China Military Watch - Jan 11, 2011

[shiv]

indeed , its quite surprising in the vast field of medical electronics and diagnostic eqpt are there big chinese names to counter the likes of GE medical, Siemens, Philips ? or chip lithography eqpt from Applied materials or Nikon ? or doppler weather radars/ATC radars from raytheon?
all areas which demand quality and money is not the most important criteria.

the only "high tech" field I see them as having deeply made a mark so far is personal computers and telecom equipment(huawei and zte). but in both areas there are still strong outside competitors and they are having to offer things at throwaway prices to get deals in developing countries. perhaps the plan is to establish relations and footprint later to shut the gate on competitors.

certain other "medium tech" field like motors, ships, power generation plants , electrical and electronic parts, toys, textiles, plastic parts is where they have taken deep bites.

I had posted an anecdote of a family jeweller who pulled out a portable mini electronic weighing scale. I asked him about it and he said that it is Chinese, cheap and can be expected to work for a year or so and is worth it for the money. For 5 times the cost a super-reliable and accurate German one can be bought as a lifetime buy. Of course the man is a Jeweller using Chinese scales which even he admits is not going to last very long - and I would worry about that despite his family being known to ours even before I was born.

Naturally people are "afraid" of the Chinese. But for all the wrong reasons.

Oh - and speaking of medium tech - what about Chinese cars and trucks in the world market?

[D Roy]

What people don't get is that forex reserves don't necessarily mean good news domestically.

Forex is an asset entry on the central banks's asset-liability framework. its counterpart on the liability side is high powered money. so any increase in forex has to be accompanied by sterilization to keep your money market in equilibrium and to prevent leakage into the goods market. we must remember that you can fix either money supply or the interest rate. you can't fix both simultaneously.

Moreover forex cannot be used for investment back home. I know, Montek had mooted that but the fact is no overseas SPV can re-route forex just like that. they were trying to tide over the opportunity cost of putting these in American T-bills at those extremely low rates.

So having huge reserves is not a huge plus. it is a big liability. and its bearing on a military buildup relates to having enough forex to purchase weapons from abroad. and you don't need 2 trillion for that.

Moreover looking at def spending as a percentage of GDP is not that great an idea either. It is better to see it as a component of the federal budget and no major country of the world is doing particularly great on that score. everywhere defex is squeezing out expenditure on human capital especially in the US.

There are only two sources of growth - increases in total factor productivity and population. China has screwed itself on the latter and in due course of time military keynesianism will choke out the first.

People must understand that in a command economy a growth rate is targeted sometimes using basic leontieff models and then investment etc are set with a given Incremental capital output ratio to see what is required.

In the long run its patently unstable. and when you don't meet it , you go further away.

Already Chicom's stupidity in investing in massive high speed rail lines on the very routes where several air carriers operate has been exposed. the former railway minister is in jail.

and while Chicom drones will rah rah it to the envy of some jingos, people must remember that these lines have to be viable. just having them doesn't mean anything. And this is precisely why you don't see too many news stories nowadays talking about high speed corridors. at current rates its something like 50 million plus a km. so a 1000 km line is 50 billion US. Have a nice day.

[abhik]

...Added later: As an aside - I admire the Chinese for trying which is better than we do here in India. The chinese developed a fiber optic endoscpe ages ago which they tried to sell really cheap in India. But no. those scopes were too low in quality and reliability and the Chinese company did not make headway. but full marks for trying. Indians are too naive even to copy the intestinal staplers that they are paying in dollars for making a lot of Indian pay through their nose. Sorry OT.

But the bottom line is that if there were a contest b/w the two countries to design and make an endoscope or a 5th gen fighter of the same spec 9 out of 10 times china would win.

Oh - and speaking of medium tech - what about Chinese cars and trucks in the world market?

That Juggernaut has already started rolling, I suppose you wouldn't ask this question after about 5 years. I remember the teacher in school saying that Chinese people use only bi-cycles. And school wasn't that long ago for me.

[prithvi]

That Juggernaut has already started rolling, I suppose you wouldn't ask this question after about 5 years. I remember the teacher in school saying that Chinese people use only bi-cycles. And school wasn't that long ago for me.

bingo... Chinese has rapid prototyping capabilities.. the scorching rate at which they bring up new gadgets is quite impressive.. even if we water down 50% of the claimed capabilities of all gadgets.. thats still a lot.....

someone said.."quantity is also quality"

[NRao]

Chinese State Media, in a Show Of Openness, Print Jet Photos

Internet posts by analysts and Chinese aviation enthusiasts point to a fighter crammed with the best technology China can produce: holographic “heads-up” instrument displays, advanced anti-ship radar and, Mr. Lan said, self-guiding missiles, in contrast to the gravity-controlled bombs and sight-guided missiles that largely populate China’s existing 3,200-aircraft fleet.

wonder if the Chinese will sell India the J-15 for the MMRCA?

The J-15 is being compared in some quarters to the American F-18, a workhorse on Navy carriers. But Mr. Lan said it had a shorter range, in large part because its takeoff method — flying off a ski-jump-style runway — dictated that it could carry less fuel than a comparable American jet, which is propelled off a flat carrier runway.

[shiv]

But the bottom line is that if there were a contest b/w the two countries to design and make an endoscope or a 5th gen fighter of the same spec 9 out of 10 times china would win.

A great statement for argument, but if we went for an all out war with Pakistan, Pakistan would also win because they have less to lose, the citizens are more accustomed to violence and have Chinese arms.

