China leading quantum revolution
More than a decade ago, Chinese physicist Pan Jian-Wei returned home from Europe to help oversee research into some of the most important technology of the 21st century.
At a conference in Shanghai this summer, Pan and his team offered a rare peek at the work he described as a “revolution.”
They spoke of the hacking-resistant communications networks they are building across China, the sensors they are designing to see through smog and around corners, and the prototype computers that may someday smash the computational power of any existing machine.
All the gear is based on quantum technology – an emerging field that could transform information processing and confer big economic and national-security advantages to countries that dominate it. To the dismay of some scientists and officials in the United States, China’s formidable investment is helping it catch up with Western research in the field and, in a few areas, pull ahead.
Beijing is pouring billions into research and development and is offering Chinese scientists big perks to return home from Western labs. China’s drive has sparked calls for more R&D funding in the United States, and helped trigger concerns in the Trump administration that some types of scientific collaboration with China may be aiding the People’s Liberation Army and hurting U.S. interests.
“The United States must be prepared for a future in which its traditional technological predominance faces new, perhaps unprecedented challenges,” the Center for a New American Security wrote in a recent report about China’s quantum ambitions.
Quantum technology seeks to harness the distinct properties of atoms, photons and electrons to build more powerful tools for processing information.
Last year, China had nearly twice as many patent filings as the United States for quantum technology overall, a category that includes communications and cryptology devices, according to market research firm Patinformatics. The United States, though, leads the world in patents relating to the most prized segment of the field – quantum computers – thanks to heavy investment by IBM, Google, Microsoft and others.
Helping oversee China’s program is Pan, whom Chinese media call the “father of quantum.” From his labs at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), in Shanghai and Hefei, the 49-year-old leads a team of 130 researchers. In 2017, the journal Nature named him one of “ten people who mattered this year,” saying he had “lit a fire under the country’s efforts in quantum technology.”
Pan occasionally gives lab tours to President Xi Jinping, who takes a keen interest in his work, according to Chinese media. Pan is also overseeing plans for a new national lab for quantum research in Anhui province, which he said had drawn about $400 million in government funding.
At the Shanghai event, Pan illustrated his slide presentation with science-nerd jokes about Einstein and Star Trek. In a nod to Schrödinger’s cat – a 1930s thought experiment that helped define a quantum concept called superposition – Pan used images of a cartoon feline standing upright and lying flat on its back.
“As we all know, in our everyday life, a cat can only either be in an alive or dead state,” Pan said, but “a cat in the quantum world can be in a coherent superposition of alive and dead states.”
He was making the point that quantum particles, also known as quantum bits, differ fundamentally from the bits in today’s technology. Existing computers and communications networks store, process and transmit information by breaking it down into long streams of bits, which are typically electrical or optical pulses representing a zero or one.
Quantum bits, or qubits, which are often atoms, electrons or photons, can exist as zeros and ones at the same time, or in any position between, a flexibility that allows them to process information in new ways. Some physicists compare them to a spinning coin that is simultaneously in a heads and tails state.
In his talk, Pan detailed how China is harnessing qubits to safeguard its communications from hacking – one of the fields in which China appears to have a lead over the West.
Pan and his team are aiming to launch a constellation of satellites and a nationwide fibre-optic network that use qubits to securely transmit information. An almost 1,300-mile fibre link connecting Beijing, Shanghai and other cities is already up and running. So is a satellite China launched in 2016, which has conducted several prominent experiments, including facilitating a hacking-resistant video conference between Beijing and Vienna.
When the network is complete, it could complicate U.S. efforts to eavesdrop on China’s government or military communications, some Western scientists say.
“I predict China will go black in two to three years – we won’t be able to read anything,” said Jonathan Dowling, a physics professor at Louisiana State University who spends part of the year as a visiting faculty member at USTC in Shanghai.
Others argue that even if China’s network equipment is more secure, it could still be hacked by manipulating the humans running the system.
If the technology gains traction globally, China could be in a strong position to sell it, given the large number of patents its universities and companies have registered for devices and technology relating to quantum communication and encryption, according to Patinformatics.
Pan has credited Edward Snowden for motivating China’s quantum research. The former National Security Agency contractor’s revelations about NSA eavesdropping led China to pour money into developing more secure communications, Pan has said in published interviews.
Barry Sanders, a Canadian physicist from the University of Calgary, spends two to three months a year as a visiting professor at the USTC labs in Shanghai. He got the job through China’s Thousand Talents program, which recruits Western scientists for teaching and research stints, and offers incentives to persuade Chinese researchers to return home from overseas.
Sanders said China’s cultural differences can provide advantages in the lab.
“I have my Western way of doing things – freedom of thought, take risks,” he said. In China, there is more emphasis on the common good, he said. “One guy spent two years really focused on how to prepare the lab room. You can assign people these tasks – they will do something that in our world would be seen as beneath us. But here they are supported and held in high esteem.”
Quantum computers might someday be able to crack all existing forms of encryption.
Quantum sensors could help the Chinese military track and target enemy troops with greater precision.
The university where Pan works, USTC, has established several quantum-research partnerships with state-owned defense companies in recent years, with aims that include enhancing the combat capability of naval vessels, according to Chinese media reports cited in the Center for a New American Security paper.
“China’s national advances in quantum communications and computing... will be leveraged to support military purposes,” according to the paper’s authors, Elsa Kania and John Costello, who reviewed hundreds of Chineselanguage media, government and technical reports.
Scientists who have discussed the field with U.S. government officials say the Trump administration has recently expressed concern about the number of Chinese students pursuing studies in the United States in sensitive areas such as quantum science.
“We’ve always encouraged the best and brightest to come from overseas, and it’s always served our nation well,” said John Preskill, the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology, who has advised the government on quantum-tech issues. “But there is concern in government about how we are training all these people, and a lot of them are going back to China and competing in technologies that have implications for national security. And we’re talking about what to do about it.
“Many of us in academia, although we know there are complicated issues, are inclined to continue encouraging Chinese students to come,” Preskill said, “but there is a continuing discussion in the government about what’s the best policy for doing that.”
In an opinion piece this month, two U.S. university associations said their members were strengthening security protocols and building closer relationships with the FBI and intelligence agencies, after hearing “increasing concern” from the federal government about “foreign interference” in university research.
They also praised the contributions of Chinese students and faculty, and said the United States must continue to welcome them.