I think the title of this thread: "
China rapidly narrows technology gap with S. Korea" is
outright wrong and misleading by itself.
TECHNOLOGY encompass so many aspects...
Just explain how the KOR is leading in these fields nowadays???
- AEROSPACE INDUSTRY: rockets, satellites, space stations, docking technologies, remote sensing, space explorer, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), in short just anything related to the aerospace... then the Quantum Technologies
- MILITARY TECHNOLOGIES: anything from air, sea, undersea, land to space
- HIGH-SPEED RAILWAY INDUSTRY, also incl. the non-HSR (just look at the world's highest railway: Qinghai-Lhasa line, how can KOR ever have a project like this)
- INFRASTRUCTURE: BRIDGES, TUNNELS, Undersea Tunnels (how can KOR ever have a project like HK-Macau-Zhuhai); DAMS (Three-Gorges Dam everyone), ROAD BUILDING (look at the Karakoram Highway etc); SEAPORTS (I recall someone at PDF did mention that the Chinese companies do supply about 90% of the seaport's heavy equipment around the world); AIRPORTS (look at Beijing newest airport); SUBWAY constructions, etc
- POWER GENERATION PLANTS: various modes from the "Green Technologies" to the fossil-powered ones to the NUCLEAR power generation
- COMPUTING TECHNOLOGIES includes but not limited to the Supercomputing ones... personal computing, portable computing, medium servers and enterprise levels etc
A handy read:
"10 Years Later, Looking Back at the IBM-Lenovo PC Deal" at PC Magazine - some excerpt at below:
I recently spoke with Peter Hortensius, who is Lenovo's CTO and a senior vice president who joined Lenovo as part of the executive team that came from IBM. He told me that Lenovo's dedicated focus on delivering innovative products and being willing to branch out in new areas is key to its growth.
Last year, it bought Motorola and IBM's server business, adding new breadth to its product offerings. Although relatively new to the smartphone wars, over the last five years, Lenovo becamse the No 3 smartphone vendor in China and No. 4 globally. It is also the No. 1 PC vendor in the world with an extremely strong position in China in business and consumer PCs.
[...]
Any one feels free to add up.... just need too much resources to cover it comprehensively
LOL
What I clearly see is CHINA has the resources that the South Korea does NOT have and WILL NEVER have!
SIZE (geographic; scale of economy), financial resources, human resources, natural resources... if the South Korea does still maintain some leads in some particular narrow fields such as Display Technologies; Semiconductors etc... China is catching up rapidly in those sectors.
On the other hand I don't see how the South Korea can ever catch up in the
Aerospace Industry;
HSR and so on... the South Korea simply does not have the scale of economy to jump in those sectors,
after all the South Korea is just a medium to small country,
look at its landmass and population... how can it exceed over a nation as huge and determined and effectively managed as China in
OVERALL technological field?
Perhaps 10 or 20 years ago it
might be true (yet in aerospace and rocketry fields since China had the genius, Mr. Qian Xuesen, China never lag behind the KOR) but no more today except in few particular narrow fields yet at the same time the South Korea lacks behind in many other technological fields as briefly mentioned above.
One article above mentioned that the KOR still has some lead over CHN in Shipbuilding, but I don't see KOR engages in any DEEP-SEA submersible like Jiaolong and so on. And If CHN keeps on building aircraft carriers, helicopter carriers and so on, how can KOR maintain its lead in [overall] shipbuilding industry??? The one by Bloomberg is misleading for it leaves out many fields of technologies and just covers those limited sectors whereas KOR is perceived as leading, still in some fields like IoT, Network etc its accuracy is highly dubious!
Look! How big the Korean Peninsula is!