If the discussion is about "Why India will always lose against everyone else" - I am wholly in agreement with your views. However I notice that India is, very sensibly, NOT in an endoscope making race with China, And India is not in a 5th gen fighter making race with China although I would love it if someone could bother explaining to me what "5th gen fighter" means - which is also an empty expression that is used as a flagging point for a rhetorical argument.

If anyone thinks "5th gen" refers to fighter. It is not. Which is what makes the words "5th gen fighter" utterly meaningless and thrown around on the internet and media as a great expression of knowledge of what is latest and greatest

[shiv]

That Juggernaut has already started rolling, I suppose you wouldn't ask this question after about 5 years. I remember the teacher in school saying that Chinese people use only bi-cycles. And school wasn't that long ago for me.

bingo... Chinese has rapid prototyping capabilities.. the scorching rate at which they bring up new gadgets is quite impressive.. even if we water down 50% of the claimed capabilities of all gadgets.. thats still a lot.....

someone said.."quantity is also quality"

This is a rhetorical statement like "In the long term we are all dead'. You are referring to the scorching rate at which gadgets are copied.

If you have 20 aircraft of which only 5 are working fully at any one time, it is the same as having 5 aircraft - all of which will reliably work.

Both are equal, but the latter is quality, the former is quantity. That is how the "quantity equals quality" works.

[shiv]

Chinese State Media, in a Show Of Openness, Print Jet Photos

wonder if the Chinese will sell India the J-15 for the MMRCA?

Good question. Let me quote from the article

At the century’s turn, many news reports say, the Chinese beseeched Moscow to sell them the Sukhoi-33, a 1980s Soviet fighter capable of landing on carriers. Moscow refused. But in 2001, the Chinese bought an Su-33 prototype from Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, and began a teardown to learn its secrets.

Repeating a post I made earlier

Titbit from Vayu

What appears to have been straight forward reverse engineered is the optical-electronic pod on China's ZW-9 combat helicopter, which bears a strong resemblance to the Leo -II serial O/E pods produced by the Zeiss Company. Technical experts from the Zeiss company recalled that about seven to eight years ago Zeiss had exported two sets of an earlier variant of the Leo-II O/E pods to China, intended for use on helicopters, According to them the Chinese authorities explained that they needed a large number of this type of / pods for civilian helicopters, and therefore would like to purchase two sets initially for testing purposes The Chinese took no further action after receiving the test pods. Currently both the ZW 10 and the night attack version the ZW-9 are equipped with o/E detectors very similar to the Leo-II

At every defence exhibition Sukhoi are present, offering their wares and so is Zeiss and other companies - selling wares that are open for people to look at, examine and buy. It makes me wonder why the oh so feared Chinese companies are also not openly competing for sales at the large number of exhibitions held worldwide.

i can only speculate

Chinese cloned equipment is so sophisticated and so advanced that they will not offer it for sale. After all the US does not exhibit the F-22. But the US does exhibit lower level tech which is still among the best in the world, so why don;t the Chinese do that?

Could it be that the Chinese do not want to show how much they have copied? Or could it be that the equipment they have cloned does not work like the original because the fabrication of individual materials is what makes the original equipment work well and copying is not technology creation? Avram was right in pointing out that it is the materials and fabrication that is high tech - not just the shape and size. And color.

The Chinese OTOH have no problem exhibiting their Bundaar for sale via their proxytutes.

[Singha]

there is also the covert threat by those that were ripped off that while they cannot do anything about selling the 'cloned stuff' in china's internal market due to solid chinese govt backing, they can and will go to court if such stuff is attempted to be sold abroad.

[vina]

Hmm. Chinese have ZERO experience in carriers both on the ship side and the aviation side . It will take them the better part of 2 decades from NOW to build even a basic entry level capability.

Also, an overweight J-15 Flying Shark of an SU-33 clone is a duck that will become roast in any real world fighting situation, especially if the opposition has anything significant in terms of anti aircraft.

Lets face it. If the Chinese think their refurbished Varyag plus cloned SU-33 is going to deter a crack experienced force like the USN or even someone with significant anti air like the Japanese, So Ko, they will learn the hard way.

As for the IN, the Adm Gorshkov fiasco should NEVER EVER be repeated. Get the IAC in ASAP, get the LCA MK-II Navy in ASAP (from the looks of it with the MK1 Navy already out, the MK-II navy will roll into service faster than the SU-33) and for heaven's sake, get Cats and E2D Hawkeye from Unkil, and have a decent allround carrier force. With those in place, we should be fine.

[ashi]

I had posted an anecdote of a family jeweller who pulled out a portable mini electronic weighing scale. I asked him about it and he said that it is Chinese, cheap and can be expected to work for a year or so and is worth it for the money. For 5 times the cost a super-reliable and accurate German one can be bought as a lifetime buy. Of course the man is a Jeweller using Chinese scales which even he admits is not going to last very long - and I would worry about that despite his family being known to ours even before I was born.

Naturally people are "afraid" of the Chinese. But for all the wrong reasons.

Oh - and speaking of medium tech - what about Chinese cars and trucks in the world market?

Isn't that you get what you pay for. For a price point, China makes the best quality bar none.

Companies are no fool, they will go where the biggest bang for their buck. China doesn't become the world's manufacturing center for no reason.

Now a jacket selling for more than US$1000 also made in China. Check out brand names such as St. John. Consumer products such as Iphone, and heavy industry machinery are either assembled or made in China, to export to the world.

[ashi]

Ashi, no matter how much something is sold for (1000 or its cheap clone at 80), the PRC gets paid about the same.

How do you know?

There is no great gain in talking about superior manufacturing when all you do is low end non high tech items that can be cheaply cloned with near-slave labour.

