Eight examples of high-tech innovation in China

In June 2016, Chinese president Xi Jinping outlined his vision for China to become the leading player in science and technology globally. Speaking at the national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology, he said the country must be on course to being a leading innovator worldwide by 2030.
According to a post on the Chinese Academy of Science website, Xi said: “Great scientific and technological capacity is a must for China to be strong and for people’s lives to improve,” adding that the country and even humankind “won’t do without innovation, nor will it do if the innovation is carried out slowly.”
These are lofty words from the world’s emerging superpower. But there are some indications the country’s already well on track – here are just a few examples of technological innovation underway in China

1. Floating solar power plant

The world's largest floating solar power plant was completed and connected to the local power grid in China's Anhui province in May 2015.
This 40-megawatt solar facility is built on top of a flooded coal mining region. It is part of a vast shift in China's use of fossil fuels. China increased its solar power output by 80 percent in the first three months of 2017, according to The Guardian.
China also completed the Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, a 10-square-mile, land-based solar power plant in 2015. It is allegedly the largest solar facility on the planet.

 

2. Shenzhen East Waste-to-Energy Plant

  Over in the industrial hub of Shenzhen, Danish firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects has proposed the planet’s biggest waste to energy plant, designed to transform 5,000 tonnes of waste every day into power. The plant is due to open in 2020, and it will be almost a mile wide

 

3.Transit Elevated Bus

  This concept called Transit Elevated Bus was first revealed at the 19th China Beijing International High-Tech Expo, last month. It’s designed to accommodate as many as 1,200 people at any time, and would trundle along highways straddling normal road traffic, that passes by beneath. It’s just a model at the moment, but its creator, Ben Zhiming, claims the cost of its construction is less than a fifth of a subway, and a trial will reportedly begin in Qinhuangdao City in the second half of this year. 

 

4.Quantum Science Satellite

  

The Chinese Academy of Sciences’ head scientist, Pan Jianwei, recently announced that the country will undertake its first experiments with a ‘quantum satellite’ – to establish a quantum communications link between earth and space. It’s believed that, if the experiment is a success, such a satellite could greatly improve the security of data transmissions around the world.

 

5. Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST)

  In September this year, the Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope – FAST for short – is set to open its doors and become operational. First proposed in the early 90s, it will become the biggest single-aperture radio telescope on the planet, with 4,600 triangular panels. The telescope is situated in a natural basin in Pingtang County, Guizhou Province, to protect the project from unwanted magnetic disruptions.

 

 

 

6. 3D-printed houses

 

Although 3D printing is by no means new (nor is it emerging in China alone), in 2014 a Chinese company called WinSun Decoration Design Engineering managed to create a 10-house 3D-printed village in under one day.
After printing out each of the prefabricated modules, the components were lifted into place by a crane and were then ready to use. And in 2015, the same company created the world’s tallest 3D-printed building at the time.

 

7. Tianhe-2

 

The Tianhe-2 is a 33.86-petaflop supercomputer which has topped the world’s most powerful high powered computing lists for years. Developed as part of the Chinese government’s 863 High Technology Program, the monstrous computer was built by China’s National University of Defense Technology. It boasts 32,000 Intel Xeon E5-2692 12C processors and has more than 1,300 TiB of memory. Although it’s by far the most powerful in terms of calculation capacity, critics say that it’s not as functionally useful as other supercomputers in the US and Japan.

 

8. Customised server chips with Qualcomm

  

 Mobile chip giant Qualcomm will begin to make server chips specifically designed for the Chinese market this year, through a business owned by the Chinese government. The Guizhou province-Qualcomm collaboration was initiated because server demand in the country is expected to eventually outpace that of the US – and for political reasons, China is beginning to clamp down on technology produced from outside its borders. According to the Wall Street Journal, Qualcomm president Derek Aberle has said the project will address security concerns with a solution that’s “very specific to 
China”.