Page 304 - DCAP404 _Object Oriented Programming

Unit 13: Working with Files

The author concedes that more science and scientific discovery will occur outside the US, Notes
in new government and university labs in China and India, and in the corporate labs of
Japanese and South Korean companies. “While we have grown accustomed to science
flowing west across the Pacific, our true shift in consciousness will not be realised until we
internalise how much we can learn and gain from collaboration with Asia by meshing our
software advantage with Asia’s emerging hardware strengths.”
Source Code

A section on ‘the hardware and software of innovation’ avers that Asia is underdeveloped
in the software aspect, which includes both the specific organisations and relationships
that structure innovation and the underlying cultural framework, the ‘source code.’
A dismal story narrated in the section is of Chen Jin, the dean of the School of
Microelectronics at Shanghai Jiaotong University, who became a national hero in 2004 for
his work on the Hanxin chip, China’s first digital signal processing computer chip. “The
chip, which can be used in modems, cellular phones, high-capacity hard disks, digital
cameras, and digital TVs, is critical to China’s drive to become the preeminent player in
information technology markets… The Chinese press praised Chen as a patriot, particularly
since he had left a good job at Motorola to return to China.”
The Ministry of Education made Chen a ‘Yangtze River Scholar,’ the highest academic
award given by the Government of China, and the government support for his research
totalled more than 100 million yuan, one learns.
Pressures on Scientists

Alas, the chip was a fake; for, when Chen left Motorola, he had taken a chip with him, and
then scratched the name off it to stamp Hanxin thereon, the book recounts. “Until an
assistant exposed him, Chen used connections of various universities and bribed
government officials to receive fake certifications of design and testing. After the fraud
was revealed, the university removed Chen, and he was required to return the investment
funds.”
The author observes that it is not easy to be a scientific star in China. He notes that
celebrity professors like Chen face extraordinary pressure to produce tangible outcomes,
after having been lured home with promises of cutting-edge equipment and brand-new
labs staffed by eager graduate students, showered with attention by the media, and feted
by a government that desperately wants its own technology to compete with Western
standards. “A scientist who is unable to come up with the goods might be tempted to
plagiarise or falsify research results… Fraud and plagiarism are prevalent because of a
lack of accountability and effective oversight in Chinese society.”
Culture of Collaboration
Instructs Segal, therefore, that regardless of how fervently China races to build the hardware
of innovation, we should not mistake the inputs to the innovation process for actual
innovation. An insightful quote of Cheng Jing, CEO of Beijing biotech company Capital
Biochip, reads thus: “To construct a research building takes a year. To fill it with something
really meaningful easily takes ten to twenty years.”

The author explains that a country can build labs, invest money, enrol students, and
recruit prominent professors; yet, these steps will not produce the intended results when
there is no respect for the rule of law and intellectual property rights, as well as a culture
of individual initiative and openness.

Contd...

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