What pain? Hundreds of millions of people have been pull out of poverty. China has risen up to the second largest economy in the world. This is the path that almost every large developed country has walked before, Europe, US, Japan.

[shiv]

Now a jacket selling for more than US$1000 also made in China. Check out brand names such as St. John. Consumer products such as Iphone, and heavy industry machinery are either assembled or made in China, to export to the world.

St John jackets? What on earth is that? Is that some stealth coating for your J-21 or whatever? I am talking high tech fabrication. Not jackets and assembly of parts designed by someone else and given to a China shop. Not a single high tech Chinese IR detector or radar advertised in Jane's or Aviation Week. Or Vayu. Israel fills pages and pages of ads with missiles, UAVs, targeting equipment etc. Recaro seats. GE engines. Finmeccanica. AVIoil. Sukhoi. Agusta Westland. Where are the "made in China" ads?

China has 20 brands of UAV? And your prostitute Pakistan buys the Italian Falco and begs the US for UAVs. And you are telling me about St.James' jackets?

[abhik]

If the discussion is about "Why India will always lose against everyone else" - I am wholly in agreement with your views. However I notice that India is, very sensibly, NOT in an endoscope making race with China, And India is not in a 5th gen fighter making race with China...

But what does matter is what they field against what we field against them at any point of time.

[Gurinder P]

Read again, in the context of your post. I said "gain" - you said "pain". heh.

You said at a certain price point - that price point at which China makes "the best" is a fallacy and basically you're talking of the cheapest price point because if it is made anywhere else, the quality will be higher and of course so will be the cost.

That is very true. My professors were telling my class about construction of PCB's and how local companies were the best bet for initial batches and China would only be considered if large scale production was needed. He did mention one thing in particular, and that was embedded coding in the chips and he stated that it is a taken risk if one does assembly in China that the chinese would assimilate or reverse engineer the code.

The funny thing is that the chinese clones are reverse engineered imitations and they are not innovated on the originals. Iphone knock offs are a great example to this, as one only needs to feel the real thing and the knockoff to know the difference right away.

[Chinmayanand]

China has 20 brands of UAV? And your prostitute Pakistan buys the Italian Falco and begs the US for UAVs. And you are telling me about St.James' jackets?

Now China will force porkis to buy Chinese UAVs.

[shiv]

Make no mistake, China is not very far behind the curve when it come to chip fabricating tech, and certainly far ahead than most in volume

I have been searching every part of my unkal Googal about this. The main complaint about China is not fabrication of fake chips. It is stripping off old chips from old equipment and refurbishing them and relabelling them and selling them as the genuine new one using all sorts of tricks to make sure that the labelling and marks - including pits and depressions in the chip look right.

One thing that is done is to sand off markings from commercial chips and relabel them as military grade - capable of withstanding higher temperatures. The following page has two videos with a lot of information and below that is a Business week article link. There ii very little information that China is reverse engineering and fabricating fake microchips and I would like to see some links/information about that because my unkal googal is not telling me.

http://www.aeri.com/counterfeit-electro ... onents.asp

From here
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/co ... page_2.htm

BusinessWeek tracked counterfeit military components used in gear made by BAE Systems to traders in Shenzhen, China. The traders typically obtain supplies from recycled-chip emporiums such as the Guiyu Electronics Market outside the city of Shantou in southeastern China. The garbage-strewn streets of Guiyu reek of burning plastic as workers in back rooms and open yards strip chips from old PC circuit boards. The components, typically less than an inch long, are cleaned in the nearby Lianjiang River and then sold from the cramped premises of businesses such as Jinlong Electronics Trade Center.

A sign for Jinlong Electronics advertises in Chinese that it sells "military" circuitry, meaning chips that are more durable than commercial components and able to function at extreme temperatures. But proprietor Lu Weilong admits that his wares are counterfeit. His employees sand off the markings on used commercial chips and relabel them as military. Everyone in Guiyu does this, he says: "The dates [on the chips] are 100% fake, because the products pulled off the computer boards are from the '80s and '90s, [while] customers demand products from after 2000."

Intel has set up a Chip fabrication facility in China. I will get to a contact I have in Intel and ask how counterfeiting and IP is protected.

But design and fabrication of chips in China. Please show me news and articles.

[darshhan]

^^Shivji , Chinese do have a homegrown chip development effort going on.It should be mature within some time.While they have not reached the standards of Intel,AMD or NVIDIA, the progress that they have made is nontheless impressive.

The name of this development effort is project godson.Within couple of years they should achieve technology closure.Now whether they go for mass production after that is another question which depends on many other factors , primary among which would be financial viability.May be they will go for some limited production to serve their strategic and defense sectors which are currently served by US chipmakers and hence vulnerable to backdoor attacks.

Another application for project godson chips would be in chinese supercomputers which are also making substantial progress.


But yes there is heavy involvement of western firms like ST Microelectronics for fabrication and even the design can be traced to MIPS Technologies which is a US firm.Even then their effort is commendable because theoretically they will be self reliant in microprocessors within this decade

[darshhan]

darshhan, very disingenuous to mention "substantial progress" in Chinese super computers without mentioning they used NVidia chips, not Chinese-designed or manufactured ones.

You got me wrong.I meant that Chinese are making substantial progress in supercomputing and at a future date they might replace western chips with godson chips.I never said that they are already using these chips in their supercomputers.I am sorry if my wording suggested otherwise.

Infact if you read my post once again you will find that I have emphasized that this is still a research project and it will take some more time before they achieve technology closure.

[Singha]

iirc intel has two test & assembly facility in chengdu not a wafer fab.
the fabs in china are owned by chinese cos.

[Prasad]

Intel has a 65nm fab in Dalian in china.

