#1 DEEPSEEK TAKES THE WEST BY SURPRISE
#2 XI’AN – MORE THAN JUST THE WARRIORS
#3 A CHENGDU UNIVERSITY AIMS FOR #1 SPOT
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#1 DEEPSEEK TAKES WEST BY SURPRISE
NIKKEI ASIA
Google CEO Sundar Pichai joined Apple, Microsoft and Meta chiefs in praising Chinese AI developer DeepSeek and said lowering the cost of artificial intelligence will be a positive for the tech giant and overall AI demand.
“First of all, I think, tremendous team,” Pichai said of DeepSeek at a Tuesday earnings call. “I think they’ve done very, very good work.”
DeepSeek-R1, a model the company released late last month, stunned Silicon Valley and Wall Street after the company claimed it had achieved a similar level of performance as OpenAI’s o1 model at a fraction of the cost.
U.S. chip developer AMD’s CEO has also called DeepSeek a “good thing” for the industry, despite questions about whether a more efficient model like R1 would reduce the demand for AI chips produced by AMD and rival Nvidia.
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS;-
Nikkei Asai reports that the heightened domestic and international attention given to DeepSeek and its founder reflects the AI community’s admiration for the firm’s low-cost development of world-class models – which either surpassed or matched the performance of rival products across a range of industry benchmark tests – in spite of tightened US restrictions on on China’s access to advanced semiconductors and related technologies.
It is a ‘Sputnik Moment’. It is difficult to recall today the shock in the West in 1957 when they realised that Sputnik was for real and not “a trick by those devious Russians”. DeepSeek is on the same level. It will shake Washington and Silicone Valley. The Chinese are much more than cameras, clothes and consumer goods. “Made in China” means something very significant – for the US, the EU and most important of all – for the Global South. The China model is gaining traction. China is not going away. It is coming on.
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FOOTLOOSE IN XI’AN. MORE THAN THE TERRACOTTA ARMY
NIKKEI ASIA
“Food, markets and an ancient wall enrich the capital of China’s Shaanxi province
Say the word Xi’an, and people think of the Chinese city’s astounding collection of terracotta warriors, created to guard the Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s tomb in the third century B.C. But on a recent trip to the city, the capital of Shaanxi province, I discovered that there is much more to see — from a well-preserved city wall to quirky pagodas, lively markets and a thriving street food scene.
I started my exploration with a walk on the city wall, which runs for 13.7 kilometers and can be entered through any of four gates sited at the cardinal points of the compass. Built in 1370, during China’s Ming dynasty (1368-1644), the wall has 12-meter-high ramparts, sophisticated drawbridges, massive watchtowers and a moat (now dry), creating a miniature medieval city in the heart of the modern metropolis.
The wall survived centuries of wars and invasions, but came close to destruction during the Chinese Communist party’s Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), which was intended to erase the country’s imperial history. It was saved by local conservation lobbies, and declared a protected Chinese heritage site in the 1980s. It is now on a tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, awaiting addition to the official global list, along with other fortified walls from the Ming and Qing (1644-1912) dynasties.
I chose to walk on the wall late in the afternoon, staying until sunset to see the twinkling lights of the city, which lie just beyond the fortifications. Having hiked at the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall in northern China, I was fascinated by the contrast in Xi’an, where the wall remains a part of everyday life, with residents and tourists using it as a public park. There were walkers and joggers, buskers and vendors, families with children and canoodling couples milling together high above the city.”
After sunset, I descended the steps and walked toward the open plaza near the south gate to watch a spectacular sound and light cultural show against the backdrop of the wall. Dancers and acrobats floated across the stage as the background narration laid out the story of Xi’an’s history under its former name of Chang’an, a flourishing kingdom at the starting point of the famed Silk Road that stretched across central Asia and on to western Europe.
Xi’an’s ancient city wall is one of the best-preserved in China.
The next morning was reserved for Xi’an’s star attraction — the army of terracotta warriors, housed in the mausoleum site museum, an hour’s drive out of the city. The warriors lay buried underneath the ground until March 1974, when local farmers accidentally found a few pieces while tilling the soil. Since then, more than 8,000 warriors with weapons, horses and carriages have been unearthed, pieced together and exhibited in three different pits across the museum.
Although I had read about this archaeological find, the first sight of this army in Pit 1 took my breath away: Hundreds of these life-size warriors stand in neat rows facing east with weapons drawn ready for battle. It is believed that the emperor wanted his army to protect him in the afterlife. Over 2,000 years later, these warriors stand clustered in open pits, with more being excavated every year.
