The joke below is making the rounds on Chinese social media. See Struggles at Yale and Baizuo = Libtard. Also circulating on Chinese social media: A Report on the Cultural Revolution in the United States. Yes, an entire country can go crazy for a decade… Cultural Revolution (Wikipedia): The Cultural Revolution, formally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a …
3:00 a.m. My alarm goes off. I open my eyes and see the Heilongjiang sun starting to rise. I close my eyes just for a minute more… (Editor’s note – China, while geographically spanning five time zones, follows only one for unity. That means far eastern locales like Heilongjiang see daybreak early.) 3:15 a.m. My …
Data from the 2016 NSF report on global Science & Engineering Indicators shows the rapid rise of China in both academic science and applied technology. Rapid growth in number of Chinese S&E articles, reaching parity with US in 2013, and well ahead of Japan and India. Fraction of high impact (top 1% most cited) papers highest for …
My China fieldwork this year splits into two trips – June to August, then January to October of next year. These will differ from my previous trips in that this time, I am funded directly from government sources (An East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute [EAPSI] fellowship this summer and a Fulbright grant next year). …
Once again, I am currently adjusting to the Chinese way of life. Thankfully, this is not my first rodeo in China. I spent two months here last summer, so I am hoping most of the culture shock occurred then. That being said, this summer I will be attempting to collect data for my own dissertation …
Largest component of genetic variation is a N-S cline (phenotypic N-S gradient discussed here). Variance accounted for by second (E-W) PC vector is much smaller and the Han population is fairly homogeneous in genetic terms: …while we revealed East-to-West structure among the Han Chinese, the signal is relatively weak and very little structure is discernible …
The Chinese government is not the only entity that has access to millions of faces + identifying information. So do Google, Facebook, Instagram, and anyone who has scraped information from similar social networks (e.g., US security services, hackers, etc.). In light of such ML capabilities it seems clear that anti-ship ballistic missiles can easily target …
Howard French discusses his new book, Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power, with Orville Schell. The book is primarily focused on the Chinese historical worldview and how it is likely to affect China’s role in geopolitics. French characterizes his book as, in part, … an extended exploration of the …
Unbeknownst to me I’ve been skyping with a collaborator who has been working from this location. SCMP: China opens first national gene bank, aiming to house hundreds of millions of samples China’s first national gene bank, claimed to be the largest of its kind in the world, officially opened on Thursday to store and carry …
… but in a good way! :-) Beijing-based economist and rapper Andrew Dougherty (“Big Daddy Dough”) presents The Redprint: Rhyme and Reason in the Riddle Kingdom at the BYU Kennedy Center. This is his classic cover Beijing State of Mind: Dougherty interview on Sinica podcast. Tweet
Feb. 21, 2017 Ciara Hovis is working toward her PhD with Dr. Jack Liu studying the global soy trade using the telecoupling framework between the United States, Brazil and China. A professor posed these two questions to my first year grad student cohort. And I realized I did not have a clear answer. If he …
Some observations concerning the military balance of power in Asia. Even “experts” I have spoken to over the years seem to be confused about basic realities that are fundamental to strategic considerations. 1. Modern missile and targeting technology make the survivability of surface ships (especially carriers) questionable. Satellites can easily image surface ships and missiles …
While ceramics from the Early Period of Michigan State were primarily inexpensive, simple, and durable institutional wares, assemblages changed along with the campus. One of the main changes to take place was the increased number of delicate and stylishly decorated serving dishes, some of them made of porcelain. Porcelain was a highly sought after ware …
China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay (Minxin Pei) Minxin Pei is an exceptional observer of modern Chinese politics, although he tends toward the pessimistic. In his new book he has assembled a dataset of 260 major corruption cases involving officials at the highest levels, covering roughly the last 25 years. There is no …
Rumors over the summer suggested that AlphaGo had some serious problems that needed to be fixed — i.e., whole lines of play that it pursued poorly, despite its thrashing of one of the world’s top players in a highly publicized match. But tuning a neural net is trickier than tuning, for example, an expert system …
Ghost city or $100 billion paradise adjacent to Singapore? Chinese developers build gigantic “Forest City” in Malaysian Special Economic Zone. 10 km of coastline! 2 bedroom apartments for < $200k. The mental model is Shenzhen: a city that barely existed 25 years ago, across the border from Hong Kong. Population today: 10 million. Bloomberg: The …
This is from a blog that tracks Chinese public opinion, mainly via the internet. I don’t agree with everything in the original post, but here’s something sourced from the crowd: … a widely-read Weibo post (again originated from Zhihu) summarizes what Trump’s win has “taught China”, generating tens of thousands of retweets. “1. We should …
Highly recommended. See also references linked below. Andy Rothman has interpreted the Chinese economy for people who have serious and practical decisions to make since his early career heading up macroeconomic research at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. He is now an investment strategist for Matthews Asia, where he continues to focus on the Chinese …
If you asked me a couple of years ago if I would ever experience waves of pleasure at the site of fresh feces, I would have probably answered “maybe.” I can now give a definitive “yes” to that question, if anyone was wondering, as my fall fieldwork in Sichuan Province, China, kicks off the ground. …
More Hugh White (see The Pivot and American Statecraft in Asia). In the first video below @38min: he gives what I consider a realistic assessment of the current and near future military balance of power in the Pacific, including the fact that both sides have significant uncertainty in their evaluation of opponent capability. If you …