[Indranil]

Shiv ji, I would not ask you to believe me. Ofcourse Googal unkal knows more than all of us here put together.

I study high performance computing and hence I have to understand the state-of-art of chips. As far as designing the circuitry goes it is not a challenge to just design a circuitry, it is being on the cutting edge. In this field where a circuitry or idea gets obsolete in 2-3 years, it is not difficult to find the circuitry. But knowledge and manpower to extend the cutting edge is somewhat exclusive to the US. Chinese philosophy has traditionally never been on being the cutting edge and they made a headstart in 2001, with Loongson.

Actually there has not been any significant find in microprocessors since pipelining, the dethroning of superscalar architecture and good branch predictors. Today these tech is almost mundane and taught in 4th year courses. We are actually going back in time where we want to move away from CISC machines back to simpler RISC-like cores. The challenge today is how can I rearrange everything such that I can make my wires shorter and thinner, how should I arrange the circuitry so that I can put more cores on a single die (you hear this as so-many-nm-tech). how much cache memory can I cram onboard the processor chip, now that I have a higher bandwidth requirement from many cores and very importantly how can I manage power and dissipate heat.

Another major research area is how can I increase the fabrication yield. I have not touched base on this for some time now, but last I heard it was in the range of 20-40 percent.

To my knowledge, China like India has not invested to research in processor development. 10 papers in the area can't capture a volatile field like this. But when it comes to manufacturing chips, a significant fraction has been offshored to China, whereas related software development has made its way to India. But none of the countries have no where close to the capital invested in research required. Having said that China has a huge headstart over India in this respect. We are not even thinking of it !!!!

Please don't read chips as just processors. Look under your Digital TV or any of your laptops (lenovo, HP, Apple, Dell etc.) and all will have china written over it. It just made economic sense for the companies to set base in China. Economics drives this world (Read Boeing/Airbus moving to China).

You are right about critical equipment not coming out of China till date. However that is changing rapidly. My field is similar, supercomputers were thought of to be exclusive things for the elite. The frames were designed by the same people who designed F1 cars. Specialized hardware which drove speed. But today that has changed, All the the TOP 500 supercomputers today are made of commodity elements and have a AMD or Intel chip made in China.

The trend is similar in bioinformatics, till five years back every body was making custom (and very expensive) machines. Today they are all migrating to commodity products. It is impossible to develop quality programs for every iteration and to keep pace with the speed of growth of commodity products (which becomes twice as better in 1.5 years (Moore's law)). There are people in my lab who are developing parallel programs for such machines. So soon enough, when you open a doctors GE machine you will see a lot of Chinese made stuff inside similar to the things you see in your laptop.

Shivji, I have been here for sometime. I hope you understand that I am not one of the yellow langoti guys. But if you ask me objectively, Indranil, from your POV, ten years from now which country is better placed to be independent of foreign chip manufacturers, I would say it is China without a doubt. What is more the rest of the world will still be dependent on China for economic sense!

P.S.
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/21322/?a=f,
http://www.technologyreview.in/computing/26596/
http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~imarkov/pubs ... tedICs.pdf

[Indranil]

^^^ Actually that is a very important point. China is investing a lot on computers these days. On hardware, software, security and espionage. They are taking baby but significant steps towards self-sufficiency.

Where economy flows, tech will follow. The story in India is different. I hate the lethargy within us. EVERYTHING has to reactive, and EVERYTHING has to be last-minute. Sab thik ho jayega, yaar!

Well a counter point exists. Is India in a position to spend billions on high-tech research yet? May be in five years our economy can start supporting such research, like China's economy of today can.

[NRao]

Perhaps IF that bill passes (and something gets done in a year. yeah) and India recovers a huge chunk via Swiss accounts (per WLeak)?

There seems to be total lack of vision at the higher level ................. ?

Yanha tak pounch gaye to kya fikir?

[NRao]

Slowly Indians are getting a wee bit bolder:

India must keep in mind that China has a gun under its pillow

[shiv]

Please don't read chips as just processors. Look under your Digital TV or any of your laptops (lenovo, HP, Apple, Dell etc.) and all will have china written over it. It just made economic sense for the companies to set base in China. Economics drives this world (Read Boeing/Airbus moving to China).

You are right about critical equipment not coming out of China till date. However that is changing rapidly.

<snip>

Shivji, I have been here for sometime. I hope you understand that I am not one of the yellow langoti guys. But if you ask me objectively, Indranil, from your POV, ten years from now which country is better placed to be independent of foreign chip manufacturers, I would say it is China without a doubt.

Indranil there are several points here that we need to get clear because the same things get repeated time and time again and prevent progress in understanding what I mean and perhaps vice versa also

There are two statements you have made that are made by everyone else when I discuss this topic, both of which I consider redundant and non illuminating with regard to this subject

1) The first statement is to ask me not to look at chips as processors but as thousands of other components. Sorry - but telling me that is a waste of time because I am not looking at China as the source of high end chips but the source of day to day chips embedded in all sorts of items "inside my toaster, coffee maker, cell phone" etc.

These chips are made in China because the companies that made them moved production lines to China to reduce manufacturing costs and increase profit margins. Those chips were all originally designed somewhere else and shrunk into a silicon wafer in a process that finally required cheap labor to reduce costs. Billions of them are produced. In fact so many billions of them are produced in China that China buys them back in boards as scrap, strips them off boards and restamps and recycles them and makes even more money recycling counterfeit chips. These chips have been produced in such large quantities that there is not likely to be any shortage of them for anyone needing them for critical work like making a soosai bomb. They are bought from China because they are so cheap. They are cheap partly because Western workers are overpaid and Chinese are underpaid. That is how the West sells a jacket for $1000 in the West and China can sell a clone for $ 50 and still make a profit. As China progresses (and as India progresses) it is the western worker who will see unemployment or reduction in salary because of the way they structured their finances and laws to enable rampant profiteering. That is why the West is shitting brix.

