How the U.S. and China Compete in Planes, EVs, Chips and More | WSJ U.S. vs. China

from Jets to electric vehicles and supercomputers the US is fighting to lead the world in a variety of Industries especially against China we break down how American technology engineering and science stack up against its Chinese competitors our first story is about China's first homegrown narrow body Jet and how it compares to Western standards like the Boeing 737 this is comac c919 China's first homegrown narrow body jet that's been in the works for more than a decade this is a 737 Max 8 Boeing's popular narrow body plane among Airlines worldwide this type of plane can cover lots of domestic and InterContinental routes accounting for more than half of the global passenger aircraft Fleet and that's a big reason why Beijing hopes its own model can compete with Western giants like Boeing and become the main carrier at home eventually one day taking on the global airspace so we compare the design and Technology of both planes to see how China's deep Reliance on Western Parts could sign the beijing's ambition to challenge its U.S rival Boeing has more than 100 years of experience with commercial Aviation China in comparison started exploring the industry in the 1970s but for several decades wasn't able to develop its own airliner so Boeing became one of China's go-to companies in China Boeing has had a great couple decades Richard abulafia is managing director with aerodynamic advisory and Aerospace and defense consultancy based in Michigan for more than 30 years he's been tracking Global Aviation markets with Boeing as one of his main focuses if you look back at China economic growth and air travel demand growth it really took off in the 90s and sometime in the 2000s that began to translate into very large jetliner sales numbers Boeing strutliner sales hit a record high in 2017. the American Giants sent more than 200 planes to China that's about a quarter of all its deliveries that year it also has a 737 completion and delivery plan there today about 40 percent of China's passenger Fleet comes from with more than half of the planes held by the European giant Airbus which also has an assembly plant in China so in order to reduce its Reliance on the two Western jetliners the Chinese government has been focused on comac which was established in 2008 and Chinese president Xi Jinping has especially been keen on creating a domestic airliner yeah University China hasn't revealed how much it's invested in comac but some Aerospace analysts estimate that the state-owned company has received somewhere between 49 and 72 billion dollars in government Aid that was and is a national goal for uh for China to be able to compete against the U.S and Boeing Alex krutz is managing director with U.S based Aerospace consulting firm Patriot industrial partners and he's been following comex programs for about seven years ultimately designing and building a successful commercial our aligner is is very technologically advanced for countries to be able to do so to develop a successful commercial airliner China has been eyeing Western designs like Boeing the two jets are both narrow bodies with a single aisle they're also about the same size and carry a similar number of passengers even the engines aren't too different they're from CFM which is a joint venture between General Electric and Safran of France and they're very similar engines with roughly similar levels of Technology both engines are models from the leap 1 series from CFM leap 1B is for Boeing leap 1C is for comac but the max 8 and the c919 need more than just the engines to take off they need other systems like the mechanical mechanical systems landing gears or Management Systems avionics for the cockpits these components and their supply chains have played a big role in establishing Boeing as an industry leader over the years with Decades of experience the American company has developed steady relationships with its partners and suppliers at home and abroad and most of them are close allies of the US it's very much an international creation Boeing's major International Partners Japan Britain France Canada Italy Germany and many others those Partnerships have helped Boeing secure some of the most Advanced Technologies for its aircraft like the cockpit which is the brain of the plane Commack also needs a global supply chain to put the c919 together especially from American and European companies but Aerospace analyst say some foreign suppliers have been reluctant to provide state-of-the-art components over concerns about their intellectual property this is saddled the c919 with older technology than the 737 Max 8 and even the Airbus 320 Neo but this may not be the biggest risk to the comac project there's this I guess sword hanging over the 919 and a lot of it does come down to geopolitics the U.S has long accused China as seeking to steal Advanced Technologies for use in its military which Beijing repeatedly denied in January last year the Trump Administration added comac to a list of companies that it said supported China's military curbing the plane manufacturer's access to American Technology and funding comac was later removed from President Biden issued a new list the Chinese company didn't respond to a request for comment about The Blacklist and concerns over IP infringement as well as whether geopolitical tensions could pose a risk to its c919 program even if these vulnerabilities was sourcing critical western parts disappeared Aviation experts say Comax still has other challenges learning how to build it conforming that is to say each article is exactly the same as the previous one that's a major challenge that's one of the easiest places to stumble and another stumbling block if and when China goes Global the lack of a worldwide support system for operators to obtain c919 spare parts or receive maintenance and repairs at the service it aftermarket support for the airplanes so there's vast networks that Boeing has that comac has to develop for Boeing the U.S giant also has its own problems especially in the Chinese market as trade tensions broke out between the U.S and China in 2017 Beijing froze nearly all orders and deliveries of Boeing's Plains since early 2019 the country has also kept the 737 Max grounded after two fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia Boeing says it continues to work with global regulators and customers to safely return the 737 Max and seize China as an important market for the company's commercial planes urging dialogue between Beijing and Washington despite the challenges comac is moving forward the c919 marked a major milestone in September towards carrying passengers and the company has plans to develop a wide body plane as well but for comeek to rival Boeing it'll be a long and perhaps bumpy flight ahead [Music] this is Tesla's model 3 sedan and it's the cheapest Tesla Model in China and this is byd Seal sedan it looks very similar and it's one of the company's most expensive models but with this range china-based byd has closed in on Tesla's share of the EV Market in China China accounts for more than half of all EVS sold globally in 2022 and any company that can own this Market will have an advantage on dominating the growing industry there's a potential