China Report

Nanotechnology is developing as a strategic branch of science and engineering in the twenty-first century, a key technology that can fundamentally restructure the technologies currently used in varied industries. Nanotechnology appeals to developing economies as it can provide novel interventions in areas that are of pressing concern such as the environment, water purification, agriculture, energy and so on. Thus, it becomes important to assess the extent to which developing countries are creating capacity in this technology and whether it is providing a ‘window of opportunity’ for them to ‘catch up’ with the developed world. This study highlights the significant achievements by China in capacity creation which is already showing tangible outcomes. Government-affiliated research institutes and universities are playing a leading role in this endeavour and developing novel partnerships particularly with foreign firms. Through the lens of nanotechnology development, the study examines China’s policies, strategies and governance that are helping it to create capacity and make a strong assertion at the global stage in a high-technology area. The study discusses the lessons from China for other emerging economies that are trying to ‘catch up’ using technological intervention.

This article examines Chinese and Manchu-language sources on Sino-Indian contact during the 18th century, concentrating on those—chiefly produced on the basis of intelligence arriving via Xinjiang—that describe ‘Hindustan’. During the 18th century, ‘Hindustan’ was an evolving political and geographic concept for Qing observers. At first used in Chinese transliteration primarily by a small cohort of Chinese Muslim scholars, the term rose to prominence during the empire’s westward expansion in the 1750s. In subsequent decades, geographers, officials, and even the Qianlong Emperor analysed its name, location, historical identity and other characteristics. A central issue in these debates was the relationship between newly-prominent ‘Hindustan’ and older conceptions of ‘India’. The intersection of geographic terms and concepts from multiple linguistic and cultural backgrounds, central to interpretations of ‘Hindustan’, was a general feature in the formation of geographic worldviews during the era of Qing expansion, and an important element shaping Chinese understandings of India in the relatively neglected period between 1650 and 1850.

The inspiration behind the pre-modern bronze round coinage standardised across China by the First Emperor of Qin in the 3rd century BC have remained fairly obscure and are still a contentious issue. We demonstrate in this article that the various theories arguing for an exclusively endogenous impetus behind the spread and development of Chinese round coinage vouched for by many scholars in either East Asia or the West all carry inherent contradictions. In contrast, circumstantial and archaeological evidence in support of partly exogenous origins are mounting. Evidence from the Middle East points to the early invention and wide circulation of round coinage in Lydia, Greece and the Achaemenid Empire. The expansion of the Persians into India in the 6th century BC and the later incursions by Alexander and the Greco-Bactrians in the fourth and third centuries BC all facilitated and may have decisively contributed to India’s adoption of round coinage. Similarly, the flow of ideas, artistic motifs and metallurgic knowhow from West Asia to China via Central Asia had occurred much earlier than the 3rd century BC. Active adoption of foreign (Central Eurasian steppe) customs in the fourth century BC is recorded in Chinese pre-imperial records and confirmed by recent archaeological findings across Eurasia. Ongoing archaeological work in China’s western provinces could further highlight this ancient phase of globalization that, quite literally, still shapes our most fundamental grasp of money.