I was equally fascinated by the more contemporary army of experts at work behind each of these pits, engaged in repair and restoration. To mark the 50th anniversary of the discovery of these long-forgotten heroes, a new exhibition with over 200 artifacts has recently opened within the museum premises, allowing me to get up close and personal with individual warriors. That was where I got a chance to observe their unique facial characteristics (including wrinkles on the forehead of the older ones), with varying clothes and hairstyles to signify age and rank within the army.
Discovered by farmers in 1974, the terracotta warriors of Xi’an are the city’s most popular tourist attraction.
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS;-
Mention Xi’an and people immediately think of the terracotta warriors. Over 2000 years after they were constructed the warriors stand in clustered pits as excavations are ongoing to discover more of their statuesque number. But aside from the pits and the labour of the experts and their constant search for more relics is the sense of life and harmony that pervades the city of Xi’an. Remember the description “I was fascinated by the contrast in Xi’an, where the wall remains a part of everyday life, with residents and tourists using it as a public park. There were walkers and joggers, buskers and vendors, families with children and canoodling couples milling together high above the city.” There is a point here.
So often the Chinese are portrayed in the Western media as victims of a harsh and intolerant work schedule that leaves them washed out and exhausted – unable to relax and enjoy the life around them. This article provides a contrast – there are walkers and joggers and buskers and vendors and canoodling couples enjoying the casual life style that is as much a part of life in China as the 9-9-6 work schedule is.
China is not a panacea. It is not a holiday camp. It may about to become the largest economy in the world and there are undoubted signs of long term belief in their future but life is a blend of hard work and quality recreation and the account of life in Xi’an beyond the terracotta warriors reminds us that it is the people more than the monuments that provide the confidence about the run up to 2049 – the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China.
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SICHUAN UNIVERSITY IN CHINA OVERTAKES OXFORD UNIVERSITY IN UK
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
A regional university in southwest China, little known to the wider world, has eclipsed much more famous Western institutions with its high-quality scientific research output, according to a new ranking of global universities.
Sichuan University (SCU), in Chengdu, the provincial capital, has overtaken Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Oxford University and the University of Tokyo in less than two years, according to the latest Nature Index.
The index – maintained by the highly regarded academic journal, Nature – ranks research institutions based on their contributions to articles published in the world’s most influential science journals.
Updated on Monday, the list now shows SCU in 11th place among the world’s leading academic institutions based on research output between October 1, 2023 and September 30, 2024.
Also, while America’s Harvard University has the top spot on the list, the other nine institutions in the top 10 are all in China.
SCU has come far in just two years. Back in 2023, it was ranked 26th in the Nature Index, overshadowed by many Western establishments, such as the University of Michigan and the University of California, San Diego.
Now, in the latest ranking, SCU’s work in chemistry stands out in particular, at ninth in the world in the subject area. Research topics such as organic chemistry, chemical engineering, materials engineering, macromolecular chemistry and materials chemistry made the biggest contributions to the university’s improved position, according to Nature.
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS;-
The China critics like to focus on the negatives in China and there are negatives in China – be it the property sector, or the hard core unemployed who slipped through the education net and find themselves on the margins of society and employment; or the 9-9-6 work schedule. But China’s critics always overdo the negatives because they cannot bring themselves to accept that a China led by a Communist Party can do better for its people than a Democrat or Republican can do for the US people.
If you look at China you can view the positives and the negatives. They are both on show and you then decide which has the upper hand. Is China becoming more positive or more negative?
This Column – eyes wide open “warts and all” – comes down on the side of positivism and an expression of China’s surge is the progress and achievement in the science sector for it is here that China is moving ahead of the US and it is here that you find why DeepSeek has created a Sputnik moment for the world
Sichuan University is also part of the story. “Sichuan University (SCU), in Chengdu, the provincial capital, has overtaken Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Oxford University and the University of Tokyo in less than two years, according to the latest Nature Index.” Chinese scientists in numbers are forgoing career progress in the US and, instead, accepting appointments at Universities in the PRC. As the Kennedy School at Harvard University noted in its annual report for 2023, Chinese in the US are antagonised by the anti-Asian racism on the streets of the US and looking with greater enthusiasm at China notwithstanding its more authoritarian democracy. Chinese scientists are voting with their feet and the beneficiaries are Chinese Universities such as Sichuan University.
GRAHAM PERRY
