China steps up quantum competition with US
▶ Fundamental sector has crucial strategic significance
China is expediting efforts in its competition with the US in quantum computing, a fundamental technology with the most strategic significance in the 21st century – and one where the US hasn’t established an advantage, experts told the Global Times on Sunday.
To narrow the gap and beat the US in the game, China needs to further stress the coordinated development of the whole system, they suggested.
Ren Zhengfei, founder and chief executive of Huawei Technologies, recently claimed that quantum computing would decode blockchain crypto in fast manners.
“Blockchain [crypto] would be decoded quickly when facing quantum computer,” said Ren in an interview “A Coffee with Ren” published on Huawei’s WeChat account on Thursday.
Quantum computing is a more fundamental technology than blockchain, and they will both have significance in the coming Fourth Industrial Revolution, Cong Yi, a professor at the Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, told the Global Times on Sunday.
The global competition in the coming era will be highly intensive, as it will be a competition to manage the incomparably rapid progress of big data processing technologies including artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and blockchain, according to Cong.
China understands that quantum computing technology has even bigger strategic importance with its computing power, and the nation has started a visionary technology promotion, Cong added.
Quantum technologies were highlighted in China’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20).
China has built an advantage against the US in quantum communication, and it is making progress in catching up with the US in quantum computing.
After US technology company Google announced last month that it had achieved quantum supremacy, Chinese scientists made their own breakthrough in the field.
By the end of 2020, China will develop its first quantum prototype computer with completely domestic intellectual property, Guoping Guo, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China and founder and chief scientist of Chinese start-up Origin Quantum, told the Global Times on Sunday.
If a country can win the competition of quantum computing, it will dominate the next industrial revolution, according to Guo.
“A country that achieves success in the technology will gain a leading advantage over other countries, like a steam engine compared with a horse cart.”
The technology is still at the very early stage, and the US has not built an absolute advantage, Guo said, adding that China has largely narrowed its gap with the US in fundamental research but needs to put more emphasis on coordinating the development of the whole system.