science, tech & art in modern china - piero scaruffi · –xiaomi (2.8 million mi band sold in...

Science, Tech & Art in

Modern China

Piero Scaruffi

p@scaruffi.com

scaruffi@stanford.edu

Vanity (and credentials!):

Piero in China

Coauthor

Piero in China

Top 100 recommended books of 2017

Piero in China

Vanity: Piero in China

Piero in China

Vanity: Piero in China

China Academy of Art

The best Introduction

to China’s Growth Rate

China used more cement between 2011 and

2013 than the U.S. used in the entire 20th

Century.

China’s High-tech Industry

2007: Chuang Yeban, the Chinese equivalent

of the NASDAQ

2008: Thousand Talents program to bring back

Chinese-born academics and workers who

trained overseas

2015: Internet+ initiative

China’s High-tech Industry

2017 unicorns

China’s High-tech Industry

Hightech companies

Largest

Internet

companies

Revenues in billion $ (2016)

The B.A.T.

Alibaba

Baidu

Tencent

The B.A.T.

• The B.A.T.

– Alibaba

– Baidu

– Tencent

Compare with:

Silicon Valleys of China

• Wuhan

Silicon Valleys of China

• Zhongguancun: Beijing's Silicon Valley

Silicon Valleys of China

• Zhongguancun: Beijing's Silicon Valley

Silicon Valleys of China

• Zhongguancun: Beijing's Silicon Valley

Silicon Valleys of China

• Zhongguancun: Beijing's Silicon Valley

Silicon Valleys of China

• Zhongguancun: Beijing's Silicon Valley

Silicon Valleys of China

• Baidu

Silicon Valleys of China

• Baidu

Silicon Valleys of China

• Baidu

Silicon Valleys of China

• Baidu

Silicon Valleys of China

• Baidu

Silicon Valleys of China

• Baidu

The head of communications at Baidu is the founder of

China’s first heavy-metal band

Technology Parks

• Torch Program (1988)

– Innovation Clusters (starting with Zhongguancun

Science Park in Beijing)

• 1988-today: 50+ "National Science and

Technology Industrial Parks" (STIPs)

– Technology Business Incubators (TBIs)

– Seed Funding (Innofund)

– Venture Guiding Fund (invests directly into VC

funds, co-invests with VCs, covers some VC losses)

Technology Parks

• Shanghai

Competing for Talents

• Chinese talents used to move to the USA

2015

Competing for Talents

• Fall 2016: “The roughly 3% decline in

new foreign students nationally was

the first drop the institute has recorded

in the 12 years … and the decline

appears to be deepening”

• Fall 2017: The number of newly

arriving international students

declined an average 7%

Open Doors survey

Competing for Talents

• Chinese students abroad (2016)

– 544,500 Chinese studied overseas

– Returnees (“sea turtles”): 432,500

(82% up from 72% in 2012)

Competing for Talents

Main reasons why Chinese talents move back to China:

• …

• …

This is probably the #1 factor helping China’s high-tech

industry and science: Chinese talents who move

back

Competing for Talents

• Main reasons why Chinese talents move back to China

1. Homicide rate in the USA

2. US immigration law

3. Parents want them back (One-child policy)

4. Economic opportunities in booming China

5. Spouse

6. More modern infrastructure in China

7. If they have children: free health care and good public

schools in China

8. Donald Trump

Competing for Talents

• Main reasons why Chinese talents move back to China

1. Homicide rate in the USA

State of the Art

• 2017: China, 731 million people are online

• A smartphone-first market

State of the Art

• Wechat

State of the Art

• Wechat

Dinner with the Microsoft team (Chengdu, 2017)

State of the Art

• Wechat

State of the Art

• QR Code

A History of

Silicon Valley

State of the Art

• AliPay

State of the Art

• Bike sharing

– Mobike

– Ofo

State of the Art

• Bitcoin

42

State of the Art

• Supercomputing

• 2016: Seventh year

in a row that China

has the fastest

computer in the

world

• 2016: the fastest

supercomputer uses

Chinese-made

microprocessor chips

instead of Intel’s

State of the Art

• Internet of Things

– Xinhua (September 2017): “China's Internet of Things

(IoT) industry has seen its output value exceed 900

billion yuan ($140 billion), with a compound annual

growth rate of over 25%

– Chengdu Internet of Things Technology Institute:

providing top health care to remote rural areas

– 2014: “Reference Architecture for IoT” proposed by

China is approved by the ISO

State of the Art

• Wearables

– Xiaomi (2.8 million Mi Band sold in 2016)

– Huawei

– Lifesense (1 million fitness trackers)

