China's star scientist:China is far ahead of the US in electromagnetic technology

[AViet]

One thing should always be kept in mind: The Chinese are very conservative and careful people. They will say things when they are firm about it. This is deep in their DNA. Western people (Indian and many other non-East Asian included), by historical experience, says things even when they are still not sure about it.

There are Chinese who brag and there are humble Westerners and Indian, but that is the general concept to begin with.

Therefore, when I hear about a news, if there is no reliable source to prove whether it is right or wrong, generally I still trust Chinese (except political issues of course, which every government lies) much more than Western.

 

[Sarthorael]

Don't trust any mainstream media source on tech. Those reporters are not scientifically literate enough to differentiate EM technology with FEP(full electric propulsion), especially in Chinese abbreviation.
In the interview, Ma was literally talking about the 2nd generation medium voltage DC integrated FEP technology. It was developed in China before 2013 yet still regarded as future technology in the west. Ma said China is 15 years ahead of US in this area. As an naval official, he is responsible for his formal remarks in front of state media. Therefore I tend to believe 15 years is convincible if not conservative.
Despite well known as Chinese EMALS developer, Ma Weiming's major contribution is in ship FEP area. Currently he is working on 3rd generation FEP system. The next generation will try to explore the application of high-speed induction generator for ship propulsion. From the leaked slide from PLA Naval University of Engineering, some prototype or testbed has been built.

 

[samsara]

I regard Ma Weiming as a brilliant scientist on peer with the late Qian Xue Sheng, they are/were the "national treasure" of China.

Qian Xue Sheng was a Chinese scientist working in USA during WW2 and came back to China to jump start China's space programe. He was one of the three founders of JPL (Jet Propulsion Lab) that started NASA's space programe.

The CORRECT name is Qian Xuesen 钱学森

There's a good BIOPIC of Qian Xuesen 钱学森 (or Hsue-Shen Tsien as he's more widely known in the Western publications), released in 2012, previously this hard-coded CN-EN bilingual movie can be found in youtube but now all HQ ones are gone luckily the torrent keeps a good copy at even higher resolution (4.36 GB). Just search for its hash code: 269D8BEF56F10D3D066EBE33832BDF51BA1C790D
(it's worth of one's viewing time if not yet,... among others it tells the background story behind China's nuke program in 1960s.)

Witnessing the dynamics of China's aerospace today brings a good remembrance of this great scientist (in fact Mr. Qian was one of the greatest scientists in the world in the 20th century). China owes this man a lot for its great achievements in rocketry incl. missiles & satellites and aerospace programs in general!