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News from China

China leads the world’s fastest supercomputers

14th November 2017

ONCE again, China dominated a new list of the world’s fastest supercomputers, not only taking the top two seats, but also pulling ahead of the United States in the sheer number of systems being used.

According to a biannual ranking of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers, called the Top500 published yesterday, China’s Sunway TaihuLight maintains the lead as the No. 1 system for the fourth time, with a performance of 93.01 petaflops.

China’s Tianhe-2, or Milky Way-2, is still the No. 2 system at 33.86 petaflops. Intel chip-based Tianhe-2 had topped the list for three years until it was displaced in November 2015 by TaihuLight, which was built entirely using processors designed and made in China.

Switzerland’s Piz Daint, which is also the most powerful supercomputer in Europe, is No. 3. A new system in Japan, called Gyoukou, is No. 4, pushing Titan, the top US system, to No. 5.

“For the second time in a row there is no system from the US under the Top 3,” Top500 said in a statement.

And that’s not all. The 50th edition of Top500 ranking also shows that China has overtaken the US in the total number of ranked systems by a margin of 202 to 144. Just six months ago, the US. led with 169 systems, and China with 159.

“It is the largest number of supercomputers China has ever claimed on the TOP500 ranking, with the US presence shrinking to its lowest level since the list’s inception 25 years ago,” Top500 said.

“China now clearly shows a substantially larger number of installations than the United States.”

China has also overtaken the US in aggregate performance as well, claiming 35.3 percent of the TOP500 flops, with the US at second place with 29.8 percent.

When it comes to companies making these systems, US-based Hewlett-Packard Enterprise leads in the number of installed supercomputers at 123, which represents nearly a quarter of all TOP500 systems.

China’s Lenovo followed HPE with 81 systems, down from 88 systems on the June list, and another Chinese company called Inspur jumped to the third position with 56 systems, up from sixth place and 20 systems only six month ago.

Liu Jun, Inspur’s high performance computing general manager, said China and its research institutes and companies have invested a lot in supporting HPC research, development and innovation.

“So China has improved greatly in its HPC competitiveness and performance,” he said. “In addition, the United States and Europe may have a more prolonged update cycle for their supercomputers.”

Liu cautioned that China’s overtaking of the US in the total number of ranked systems didn’t make too much sense.

“We should be soberly aware that core technologies of the mainstream products on the HPC market, such as CPU and GPU, are now still being dominated and controlled by US companies,” Liu said.

“China still lags far behind when compared with the US and Europe and requires continuous efforts for further development,” Liu said.

Experts also predicted that Summit, a system now being developed by the US Department of Energy, could dethrone China’s TaihuLight next year, with an expected performance of 200 petaflops.

Source: Shanghai Daily, November 14, 2017

Singles Day nets Alibaba US$25.4b

13th November 2017

E-COMMERCE giant Alibaba said its Singles Day sales extravaganza hit US$25.4 billion on Saturday, smashing last year’s record and cementing it as the world’s biggest shopping event.

Once a celebration for China’s lonely hearts, Singles Day has become an annual 24-hour buying frenzy that exceeds the combined sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States.

As tills shut at midnight on Saturday, Alibaba’s live sales ticker registered 168.3 billion yuan (US$25.4 billion), up 39 percent from 120.7 billion yuan a year earlier. The dollar figure was up more steeply due to the strength of the yuan against the US currency.

At the peak, 256,000 payments were being processed per second on Saturday, the firm said, more than 90 percent of them placed via mobile devices.

Alibaba’s rival JD.com, whose shopping season kicked off on November 1, reported 127.1 billion yuan of accumulative sales over the 11-day period.

Singles Day began soon after a star-studded event in Shanghai late on Friday. As midnight hit, a deluge of pre-orders helped drive a billion dollars of sales on Alibaba’s platforms in the first two minutes and US$10 billion in just over an hour.

“In terms of scale it just dwarfs any other event out there,” said Ben Cavender, Shanghai-based principal at China Market Research Group.

At just past the halfway mark, the headline gross merchandise volume swept past last year’s dollar total just shy of US$18 billion. Shortly afterward, sales surpassed the 2016 total in the local currency.

The event gets shoppers around China scouting for bargains and loading up their online shopping carts, while delivery staff — and robots — brace for an estimated 1.5 billion parcels expected over the next six days.

“This is a big event for China, for the Chinese economy,” said Joseph Tsai, Alibaba’s co-founder and vice chairman. “On Singles Day, shopping is a sport, it’s entertainment.”

Tsai said rising disposable incomes of China’s “over 300 million middle-class consumers” was helping drive the company’s online sales — and would continue. “This powerful group is propelling the consumption of China,” he said.

The final total — more than the GDP of Iceland or Cameroon — leaves other shopping days in the shade. Cyber Monday in the US saw US$3.45 billion in online sales last year.

Investors closely watch the headline number, though some analysts say the way it is calculated is too opaque. The US Securities and Exchange Commission launched an investigation into Alibaba’s accounting practices in 2016, including its Singles Day data. That investigation is as yet unresolved.