– BBK

– Mobvoi

– Okii

– 360

State of the Art

• 3D Printing

– Sichuan Revotek’s bioprinter

• 2017: 3D-printed blood vessels

implanted them in rhesus monkeys

– Regenovo bioprinter

• Hangzhou Dianzi University

– Tiertime’s desktop 3D printer

– Shining 3D

State of the Art

• 3D Printing

– WinSun (2016)

State of the Art

• 3D Printing

– HuaShang Tenda (2017): 3D-printing out an entire

400 square meter, two-story house at once

State of the Art

• Drones

– DJI accounts for 70% of the world’s commercial

drones

State of the Art

• Space

– 2018: BeiDou’s accuracy down to

ten meters (GPS: one meter)

– Covering all the countries of the new

Silk Road (One Belt One Road)

State of the Art

• High-speed trains

State of the Art

• Solar power

– The Global Energy Interconnection (UN speech 2017)

State of the Art

• Solar power

– Smart solar expressway (2018)

State of the Art

• Nuclear power

– 37 nuclear reactors for about 38 GW of capacity (May

2017)

– China has 20 nuclear power plants under

construction, more than any other country on earth

– 58 GW of capacity by 2020

– Floating nuclear reactors

State of the Art

• Smart city

State of the Art

• Smart city

– 2009: IBM’s Smarter Planet campaign

– 2012: "National Smart City Pilot" by

the Ministry of Housing and Urban

Rural Development (MOHURD)

– 2012: National Smart City Joint Lab of

Chinese Society for Urban Studies

(CSUS) with National Engineering

Research Center for Information

Security, Huawei, ZTE, Microsoft,

IBM, MIT, HITACHI, Baidu, Xinhua…

– 2016: $500 billion investment

Biyu Wan, Chief

Scientist of CSUS

State of the Art

• Smart city

– 2016: 400 smart city pilot projects

State of the Art

• New capital: Xiongan (2017)

– Deng Xiaoping: Shenzhen

(capitalist experiment)

– Jiang Zemin: Shanghai’s

Pudong (financial center)

– Xi Jinping: Xiongan

(sustainable intelligent

capital)

State of the Art

• Skyscrapers

Shenzhen

State of the Art

• Skyscrapers

Shanghai

State of the Art

• Skyscrapers

Guangzhou

State of the Art

• Skyscrapers

Beijing

State of the Art

• Skyscrapers

Hangzhou

State of the Art

• Skyscrapers Suzhou

64

State of the Art From “a lot of people” to “a lot of machines”

Artificial Intelligence in China

• Microsoft chatbot Xiaoce: 100 million users

• News recommendation: Toutiao

• Voice recognition: iFlytek (China)

• Face recognition: Face++ (China)

• Several A.I. unicorns

• Cambricon AI chip

Artificial Intelligence in China May 2017: Tsinghua Univ wins million-dollar

Arnold Foundation’s challenge

Oct 2017: Harbin & iFlyted win first Stanford

reading comprehension test (SQuAD)

October 2017: Megvii beats Facebook and

Google at Microsoft COCO object

recognition challenge

Nov 2017: Yitu wins first Face Recognition

Prize Challenge

A.I. in China

• A simple definition of A.I.: computational mathematics

A.I. in China

• 2015: China builds the equivalent of nearly one university

per week

• 2015: China has more STEM graduates than the USA (78

million vs 67 million)

• 2016: China STEM graduates 4.7 million; USA 568,000.

A.I. in China

• 2016: China publishes more

paper than the USA on Deep

Learning

• 2017: China generates more

data than the rest of the world

combined

A.I. in China

• A.I. sponsored by local and

national governments

• July 2017: National A.I.

program for China to

become the leading A.I.

power by 2030

A.I. in China

• A.I. sponsored by local and

national governments

Biotech in China

A Rational Nation

• A metric country

– US: 12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, ? yards to a mile

– China: 100 cms to a meter, 1000 meters to a km, …

– US: 16 ounces to a pound, ? pounds to a ton

– China: 1,000 grams to a kgs, 1000 kgs to a ton

– US: water freezes at 32 degrees and boils at 212

– China: water freezes at 0 and boils at 100

• A big-endian country

– US: month/day/year (why the month first???)

– China: year/month/day

Today in China: 2018/9/1

Today in Europe: 9/1/2018

Today in the USA: 1/9/2018 (what the ?!?!?)

Problems…

• The Great Firewall of China

– Slower Internet than Madagascar

– Fewer websites visible than in Vietnam

Banned in China

Note:

• The Great Firewall of China… with

two notable exceptions…

NOT banned in China

Problems

• Baidu the Google of China

• RenRen the Facebook of China

• Weibo the Twitter of China

• Didi the Uber of China

• Alibaba the Ebay of China

• YouKu the YouTube of China

• LeTV the Netflix of China

• MoMo the OK Cupid of China

• …

Problems…

Are they really success stories?

Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, etc succeeded

because their government banned or

thwarted the competition…

Banned in China

Problems

• A technology park in China

• County prison of San Mateo

79

Problems

Innovation

USA: – Telephone

– Television

– Transistor

– Artificial Intelligence

– Robot

– Virtual Reality

– Database

– Hard & Floppy disk

– Videogame

– Email

– Microprocessor

– Personal Computer

– Mouse & GUI

Europe

- Radio

- Computer

- World-wide Web

- Smartphone

- Skype

Internet

Cell phone

Barcode

Ethernet

Laser printer

Touch screen

Wearables

3D printing

Gene

Sequencing

Gene Editing

Search engine

Social media

South Korea

- Digital tv set

- Flat panel display

80

Problems

Innovation

Japan: – Transistor radio

– Pocket calculator

– Walkman (portable music player)

– CD

– Camcorder

– Flash memory

– Digital camera

– DVD player

– QR code

– NCF (mobile payment)

– Hybrid car

– Mobile phone with camera

Between 2005 and 2011

Japan was the world's

most efficient innovator in

the world (Xiaolan Fu,

2015)

81

Problem or Strategy?

My thesis:

China is the rapid-prototyper of Western technology

The West is the research lab and testbed of China, free

of charge

Museum Boom

• 1949: 25 museums in the whole of China

• 2017: more than 5,000 museums

82

Museum Boom

• museums

83

Museum Boom

• museums

84

Museum Boom

• museums

85

Museum Boom

• museums

86

Museum Boom

• museums

87

Museum Boom

• museums

88

Museum Boom

• museums

89

Museum Boom

• museums

90

Museum Boom

• Luoyang

91

Luoyang

Beijing 798 Art Zone

Beijing 798 Art Zone

Beijing 798 Art Zone

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Liu Dao collective

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Liu Dao collective

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Liu Dao collective

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Liu Dao collective

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Chen Chenchen

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Chen Chenchen

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Cao Chunhui

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Cao Chunhui

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Cao Chunhui

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Cao Chunhui

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Cao Chunhui

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Cao Chunhui

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Qiu Shengxian

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Qiu Shengxian

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Li Shiguang

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Li Shiguang

Shanghai M50/ 50 Moganshan Rd

Li Shiguang

Shenzhen OCT

Shenzhen OCT

Hangzhou Life Plaza

Hangzhou Life Plaza

Hangzhou Life Plaza

Beijing Olympic Village

Beijing Olympic Village

Art and China after 1989

Zhang Peili: video (1988)

Xu Bing (1955, China): mock Song books “A Book from the Sky” (1988)

Art and China after 1989

Wang Xingwei:

“New Beijing”

(2001)

Qiu Zhijie

Art and China after 1989

Ai Weiwei: “According to What” (2009)

Cai Guo-Qiang

(2009)

Art and China after 1989

Huang Yong Ping (France):

"Theater of the World“ (1993)

Chen Zhen: “Precipitous Parturition”

123

Art and China after 1989

• Painting

– Fang Lijun (1963, China)

“Series 2, No. 2,

Howl" (1992)

124

Art and China after 1989

• Painting

– Mengjun Li (1966, China)

"Autumn Scenery -

Frozen Time" (2007)

125

Art and China after 1989 • Painting

– Jian Guo (1969, China) “Bubble of Yum" (2001)

126

Art and China after 1989

• Conceptual Art

– Ai Weiwei (1957, China)

“Snake Ceiling" (2010)

127

Art and China after 1989

• Conceptual Art

– Cai Guo-Qiang

“Head on“ (2006)

128

Art and China after 1989 • Multimedia Installation/ Interactive

– Feng Mengbo (1966, China)

“Long March: Restart” (2008)

129

Art and China after 1989 • Photography

– Taiquan Tian (1960, China)

“Memory of

Totem”

(2007)

130

Art and China after 1989

• Photography

– Liu Bolin (1973, China)

“Hide in the City” (2005-)

131

Art and China after 1989 • Sculpture

– Shanshan Sheng (1957, China)

“The Wall” (2009)

132

Art and China after 1989 • Sculpture

– Wenling Chen (1969, China)

“God of Materialism”

133

Art and China after 1989 • Sculpture

– Liu Wei (1972, China): book sculptures

134

Art and China after 1989

• Sculpture/Site sculpture

– Gu Wenda (1955, China)

“Temple of Heaven" (1998)

135

The End

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scaruffi@stanford.edu

www.scaruffi.com

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www.lastfestival.org

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