On Monday, October 30, 2023 at 6:39:50 PM UTC, ltlee1 wrote:
"In 2018 and 2019, Nature sent teams of reporters to countries involved in the BRI to explore the project’s science aspects. We spoke to more than 100 people, including researchers and policymakers, to get a measure of China’s ambition to hugely
expand its international research collaboration, redrawing the global science map. These collaborations were being forged in addition to, not instead of, China’s research links with Europe and the United States.
Those ambitions remain undimmed. The Chinese premier, Xi Jinping, confirmed at the summit that the number of laboratories built across countries participating in the BRI will rise to 100 in the next five years. And a host of international networking
conferences are scheduled for the remainder of 2023 and 2024 that will bring together researchers in fields as diverse as agriculture, intellectual property and nuclear technology.
The difference now is that this is happening as researchers in China and in the United States and Western Europe gradually pull back from one another. National concerns over matters such as espionage, free trade and military threats have spilt over
into restrictions on research.
As geopolitical tensions continue to rise, the world is once again aligning with two poles of power. In these columns we repeatedly make the case for global research collaboration — not least because, without it, there can be no lasting solutions to
the interconnected economic, environmental and political crises we face. These are encapsulated in the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Countries are connected to each other as never before. Researchers need to do all they can to keep
lines of communication open.
In the space of a decade, China has built or upgraded ports in Greece and Sri Lanka and introduced high-speed rail to Kenya and Indonesia. Researchers and students at Tongji University in Shanghai, China, designed the headquarters of the African Union
secretariat in Addis Ababa. China is also co-funding construction of the nearby headquarters of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03299-6
Another offshoot besides the greater scientific collaboration of the BRI: "China is educating engineers around the world"
https://www.economist.com/china/2023/10/19/china-is-educating-engineers-around-the-world
"Chinese officials often talk of the Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure building spree, in hyperbolic terms.
On October 17th and 18th Xi Jinping, China’s leader, hosted a big summit in Beijing to celebrate the tenth anniversary
of what the government likes to call the “project of the century”.
...
Since 2016 China has set up some 27 vocational colleges in two dozen countries, mostly poorer ones. These “Luban
Workshops” (named after a fabled carpenter from the fifth century BC) have trained thousands of students in fields
including artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, railway operations and robotics. One of the newest workshops opened
on September 4th at Meru University of Science and Technology in Kenya.
The purpose is not charity. Luban workshops promote technology and standards that China wants to export to developing
countries. Gear for the new workshop in Kenya will come from Huawei, a Chinese telecoms giant America would like to see
excluded from its allies’ mobile networks, for fear its kit could assist Chinese spying. Huawei (which denies America’s
allegations) helped build Kenya’s mobile network and is now working with its biggest telecoms provider to roll out 5G services.
The workshops also help assuage worries about the Belt and Road. Participating governments sometimes complain that the
companies which win its infrastructure projects rely too much on labour and supplies from China. Several Luban workshops
now provide training directly related to Belt and Road projects. One in Djibouti has trained employees of a new rail line to
Ethiopia.
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