But when it comes to the design of new, high end chips the story is still slightly different. Even today companies seem to be using cheap labor (software engineers) in a country like India to design new chips and cheap labor in a country like China to make them. Companies like Motorola and Intel who claim that their high end new chip design has significant contributions from India also get their chips manufactured in places like China. For them it is too costly to get the work done by workers in the west - but a significant portion of the profits go to multinational corporate individuals and their shareholders. That is why there is a such a ballyhoo about "Intellectual Property". If IP is protected those companies are protected. If IP is not protected some of those companies are toast. China does not respect Western designed laws on IP - so many are in trouble, but others are making money so all iz vel. Ultimately - a company like Intel retains its highest tech manufacture in the US and that is a symbol of the US's technological leadership - where others have not yet caught up.

2) The second redundant statement that is frequently made is that "China is making rapid progress and will be at point X at time Y". Again this statement is an unnecessary one because I don't think there is a single person on this forum who does not know that.

But seeing how many times the same things are repeated I now realise that "fear of China" is coming from the same reports that are being repeated in the media endlessly and get repeated on here. We really need to see what exactly is to be feared in China and who should fear it. India's fears are not the same as the fears of the west, and just like I see an unconscious (and perfectly well intentioned) statement of American interests mixed up with Indian interests on this forum from well meaning Indian Americans - I am seeing an expression of Western fears about China being mixed up with Indian fears. The reasons that the West fears China are different from the reasons why India should fear China. No differentiation is made when we discuss that on here and the same statements are made again and again.

The west still retains a lot of clout. The highest knowhow in the world is still retained in the laboratories and companies of the West although that leadership is now being eroded (I must say those latter magic words or someone will tell me that as if I don't know) .

From about 1850 to 1960 the west remained the prime source of all technology and manufactured goods. Japan shot to prominence after that. Western companies and Japan - with increasingly prosperous societies of people who were overpaid compared to the rest of the world rapidly filled up their own countries with manufactured goods and needed new markets for continued prosperity. They needed a way of keeping the salaries of their own people high while reducing costs of manufactured goods. That is what led to outsourcing of labor. Unprofitable businesses in the west were wound up and factories were shifted to the turd world. That resulted in a drastic fall in the prices of goods - so that the overpaid people of the West could splurge on low tech foreign labor produced goods (like branded shoes and clothes) and later cars, TVs and Washing machines. Gradually western markets got saturated. Every man woman and child in the West had at least one car and two TV sets and 2 phones.

That is the time when it became necessary to expand foreign markets - and that called for a further reduction and restructuring of prices so even more profits could be made from Western designed goods in foreign markets of the middle east and the turd world. The revolution started with British Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand which became the new manufacturing hubs. Until China took over by undercutting everyone else. China in fact took over when India was still living in the past - in a socialist economy. So when the Chinese started manufacturing western good really cheap, India did not lose. Indian jobs were not lost - it was western manufacturing jobs that were moving to China. Those jobs were being done by Chinese who did not require much of an education. The west was still happy as they were still making money to pay their bloated salaries.

Around this time India found a niche for itself. India had a surplus of english speaking educated people and a relative excess of engineering colleges. These people fuelled the IT revolution. By accepting salaries that were 1/10 of the bloated salaries on the west and doing software jobs India got a piece of the outsourcing action. The West was still happy. They were still making money. Al iz vel.

Al these years China was a military threat to India since Indians always looked back at Chinese actions in 1982 and 65 and 71 and Chinese support for insurgences and Pakistan. China never went off the threat list for India for anyone who has been following events since 1962.

What China has done now is to become an increased threat to the West. China has become an increased threat to the west because the West is feeling undermined at their most vulnerable spot. Western societies in the post WW 2 era have become accustomed to extreme prosperity, profligate consumption and world leadership. Western political systems and politcians derive their power from maintaining this. Over the years the greed to maintain prosperity caused a movement of manufacture to China and an outsourcing of everything abroad. The economic crash of a few years ago was a final nail based on the idea of maintaining great prosperity on a bubble. Western politicians are suddenly finding that all low tech manufacturing has gone to China and a portion of other previously profitable ventures like textiles, TVs cars etc have all moved offshore while the western worker has been paid a humongous salary for working 36 hours a week or less.

There has been an increase in the shrillness and volume of howling from the west about the Chinese threat in the last few years. China has never stopped being a threat to India. China is hardly taking jobs away from India except in low tech Silk and wooden Channapatna toys. Chinese labor is making it cheaper to fund a consumer and information revolution in India. That is actually creating jobs in India. The Chinese threat to India is military and if anyone on BRF does not know that shame on him. It has never been any different.

it is the West that is now seeing an increased military, economic and political threat from China. The west is showing great signs of takleef and on BRF we would do well to see exactly where China is a threat to India and where it is a threat to the West. The nature of the threat is different. The reason is simple. Swallowing a western view of China is akin to swallowing a Western view of Pakistan. It is dangerous for us because the West will, in a trice, set up a war or competition between China and India the way they played Pakistan.

Every time we speak of the "manufacturing threat" of China and China holds "1 trillion US dollars" we are speaking of the new threat of China to the US and west. China is welcome to fight the West. Indians in the West will suffer if the West suffers - but India needs to see what it can leverage from a China-West competition without howling about the fears that the West expresses about China. The west fears of China are predominantly economic and political. The west will in fact aid a Chinese military threat to India to cause competition and they will aid India militarily to threaten China. If India fears the Chinese the way the west fear China - the West stands to gain by feeding India's fears and setting up a military competition that will fund the west's bloated arms manufacturing companies.