Last year, the sales number rose by nearly a third at the eighth version of the event — though that was slower than the 60 percent increase logged in 2015.

At Alibaba’s Friday night gala, the company’s co-founder and Chairman Jack Ma hosted guests including actress Nicole Kidman, singer Pharrell Williams and Chinese musicians and film stars including Zhang Ziyi and Fan Bingbing.

The excitement around the shopping blitz, however, masks the challenges facing China’s online retailers such as Alibaba and JD.com, which are having to spend more to compete for shoppers in a broader economy where growth is slowing.

“A lot of the lower hanging fruit has been picked and there’s increased competition for a share of consumer spending,” said Matthew Crabbe, Asia-Pacific research director at Mintel.

Online retailers are being forced to push offline sales as well as go overseas to attract new shoppers, and the overall online retail market was close to “saturation,” raising questions about whether the current rapid growth can be sustained.

“They’re having to spill over out of the purely online realm into the wider consumer market,” Crabbe said.

This has sparked deals to buy brick-and-mortar stores in China, and overseas tie-ups especially in Southeast Asia.

Alibaba turned 100,000 physical shops around China into “smart stores” for this year’s event. Goods perused by people at the stores, but bought and paid for on Alibaba’s platforms, were added to the sales total.

Fu Wenyue, a 23-year-old dresser in Shanghai, said offers this year were smaller but more “personalized” as brands used Big Data to hone their targets. Fu spent 4,000 yuan on clothes, cosmetics and kitchen utensils in pre-event sales, and kept shopping on the day.

“I think I spent even more than I did last year,” she said.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, accuse Alibaba and other e-commerce companies of fueling a culture of excessive consumption and mountains of waste.

Greenpeace said Singles Day deliveries last year created 130,000 tons of packaging waste — less than 10 percent of which was recycled.

It said e-commerce is more carbon-intensive than brick-and-mortar shopping, calling Singles Day a “disaster for the environment.”

Source: Shanghai Daily, November 13, 2017

China’s jet in long-distance test

10th November 2017

CHINA’S domestically produced passenger jet, the C919, will make its first long-distance flight today, leaving Shanghai for northwest China’s Shaanxi Province to undergo further tests.

It will take off from Pudong International Airport and fly to the Yanliang Testing Base in Xi’an.

Cai Jun, who captained the aircraft’s maiden flight, said it will fly at a height of 7,800 meters and complete the 1,400-kilometer journey in around three hours.

Shanghai-based Commercial Aircraft Corp of China (COMAC) has said it will produce six test aircraft, with the second expected to make its maiden flight before the end of the year.

The first C919 completed its maiden flight in May and has now made a total of five test flights. It will remain at the Yanliang base to undergo more tests to acquire airworthiness certificates.

“We have prepared a detailed work plan to ensure the safety of the flight from Shanghai to Yanliang,” Cai said.

Global access for the C919 will be boosted by a Sino-US aircraft certification agreement signed last month, COMAC said yesterday.

The agreement between the Civil Aviation Administration of China and the US Federal Aviation Administration will widen mutual recognition of each country’s aviation products.

“It is an essential step for the C919 to enter the international market,” Wu Yue, C919 project general manager, told China Central Television. “The certification environment for the C919 will surely get better, because FAA certification has been recognized by many nations.”

Under the agreement, the FAA will certify the importation of the aircraft or plane parts from China, apart from some technical evaluations, on the basis of CAAC certification documents.

The European Aviation Safety Agency has also said it is in the process of certifying the C919.

Airworthiness certifications from FAA and EASA have long been the market threshold for the global civil aviation industry.

The C919, which has 168 seats and a range of about 5,000km, will compete with the updated Airbus A320 and new-generation Boeing 737.

Source: Shanghai Daily, November 10, 2017

Trump visits China

9th November 2017

Chinese President Xi Jinping said Thursday the Sino-US relations are "at a new historic starting point."

"China is willing to work together with the United States to respect each other, stick to mutual benefit and reciprocity, focus on cooperation, and manage and control differences," Xi said during talks with visiting US President Donald Trump.

Since Wednesday afternoon, the two presidents have had in-depth exchange of views on bilateral ties and issues of common concern, and reached broad consensus, he said.

"We believe the Sino-US relations concern not only the well-being of both peoples, but also world peace, prosperity and stability," Xi said.

The presidents also agreed that cooperation is the "only correct choice" for China and the United States, and a better future would only be achieved through win-win cooperation, according to Xi.

"There can be no more important subjects than China-US relations," Trump said at the talks. "We have a capacity to solve world problems for many years to come."

Xi said US President Donald Trump's visit is "successful and historic," and their meetings have "pointed the direction and drawn a blueprint for the future development of bilateral ties."

Xi said he and his US counterpart Donald Trump have reiterated firm commitment to achieving denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and solving the nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiation.

Source: Xinhua Editor: Wang Qingchu

Source: Xinhua, November 9, 2017

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