Hong Kong & China IT R&D

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

REPORT:  ATIP95.34 : Hong Kong & China IT R&D.
To: Distribution
From: D.K.Kahaner, [kahaner () atip or jp]
Date: 07/01/95 [MM/DD/YY]
This is file name "atip95.34"


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Date: July 1, 1995
REPORT:  ATIP95.34  Title: Hong Kong & China IT R&D.


ABSTRACT
During the period 3-16 June 1995, I accompanied Prof H.T.Kung (Harvard
Univ) and a delegation of US scientific program managers, on a series of
visits to Hong Kong (where we visited three universities) and to China
(where we visited five universities in three cities, plus the Academia
Sinica). The primary purpose of the visit was to learn about new
developments and the current status of research in Information Technology
(IT), and to open channels of communication and possible collaboration
between scientists at these sites and those in the US. In the following, we
give some details related to the site visits, prefaced by my own summary
and assessment of our observations.


CONTENTS:


1.0 SUMMARY
2.0 HONG KONG (GENERAL)
2.1  CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG (CUHK)
2.2  HONG KONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (HKUST)
2.3  HONG KONG UNIVERSITY (HKU)
3.0 CHINA (GENERAL)
3.1  SINO-AMERICAN JOINT SEMINAR ON THE TRENDS IN INFORMATION SCIENCE
3.2  CERNET
3.3  REMARKS ABOUT HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING IN CHINA
3.4  BEIJING, PEKING UNIVERSITY
3.5  BEIJING, ACADEMIA SINICA
3.5.1  INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY (ICT)
3.5.2  NATIONAL RESEARCH CENTER FOR INTELLIGENT COMPUTER SYSTEMS (NCIC)
3.5.3  INSTITUTE OF SOFTWARE (ISCAS)
3.5.4  INSTITUTE OF COMPUTATIONAL MATHEMATICS AND SCIENTIFIC/ENGINEERING
          COMPUTING (ICM)
3.6  BEIJING, TSINGHUA UNIVERSITY
3.7  SHANGHAI, FUDAN UNIVERSITY
3.8  SHANGHAI, JIAO TONG UNIVERSITY
3.9  HANGZHOU, ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY






1.0 SUMMARY


* In Hong Kong we visited The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology, and The University of Hong Kong.


* In China we visited Beijing University, Tsinghua University, Academia
Sinica, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Fudan University, and Zhejiang
University.


* Concerning Hong Kong, while there are distinct differences between the
orientation in each of the three universities, there is a strong
inclination toward industrially relevant research, and advanced development
projects, all with an eye toward improving the economic and industrial
situation in Hong Kong. This tie to industry is much stronger than in the
US. Some members of the visiting group were concerned about the effect this
would have on basic research, which they view as a key university role. The
newest university in Hong Kong, Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology was impressive in almost every respect, but is still too new to
draw conclusions about.


* Both in Hong Kong and China, there is a heavy emphasis on projects that
are associated with the Chinese language, including Chinese interfaces,
Chinese text and speech processing, handwriting recognition, etc. We saw
this everywhere. The group agreed that this is a vitally important topic
for the development of a computer industry and its applications. But some
members of the visiting group were concerned about the relevance of this
research work in a global context, especially in a university setting.


* Chinese IT scientists are (mostly) aware of the current work in the West.
While there were some examples of old-fashioned research projects, there
were a significant number of up to date ones too, such as video-on-demand,
networking, parallel computing, etc. A tremendous amount of progress has
been made in the past decade in Chinese science, and now many research
efforts are not far behind Western standards, and some are first class.
Much of the research is also industrially oriented, as in Hong Kong. The
most outstanding research, not surprisingly, still comes in topics with a
long history that benefit from analysis rather than hardware, i.e.,
theoretical or analytic. A few projects, looked excellent, and some
software products and prototypes appeared at international levels.


* There are many projects in China oriented toward developing local
capabilities or products. These vary from writing a Chinese interface for
standard software (localization), all the way to totally China-developed.
The latter includes parallel and shared memory computers, parallel software
and tools, and software engineering systems -- all designed and built in
China. Major reasons for this kind of indigenous development include (a)
export restrictions on Western products (mostly hardware), (b) need for
unique Chinese interface, (c) need to internalize and intellectualize new
technology in order to engage in further research, (d) purchase/lease
prices of existing products are viewed as too high for Chinese, (e) unique
Chinese expertise leading to products not available elsewhere. In cases
where Western products are available but home-grown efforts are initiated,
these often start far behind. Without a breakthrough or a new approach,
catching up is very difficult in high tech, fast moving fields such as
advanced computing systems. Nevertheless, it is still possible to develop
useful capability and meet some fraction of local needs, or have very good
price-performance. As one group member put it, "85% of state of the art is
adequate to solve many problems." We saw a few impressive examples of
locally developed state of the art products/projects including software for
publishing, CASE tools, and a few items of system software.


* Networking, especially in China, is an exploding activity, and one that
appears to have a very high priority. (More generally, information science
and technology is a major thrust for the Chinese government, which views
computers and information processing as fundamental to advancement of its
economy. For example, at Tsinghua University in Beijing (one of the top
technical schools in China), more than 700 faculty (1/3 of university) are
involved in computing-related research.) There are plans to network all the
country's universities (more than 1,000) by the end of the decade, although
this is just at an early stage now. Network access to the West is also
improving, but total bandwidth out is still far too low for a country of
this size (there are currently a small number of 64kb lines). A dramatic
increase in this capability will be required. We saw many examples of
expensive, sophisticated network hardware, workstations, routers, and
software, mostly from Western vendors (a few Japanese and Europeans), in
newly built, climate controlled rooms. Much of the equipment has just
arrived and is not yet completely unpacked. Things are changing very
rapidly and the picture will be different even within a few months.
Currently, high telecommunication and travel costs, coupled with low
salaries, means that technical groups may not be able to collaborate as
well as they should. While it is difficult to accurately extrapolate the
impact of all this new interconnection on Chinese science and technology,
as well as on their interaction outside China, the entire group agreed that
there were opportunities for a significant, perhaps even a dramatic, step
forward in S&T activities and output. In other words, China seems poised at
this time to really enter the information age. There is a good chance that
China will be a very significant player in the computer and software fields
within 10 years. One primary determinant will be whether the country can
retain its best people, who are free to emigrate.


* There is considerable interest among Chinese researchers in arranging
collaborations and cooperative projects with US companies, universities, and
Government.


* In China, in addition to networking equipment we saw many
high-performance workstations from Sun, Silicon Graphics, DEC, and IBM.
Much of the equipment is donated or otherwise made available at low cost.
Computer companies, mostly US, and to a lesser extent Japanese, are pouring
into China. There were many, many, major brand and clone PCs, 486s
(especially 486DX2) and some Pentium systems. China also has an active PC
industry and is exporting equipment. While the 486's are probably the best
value for developing economies, it is estimated that 20-25% of 1995 PC
sales will be Pentium-based. We saw remarkably little evidence of market
penetration by Apple, and Dataquest claims that Intel has about 90% of the
market. At the research labs there appeared to be more Unix workstations
than Macs. This is dramatically different from the situation in Japan where
Apple is an excellent seller. Price, software, and flexibility were stated
as the major reasons.






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