The second part of my project involves DNA extraction from my soil samples. For that, I travel to Nanjing and work in the lab of Dr. Fang Wang in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Soil Science Institute. Nanjing is only about an hour from Shanghai, which makes my presence much less of a novelty, as …
Hugh White, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University, critiques the Obama administration’s so-called pivot to Asia. Australian strategists are a good source of analysis on this issue because they are caught in the middle and have to think realistically about the situation. Whenever I see a book or article on this topic …
Excellent podcast interview with Cheng Li of Brookings. Li has both a long historical perspective on Chinese politics (having lived through the Cultural Revolution) and a detailed understanding of current developments. He addresses topics such as technocracy, rule of law, Xi Jinping, corruption, princelings vs grassroots party members, etc. Sinica podcast: One of the most …
As we drive through the rural Chinese country side visiting village after village, I notice a pattern within Chinese agriculture that is paralleled in Chinese culture, and that is quite different from anything I’ve experienced in America. They literally use everything — and between rice paddies are planted to soy and the medians between roads …
My fieldwork in China started off rough. After the sparkle of the first week – being an honored guest, attending lavish dinners and getting private tours – wore off what remained was me, our research team of five and a project that had some serious American bias hiding within it. The soil analysis for my …
So if you remember from previous blogs, my research project is attempting to find differences is in the soil-microbial community between corn, rice (grasses) and soy (a legume). Global soybean trade, specifically soybeans from Brazil and the USA, are being imported by China; these imports are cheaper than domestically produced soybeans, thus driving out China’s …
Sweat streams down my face as I climb the steep slope. My guide and I are at around 2,000 meters elevation, and it usually stays quite cool even in these summer months, but the sun is full blast today and the hike is arduous. The slope must be at least 60 degrees, and all four …
Highly recommended. Kroeber gives a realistic assessment of the Chinese economy, covering topics such as historical development models, infrastructure investment, debt levels, SOEs vs private enterprise, corruption pre- and post-Xi, demographics, hukou reform, etc. In this episode of Sinica, we present an in-depth interview with Arthur Kroeber, founding partner and head of research for Gavekal …
It’s May. I am sitting in my studio apartment, looking at old take-out Chinese boxes with disgust and attempting to pack for my field season in China. In only one bag. How many pairs of socks should I pack? How much instant coffee does a summer of data collection in Asia require? Can I really …
Dr. Spink with book editors Dr. Junshi Chen and Dr. Joseph Jwu-shan Jen This book was created by two of the top handful of Chinese food safety government advisors. Editor Dr. Joseph Jwu-shan Jen stated that this is a landmark publication that will establish the foundation for the state-of-the-art-of the science. They stated “It is …
This is one of the best summaries of the geo-strategic implications of a rising China. Those physicists at JHU have good taste in seminars ;-) I generally listen to videos and podcasts at ~1.5 – 2x speed. Combined with the reduction in schlepping, this makes them far superior even to talks on campus. If I …
I got a survey this week asking about my experience getting my car serviced at Williams Volkswagen here in Lansing. I’m very happy with the service department at Williams, by the way. I’ve bought three cars from them in the decade I’ve lived in Michigan. But the survey sent by Volkswagen of America kind of …
Following up from last week, I want to report a few more observations from my China trip. Last week I gave a short description of the sad conditions existing in my friend Xu’s home village. As I noted, by global standards, these farming families are not doing badly. An annual income of $5000 would be …
I’m writing this week from seat 11J on a long-haul flight homeward bound from China. I spent a week in the vicinity of Nanjing giving some talks at universities and visiting my friend, Xu Huaike. Xu spent a year as a visiting scholar at Michigan State University, and he wanted to show me his home …
This speech emphasizes an under-recognized motivation for US adventurism abroad: local military and geopolitical conflicts enhance the strength of the US dollar as a reserve currency in the face of global volatility. The essay is long but worth reading as it gives a fresh look at superpower competition across multiple arenas, and some insight into …
Both sides of this issue are well argued in the debate — in particular by opponents John Mearsheimer and Kevin Rudd. See also The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. Posted by Stephen Hsu at 5:03 PM Labels: China, geopolitics, globalization, realpolitik Tweet
I returned from my first trip to China. Happily I was able to recover enough to get back into the field, but alas only once. We hiked to the border of Wolong Nature Reserve and the reserve to the north, Caopo. This area had excellent panda habitat and we found four different fecal samples. From …
After being in China long enough to maneuver public transportation and understand a few basic phrases in Chinese, I was ready to head out and see the sights. After all, Beijing is home to some of the oldest cultural and historic relics, such as the Forbidden City built in 1406 and occupied by the Ming …
I have now been in China for almost two months, and realized I have not written any updates for quite some time. Perhaps this is because they would be too depressing! I unfortunately injured my knee a few weeks ago crashing a moped which brought my fieldwork to a halt, and when I tried to …
Ironically, after almost two weeks in China I still haven’t had any tea. I have dined in homes and in restaurants, with young and older people but have not encountered this elusive cornerstone of Chinese culture. However, I have encountered many products made from soybeans (黃豆). After being harvested from the field, 85 percent of …