We need to look at the China threat very carefully and realise that all we need to do is use a 1st generation missile to nuke China if it is a military threat. Dogfighting with 5th generation aircraft (whatever that means) is unnecessary. But we need to join China in bringing down Western dominance in many areas. For that we need to compete with the West in areas that China is not there yet. And there are such areas. Until we can see our interests different from western interests we will continuously be talking of the threats the west sees and ignore what we have known for 50 years.

Sorry it became so long.

[Indranil]

Sorry for the redundancy. Point taken.

All I wanted to say is that don't look at the chips in your home as different from what you see on an aircraft. Economics and development of chip technology has pushed the use of the "general" purpose and bulk produced chips into specialized hardware.

Take any high tech component today. Fighters, space shuttles, rovers, high end robotic arms, fastest of super computers, submarines, ships, missiles, radar, they all are/have moved to open architecture. LCA flaunts its open architecture! The chips on our fighters are regular chips. The housing is more ruggedized and there is more redundancy at every step. Perhaps the only custom built chips that you would find would be an FPGA programmed and optimized for custom needs.

There is a very definite push, which is driven by economics and because chips become exponentially powerful and cheaper every year. So being able to fabricate "general" purpose chips is going to be a virtue of tomorrow.

I used to work for a hardware company while I was in India. We have the technology to punch very nice PCBs. But beyond that, I don't know. Atleast it was not there a while ago.

[Indranil]

Actually I forgot to mention, in most mission critical components, nobody uses cutting edge chips. IF you look up any of the processors used on the fighters, you would be surprised the processors are from a decade back, something which you would not buy for your laptop!

There is reasoning behind it. This processors get tested throughout and "almost" every departure for 'normal' is characterized. before it is put on a plane.

You are most probably right that nobody would risk putting a Chinese 'designed' chip into a plane yet. But 10 years from now ...

That is because they started 10 years back. We are not even thinking.

[shiv]

Actually I forgot to mention, in most mission critical components, nobody uses cutting edge chips. IF you look up any of the processors used on the fighters, you would be surprised the processors are from a decade back, something which you would not buy for your laptop!

There is reasoning behind it. This processors get tested throughout and "almost" every departure for 'normal' is characterized. before it is put on a plane.

I am sure you are right.

So if we examine the "Chinese threat" here and read all the articles that I searched for yesterday you find that the Western articles have only a feeble excuse for complaining - but they are certainly making a lot of noise about it. And that is because China is hitting at the core of western prosperity. A Western politician who is forced to oversee a drop in salaries (joblessness) in the West that was caused by outsourcing and speculation on a bubble is likely to blame China and say "the Chinese are a threat". If India gets screwed by China it is not a threat for the west. If India survives and prospers but the West gets screwed - then China is a threat. This is an important difference that needs to be noted.

If we swallow the Western line hook line and sinker and quote the Western politicians we are setting up competition on behalf of the West. Just like Pakistan can threaten India with 0.5 gen NoDongs and nukes - India can take care of a Chinese military threat without playing the west's game and fearing China for the same reasons that the west fears China. We need to get out priorities and threat perceptions right. India does not have to match J-20 exactly. Nobody wants to believe it but India is ahead of China in composites and is neck and neck with China in Aero engine development. Electronic Chips for military use as you point out are non critical and available in plenty.

Whenever we speak of the Chinese threat on here we are always mixing up Western fears with Indian requirements. And the howls on here have increased in volume side by side with howls in the Western media and the copycat anglophone Indian media.

[vina]

Godson

Isn't that the celebrated case of a US returned Chinese super start Kampooter YinJinEar who basically took Motorola PowerPC chips, rubbed off the Motorola markings and passed them off as "Godson" , 100% indigenous, Chinese design and manufactured at super cutting edge tech and that was all over the internet and mainstream media ?

If Godson (what a name, cant the chines come up with something better, all the Chinese brand names are dorky and funny to say the least.. Haier (higher?)) is the kind of progress they are making, all I can say is that I welcome that kind of plogress oops, progress!

[Indranil]

We can all decide to belief what we are most comfortable with.

But the fact is that even if they filch or design a circuit which is 5 years behind the curve (this is 2 generations). They can still send it to a fabricating house and get an "indigenous" processor. We can all cry fowl and jump up and down on ethics. They will still have the capability and we don't. We can't change that fact of today!

Added later:
I am not saying ... okay, thats it! End of world is near ... but atleast take notice and start acting ... "sab thik hai" will only lead to a further widening of the gap.

[Singha]

I believe so far whatever fabrication we need for specialized defence oriented IC is being done via singapore or taiwan fabs.
we also seem to have an 'agreement' with germany/EU for specialized radiation hardened kit used in stuff like satellites and rockets.
israeli cos might also have some small fabs for in house products.
but pls correct me if I am wrong.

if the issue is commerical chip sales (incl those used in PC), then yes they are far ahead
if the issue is defence oriented chips and opto electronics, I think we are managing as above. I dont think they are that far ahead in defence oriented designs if at all. no high tech product sales of that nature in international market.

my benchmark would be - if thailand/malaysia/hungary/south africa/brazil type buyers decide to go for a chinese radar / laser pod / AAM / processor

here is the sandpaper case:
http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/1948771/ ... chip-fraud

China rocked by 'sandpaper' chip fraud

by Simon Burns in Taipei

15 May 2006

The revelation that a groundbreaking mobile phone chip is a fake has shocked China, where the home-grown 'invention' had become a source of considerable national pride.

