Chaitra Shuklapaksha 1, Kaliyug Varsha 5116
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Immediately after he assumed power, President Xi Jinping started promoting the Chinese Dream. India has certainly a lot to learn from China in terms of ‘dreaming’. Does Delhi realise that the real objective behind the Chinese Dream which is to make of China a dominant, self-reliant superpower.
Very early in its history, the Chinese Communist leadership realised that the great renaissance of the Chinese nation was dependent on ‘innovation with Chinese characteristics’. Beijing has now taken decisive actions to remedy some of the nation deficiencies in this field. India has not yet.
On June 22, 2013, The South China Morning Post affirmed that “China’s top science advisers have listed 19 projects as the research priorities of the next decade. They include quantum telecommunications and a high-performance jet engine that could drastically improve the capacity of its indigenous fighter jets.”
According to the Hong Kong newspaper, the report was prepared by more than 200 experts associated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It was a road map for breaking into the US dominance in domains as diverse as military, space, new materials, energy or agriculture.
Though not all the projects have a direct military implication, ultimately, ALL the projects will help the progress of the Chinese indigenous technology and most of them, will have a dual use.
The South China Morning Post mentioned: “The most eye-catching one is a new jet engine that promises to deliver thrust equivalent to 15 times its own weight. The thrust-to-weight ratio is a key indicator to measure a jet engine’s performance. In comparison, the Pratt & Whitney F119 turbofan engine used in the United States’ F-22 raptor fighter has a thrust-to-weight ratio of eight and is widely considered one of the most advanced jet engines today.”
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This particular field is usually considered to be the weakest in China’s aviation sector. Beijing has had to rely on foreign imports (mainly from Russia) for its fighter jets. Even China’s purported heavy-hacking activities have not so far been able to reduce the dependence on the Russian technology.
Of course, the Chinese plans for the new proposed engine have triggered wide-spread skepticism, but the point is that China has the political will and the economic means to jump into such innovative adventures.
The Chinese Dream goes hand in hand with military modernisation. It is not new, but in the recent years and months it has been taken up by the new leadership in Beijing with a renewed vigour.
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Already in 1978, as Deng Xiaoping took over the Middle Kingdom, he instructed the Government to take ‘quick decision’ in the matter of fundamental and applied researches. A program code named 863 had for objectives: “To combine military use with civil use, with stress on the latter and limit objectives and concentrate on focal points”. It was soon included in the Ninth Five-year Plan.
Fifteen years later, another landmark document was published, “The National Medium — and Long-Term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology (2006-2020)”, is also known as the MLP.
The MLP describes itself as the ‘grand blueprint of science and technology development’ to bring about the ‘great renaissance of the Chinese nation’.
The preamble calls for the Chinese people to “seize the opportunities and meet the challenges brought by the new science and technology revolution …despite the size of our economy, our country is not an economic power, primarily because of our weak innovative capacity.”
An excellent report China’s Drive for Indigenous Innovation prepared by James McGregor for the Global Regulatory Cooperation Project of the US Chamber of Commerce, says: “The MLP blueprint is full of grand visions, good intentions and gilded rhetoric about international cooperation and friendship. …It also sets goals for expanded cooperation with foreign universities, research centers and corporate R&D centers.”
The MLP defines indigenous innovation as “enhancing original innovation through co-innovation and re-innovation based on the assimilation of imported technologies.”
What ‘assimilation’ and ‘re-innovation’ means is well-known from those who deal with China; “Importing technology without ‘transforming it into Chinese technology’ is not acceptable to China anymore”, the report states. “One should be clearly aware that the importation of technologies without emphasising the assimilation, absorption and re-innovation is bound to weaken the nation’s indigenous research and development capacity,” adds the MLP.
The plan is often considered by many international technology companies to be a blueprint for technology theft on a scale the world has never seen before. That is not true innovation, but re-innovation.
The idea of Megaprojects for ‘Assimilating and Absorbing’ technology was mooted. The megaprojects have an objective of ‘assimilating and absorbing’ advanced technologies imported from outside China to help the country to ‘develop a range of major equipment and key products that possess proprietary intellectual property rights’. The MLP speaks of ‘major carriers of uplifting indigenous innovation capacity’.
Michael Raska, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies (IDSS), quotes Tai Ming Cheung, a leading scholar on China’s defense industries at the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California San Diego, mentioning three military megaprojects:
» Shenguang Laser Project for Inertial Confinement Fusion:
The Shenguang (Divine Light) laser project explores the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) as an alternative approach to attain inertial fusion energy (IFE) – a controllable, sustained nuclear fusion reaction aided by an array of high-powered lasers;
» Second Generation Beidou Satellite Navigation System
According to Jane’s magazine, by the end of 2012, China had 16 operational Beidou satellites in orbit – six geostationary satellites, five Medium Earth Orbit spacecraft, and five satellites in Inclined Geo-Stationary Orbits covering the Asia-Pacific region. By 2020, Beidou 2 envisions a full-scale system of at least five geostationary and 30 non-geostationary satellites providing a global coverage;
» Hypersonic Vehicle Technology Project: Available data show that China has started developing conceptual and experimental hypersonic flight vehicle technologies such as hypersonic cruise vehicles (HCV) capable of maneuvering at Mach 5 speeds (6,150+ km/h), flying in near-space altitudes.
Michael Raska says: “Taken together, China’s long-term strategic military programs are deeply embedded in China’s advancing civilian science and technology base, which in turn is increasingly linked to global commercial and scientific networks.”
There is no doubt that all these ‘civilian’ innovations have application in the Chinese defence sector.
In the meantime, India is resting. To take an example, a joint venture between DRDO and MBDA of France for the development of short-range surface-to-air missiles (SR-SAM) is ready sign for the past one year, but the MoD is sitting (or sleeping) on the file for no reason. Tens of such cases could be cited.
Today in India, there is no question ‘assimilation’, ‘re-innovation’, even less ‘innovation’. Where is the Indian Dream?
Source : Niti Central
