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Report: How the U.S. seeks to maintain its technological hegemony

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The U.S., the world’s leading technology superpower, has been wielding monopoly power and taking suppression measures in high-tech fields to maintain its technological hegemony, said a report released on Monday.

Most recently, the U.S. has been lobbying its allies, including the Netherlands and Japan, to further restrict export of microchips and related equipment and technology to China.

ASML, the world’s top supplier of chip-making machines based in the Netherlands, has already been banned from selling its most advanced chip-making equipment to China since 2019, because of curbs imposed by the Dutch government under pressure from the U.S.

The company warned last week that “the drive for technological sovereignty” could lead to “long-term changes in global trade, competition and technology supply chains,” which could adversely affect its business and growth prospects.

This is only the latest move by the U.S. to further strangle China’s chip industry.

Last year, the Biden Administration proposed the so-called “Chip 4 Alliance,” which includes four of the world’s top producers of semiconductors: the U.S., Japan, Korea and China’s Taiwan region. It is widely seen as Washington’s effort to contain Beijing in the cutting-edge sector.

How the U.S. suppressed Japan’s chip industry 

Actually, China has not the only country targeted by the U.S. in the semiconductor sector.

In the 1980s, Japan, one of the U.S.’s closest allies, once produced about half of the world’s semiconductors. In the year 1990, six of the world’s top ten semiconductor manufacturers were Japanese companies.

In order to contain Japan’s semiconductor industry, the U.S. launched the “301” investigation, threatened to label Japan as conducting unfair trade, and imposed retaliatory tariffs, forcing Japan to sign the U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Agreement.

As a result, Japanese semiconductor enterprises were almost completely driven out of global competition, and their market share dropped from 50 percent to 10 percent.

In the same time, with the support of the U.S. government, a large number of U.S. semiconductor enterprises took the opportunity and grabbed larger market share.

U.S. put over 1,000 Chinese firms on sanction list

Now, facing competition from Chinese tech companies, the U.S. has been overstretching the concept of national security and mobilizing state power to suppress and sanction Chinese companies, like telecom giant Huawei – a leading company in 5G technologies.

Over the past years, the U.S. has restricted the entry of Huawei products into the American market, cut off its supply of chips and operating systems, and also coerced other countries to ban Huawei from undertaking local 5G network construction.

It even talked Canada into unwarrantedly detaining Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou for nearly three years.

As a matter of fact, the U.S. has fabricated a slew of excuses to clamp down on China’s high-tech enterprises with global competitiveness, and has put more than 1,000 Chinese enterprises on its sanction lists.

U.S. eavesdropping

The U.S. has also been abusing its technological hegemony and carrying out widespread cyber-attacks and eavesdropping, the report pointed out.

The world’s No.1 superpower, with the most advanced technologies, has long been notorious as an “empire of hackers,” blamed for its rampant acts of cyber theft around the world.

And U.S. surveillance is indiscriminate. All can be targets of its surveillance, be they rivals or allies, even leaders of allied countries such as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and several French Presidents.

Cyber surveillance and attacks launched by the U.S. such as “Prism,” “Dirtbox,” “Irritant Horn” and “Telescreen Operation” are all proof that the U.S. is closely monitoring its allies and partners.

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, a website that has exposed U.S. surveillance programs, said that “do not expect a global surveillance superpower to act with honor or respect. There is only one rule: there are no rules.”

Source(s): CGTN

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German tech fair focuses on sustainability in consumer electronics

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BERLIN, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) — As one of the world’s leading trade fairs for consumer electronics, the five-day IFA 2023 opened here on Friday with over 2,000 exhibitors from 48 countries and regions, a much greater scale than last year.

“In addition to all the historic brands you know and love at IFA, 30 percent of exhibitors are new this year,” Oliver Merlin, managing director of IFA Management, said in a statement issued on Friday.

According to the organizer, sustainability is a major priority of the trade fair. Ahead of IFA’s 100th birthday next year, the 2023 event for the first time dedicated an exhibit area to highlighting sustainability. Besides, it will have multiple forums to discuss how consumer electronic enterprises could develop in a more sustainable approach.

According to IFA official website, nearly 1,300 Chinese exhibitors have registered in this year’s event. Chinese companies such as Hisense, TCL and Haier have occupied some of the largest exhibit areas with various products.

While delivering a keynote speech on Friday, Hisense Group’s President Yu Zhitao said the company looks forward to expanding its overseas market share.

“In order to be more and more user-centric, we are upgrading and optimizing our products and services to meet consumer needs,” he said.

Source(s): Xinhua

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International Congress of Basic Science kicks off in Beijing

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The inaugural International Congress of Basic Science (ICBS) took place in Beijing on Sunday with a theme of “Advanced Science for Humanity.”

The conference lasts two weeks, with over 800 top-notch scientists and scholars gathering to discuss frontier research in the fields of mathematics, theoretical physics, theoretical computer and information science.

Shing-Tung Yau, president of the International Congress of Basic Science and a Fields Medal winner, said in the opening speech that he is expecting the academic exchanges at the conference to contribute to the development of the world’s basic science knowledge. “I hope the renowned international scholars learn more about China and the young scholars learn from the best and set their goals.”

The scientists attending the conference include eight Fields Medal winners, four Turing Award winners, one Nobel Prize laureate and more than 50 academicians from different countries.

The conference is hosted by the People’s Government of Beijing Municipality, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, China Association for Science and Technology, and the International Consortium of Chinese Mathematicians.

source(s): CGTN

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European Space Agency launches Jupiter moons explorer

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PARIS, April 14 (Xinhua) — The European Space Agency (ESA) launched on Friday an Ariane 5 rocket carrying its Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

According to the ESA, the successful launch marks the beginning of an ambitious voyage to uncover the secrets of the ocean worlds on Jupiter’s three largest moons: Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, which hold quantities of water under their surfaces in volumes far greater than in Earth’s oceans.

“These planet-sized moons offer us tantalizing hints that conditions for life could exist other than here on our ‘pale blue dot’,” the ESA said in its press release.

Over the next two-and-half weeks, Juice will deploy its various antennas and instrument booms, including a 16-meter-long radar antenna, a 10.6-meter-long magnetometer boom, and various other instruments that will study the environment of Jupiter and the subsurface of the icy moons, the agency said.

Juice will also monitor Jupiter’s complex magnetic, radiation, and plasma environment in depth and its interplay with the moons, thus studying the Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giant systems across the Universe.

Juice has been designed for an eight-year cruise with flybys of Earth and Venus to slingshot it to Jupiter. It will make 35 flybys of the three large moons while orbiting Jupiter, before changing orbits to Ganymede, said the agency.

Source(s): Xinhua

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