Shanghai's prestigious Jiaotong University announced at the weekend that the Hanxin DSP (digital signal processing) chip had been faked by inventor Professor Chen Jin, who was also the dean of the university's School of Microelectronics.

Rumours of foul play have been swirling around the project for several months, and appear to have provided the impetus for the investigation of Professor Chen.

One anonymous online forum post that began circulating in China in January claimed that Professor Chen had created the original Hanxin chips simply by grinding away the top surface of some of Motorola's Freescale DSP chips with sandpaper and having them reprinted with the Hanxin logo.

The university did not confirm this version of events, but investigators told local media that the chip had used "foreign" technology.

They also said that, contrary to claims by the design team, Hanxin's performance in tasks like media encoding and fingerprint image matching had failed to meet targets.

Professor Chen, a 38 year-old who earned his doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin, has been lauded by the media and feted by China's political leaders during the past three years.

However, he has now been fired from his post and will have to repay millions of dollars in government funds invested in the project, reports say.

Angry comments on Chinese forums and blogs have called for everything from criminal charges to execution for the disgraced academic.
Projects like the Hanxin chip have become entangled with issues of national pride in China.

The country is heavily dependent on expensive foreign technology for its huge, and growing, electronics manufacturing industry. The word 'Hanxin' can be translated as 'Chinese heart' or 'Chinese core'.

Growing dependence on international trade, and membership of the World Trade Organisation, have forced China to adhere more strongly to rules on intellectual property rights.

In recent years the government has been strongly promoting home-grown technology as a way to reduce payments to foreign patent holders like mobile phone chip maker Qualcomm.

Foreign chip manufacturers provided about 80 per cent of the chips used in Chinese-made products last year, earning some $36bn in revenue in the country.

The first version of the Hanxin was unveiled to much fanfare in February 2003, amid proud boasts from political leaders that Shanghai could soon become one of the world's top chip manufacturing centres.

The Hanxin chips could be used in mobile phones and would help China develop its own digital signal processor chip technology without having to pay for foreign intellectual property rights, Ministry of Science and Technology officials told journalists.

IBM planned to use the chip in future products, Chinese media reports claimed last year. However, a search of IBM's China and international websites returns no hits for Hanxin in English or Chinese.

Professor Chen and the university set up a company, Hisys, to develop and market the DSP chip. The Hisys website is currently offline, as are the university's pages about the invention.

Earlier this year, Chen and his 100-strong team began work on a new, more advanced version of the Hanxin. The now-cancelled Hanxin 5 was to be a system-on-a-chip which would combine a CPU with DSP functions.

[jai]

Completely agree. While there is merit in Shiv saar's perspective that we do no need to blindly believe western fears as ours; IMO, we still need to ensure that we are as a nation so strong militarily that the dragon is forced to think many many times before they pick up the courage of a misadventure with India.
What this means definitely is that we need to make our armed forces and economy second to none, get more assertive with regards to our territorial rights and demand them, and treat the dragon like an equal, without warmongering.

To be able to do this with confidence, a realistic assessment of the dragon's capacity is needed. Over hyping or understating Dragons capability will not help and will only lead to either panic reactions/inaction (familiar ?) or overconfidence or arrogance; both counterproductive to our national cause of territorial integrity and peace. This will also need focus on the national interests and careful planning.

The dragon is strong technically and is strongly focussed on technology. They have had a very strong population in US for close to a 100 years now, which is well placed and is now actively pushing for Chinese interests, many of these are technically qualified and experienced people who are now providing leadership in their own fields in a resurgent China. For decades, they have continued to send the highest number of students to top universities (along with India) and have taken their manufacturing to a scale and depth where their technically trained talent is being usefully employed - this is a strength which we must respect, but they also are unethical and will beg, borrow, cheat or steal, which is a huge trust issue globally - this we must make use of.

Right. So are we, in terms of education, economy etc etc, though slow.

Only, we need to step up the pace, of creating more high quality technical educational institutes - why can we not have an IIT, IIM and IIS in each state ?? Maybe two of each - we have perhaps the largest number of students in the world now. Why not similarly have other educational institutes ? Open the economy further - the west does not trust the dragon, why not make use of it to pull more investments in our economy, to create an industrial complex that can rival Chinas.

IMHO, the need is for us to focus on what we need to do as a nation, and execute with passion and excellence, working to our own plans to create all around strength.

[Indranil]

Indranil, aren't you being completely blind to Chip design efforts in India? imho India is now the leading non-US designer of chips.
India and Indians have been involved in chip design for over two decades now, but manufacturing is not what we're looking for. Do you know how many firms in India are involved in chip design and how many folks we employ? Or how many of the top 12-15 firms have established their design houses in India? There lies the answer - we're the brain, and China is the brawn.

I agree to it ... but not in its entirety ... In our 'design' houses are we really 'designing' new chips? I know that there is significant work in TI towards this. Freescale also does considerable R&D in India. My friends in other companies said they never 'design' a new chip. They always 'helped' to design parts of one or validated another. In very candid discussions here, friends here in the US say the "really good" work is hardly off sourced ... it seems there is a trust-deficit, as to whether the folks back at home can deliver the goods (I had a huge fight on this :X) ... it seems researcher mass in India is still nascent ... Therefore research cells in huge companies is really small. I was told that it is changing. I would not suggest anyone to believe this. Just take it at face value of opinion of friends of an arbit guy, But I have got this feedback constantly from friends on both side.

Having said that at least India is developing her mass of designers. There is no denying it. I don't know what is the mass of designers on the other side, but prima-facie it does look like India has an advantage here.

The real question is whether we can convert this base into a Indian firm which can design and sell chips. In first place it is very difficult for the new company to be able to sell a single chip. Who will buy India-made CPUs when AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and ATI would be able to sell the same at 1/10th the price. Such a company will take atleast 20 years of government hand holding. We can see that happening in China. Nobody would buy Chinese made CPUs for the first 20 years. But they are 10 years into that 20 year period. We are not even at 0.

[Prasad]

Atleast until a few years back RTL level stuff was being done in India as well as some layout and design validation stuff. I remember a friend telling me that they do basic blocks design in india too. High level design, architecture and key aspects like clock, power routing and architecture was and is still being done in the US. This isn't being done anywhere else. These are core aspects of any processor and I don't see it going out to another country since this is the cutting edge and leads from research into product. So I doubt this is done elsewhere. For example, in Intel, all this stuff is done in portland alone. If you want to do hardcore circuit design portland is where you want to be.

From friends who're in amd, nvidia, ti I hear a lot of the same. TI does a lot more work than others in india but not much is standalone. But what is truly illuminating is the number of chinese and indians working in these companies. Its almost like singapore. Lots of chinese and indians and a few goras thrown in for the mix in the trenches.

But I know of many small design companies in india that do a lot of work for various american and european companies that I think get their fabrication done in taiwan. Auto, electronic work mainly.

[PratikDas]

^^^ adding to the discussion above...

Indian R&D units add value to chip design

To boot, Intel's India centre has designed the global major's first six-core x86 microprocessor, the Xeon 7400 series. The team had planned and executed end-to-end design including frontend design, pre-silicon logic validation and back-end design. Sources say this was the first time a microprocessor was created in a design laboratory in India but an e-mail questionnaire to Intel remained unanswered.

I guess advertising that a chip is designed completely in India isn't yet good for marketing.

FICCI Higher Education Summit 2008

On the occasion, Dr. Vishakantaiah [President Intel India] shared that the world’s first six core micro-processor has been completely architectured and designed in India and the same machine will be donated to IIT, Kanpur for the purpose of research.

[Singha]

in my opinion the kind of professors/phd candidates who do research cannot convert it into a product that a company can sell. people who can take a bunch of ideas good/bad/ugly/realistic/pieinsky, refine it into even a small product and make it saleable and earning money can be counted on one's fingers in any group of 1000s in any field. I was fortunate enough to be part of such groups twice so far, in one instance as the sole owner of about 40% of it, in one instance as a camp follower but given some independent frontage of the battle to control. its very hard work as opposed to having someone design the overall framework, resolve the ambiguous areas and getting to do a clearly defined part of it...which is the usual model of about 80% work that comes to india ... a "senior guy" in san jose (could be a desi/chini/gora) and a bigger team here. indic managers love that model as it absolves them of the need to be technical - just track status here, hire, enjoy meetings, ...u know the drill

[prabhug]

I my humble opinion.India is ripe to make indigenous chips.I would love to have a FPGA company which can serve us in lot of instances than making specific chips.I have seen the whole of the digital stuff being managed out of India. We lack in analog stuff which we have to be dependent on foreign technology.My feeling was always , in India , most of the research is not directed towards a product .And a meager research funding from the government and from the private sector adds to the woos.Unless these things are plugged in we can't have indigenous system.

Whatever i said was about processors and other logic.When it comes to sensors technology , the whole world looks at US for it.Still it is a black magic US holds it.

I would wish a startup with public pvt partnership FPGA design company which can give our scientists a platform to play with. A national program on sensors design and one for seekers design to our environment.

Cheers

Prabhu.G

[shiv]

To repeat what I know about Chinese military technology- I want to summarize this so that we all know and do not have to repeat these well known facts to each other.

• China is rapidly progressing
• Do not underestimate China
• China is sitting on US$ 1 trillion
• Quantity is quality
• China is manufacturing world class electronics
• You get what you pay for "You wan' cheap. You get cheap"
• Helicopters, Planes, ships and chips may look like copies of Western or Russian stuff, but inside they are all different and far more advanced. The resemblance is purely coincidental.

Having got that out of the way, let me ask, why isn't China trying to sell equipment to India? China exports mostly third rate stuff to India. China wants Indian business, but why not high quality military stuff? Why not exhibit all those radars and targeting pods in Singapore, Dubai or Paris - assuming that the meanie Indians are not allowing Chinese to Aero India?

OK - if India is a strategic rival - then why is China not selling top of the line equipment to others? All right. All right - you say China is selling to Pakistan. And Pakistan can't afford to pay so its gets less than top of the line stuff - or is JF-17 top of the line?

Maybe China feels that if they sell their latest and greatest others will copy their stuff. That is not possible. Nobody does this sort of copying. There are laws against it. No? I mean you buy from someone and sign an agreement and you honor that agreement. So there should be no problem selling top of the line Chinese avionics and weapons systems in exhibitions - to compete with the best in the world no? I mean - I saw - in the last couple of aero India shows - on display AMRAAM, Patriot, Mica, Meteor - you name it - it was there. Now I know that Chinese missiles are equal to the AMRAAM (or at least equal to the American hype about AMRAAM). Why not offer it for sale to friendly countries - like Gulf states. Libya. If Qadhafis forces can shoot down one Rafale with a Chinese AMRAAM equivalent - (what's it called Nanching-786?) - that would be a big trade blow no? And BRFites would brown their dhotis in next to no time. Faster than posting blurry photos of flying crock ery. All for a good cause.

[ashi]

PLAN's cheap knock off, third rate fighters J-15
J-15
J-15
J-15