here for new General Motors for new Fords to emerge and for China to be a dominant player we compared byd and Tesla's business strategy Technology and Manufacturing to understand whose position to win to see byd's rapid growth in China just look at retail sales charts byd which is backed by Warren Buffett jumped from 13th Place in 2021 to the top spot in 2022 in that time its overall sales more than tripled hitting 1.86 million cars that's some half a million more cars than Tesla we have a lot of respect for the car companies in China they are the most competitive in the world in terms of volume the top car company producing EVS in China is definitely byd the caveat is that it's not a cool EV brand yet and that's why they introduce a new series of cars with specs that car commentators would say matching Tesla's model 3. so while this seal sedan sells for roughly thirty thousand dollars some byd models sell for half that with most models having an all-electric or plug-in hybrid option their strategy is really to ensure that consumers have options Tesla's Fleet on the other hand is all electric unlike byd it's mainly positioned as a premium vehicle a revolutionary bet from the beginning there was a kind of a belief among traditional car companies that somebody who would want an electric car was going to be motivated by economic concerns the cost of gasoline their thesis was let's start at the top let's make a cool a sexy car that appeals to luxury buyers for the most part that bet has paid off if you look at each company's profit margins you can see Tesla exceeds byd the company sells less vehicles with a higher profit margin but in early 2023 Tesla slashed prices for its two most popular electric car models reducing prices in China by as much as 13 the company said the cuts were possible through engineering Innovations and cost controls but these Cuts also came just before China began withdrawing decades-long subsidies for Ev buyers it's time now for the market to become more mature smaller companies that were not profitable but who depended on these subsidies and need to be able to do more to stand on their own Tesla might have the marketing power to whether the subsidy crash but byd has its own strength production specifically battery production this is just a sample of some businesses that byd operates as you can see it's far more vertically integrated byd has three main areas of business it produces cars it produces batteries for its car and it also produces chips before byd was an electric vehicle company its main focus was batteries and this battery branch of its business ensures stability along the supply chain even while disruptions plagued its competitors compare that to Tesla which continues to Source the majority of its batteries from outside suppliers there's been this tension around Tesla from the get-go over its ability to get cells the idea was to be buying so many of them from suppliers that they would have pricing advantage and they could get the cost down it hasn't come down as much as they wanted or much as they thought but it has come down dramatically although the US government is investing in this area of business even producing the raw and intermediate ingredients that compose battery cells requires Outsourcing when you think about where the ingredients for these cells come from it's largely a China game at this point I think about lithium something like 70 percent of it is refined in China it's kind of worrisome to people here in the U.S byd uses its own blade battery which is a lithium iron phosphate battery known as lfp the lfp battery is the primary EV battery in China and is generally viewed as a cheaper option since it doesn't use the costly elements nickel and Cobalt but it comes with a trade-off the batteries range range is a real issue for U.S consumers there is this mindset that there just might be a reason why you need to go 300 miles or more in a trip and so that's one of the the big kind of differences between the China and the US market in line with Market preference Tesla's standard range models in China also use an lfp battery its version is made by Chinese maker catl but its long range models still use an NCM based battery that's nickel Cobalt manganese some even include aluminum it's more expensive but can charge a car for longer distances and in the US Tesla primarily uses this type of battery but this may be changing Tesla is taking a page out of the Chinese Market's Playbook using lfp batteries in lower cost models so even as Tesla invests in its own battery production in the US it'll still depend on Chinese resources for some time the final challenge for Evie makers is getting their cars where their consumers are eyd has a home-based advantage in the China Market the Tesla has gained some with this Factory in Shanghai built in 2019 this was the first of its kind for Tesla and frankly for any foreign automaker it got off the ground rather quickly in large part because of the support from the the local Chinese government they wanted to help Tesla get going the local government in Shanghai granted Tesla a corporate income tax rate of 15 percent through 2023 a significantly lower rate than the standard 25 percent the factory deal helps slash production costs for cars sold in the country and Tesla was also able to get out of a joint venture agreement for years if you were General Motors or you were a Volkswagen and you wanted to build cars in China you had to share the profit you had to share the running of that joint venture and Tesla didn't want to give up that kind of control today Tesla sells in over 30 countries with manufacturing plants in the U.S China and Germany byd D having taken over China is just beginning its Global push its passenger EVS are currently for sale in China and a handful of other countries the US is not yet one of those in part because of the U.S China tensions right now it's hard for any Chinese car company to say they're making a foray into the U.S market right now it's also hard for car companies to just think about expanding into Market by exporting their purely without manufacturing locally the fight for the global EV Market has a ways to go in China the market needs to mature on its own without government subsidies while the U.S needs to dramatically improve its supply chain in the country and up its EB adoption rate as for the companies themselves byd has yet to fully articulate its plans to enter the U.S passenger EV Market while China's biggest EV maker faces pressure to expand uid said customer satisfaction is its main goal and top priority I've been writing about the automotive industry for almost 20 years and there's always been this kind of belief that the Chinese car companies were on the verge of coming to the states we haven't really seen that yet creating the infrastructure to sell the vehicles is a challenge Tesla did not respond to a request for comment but the company also faces its own obstacles ahead they need to show growth to the investment community and we have seen investors really be forgiving at the idea of chasing sales volume at the potential cost of profitability if electric vehicles are truly the future of the car owning this Market could be Paramount to a country's economy in order for that to be a reality for Tesla EV batteries will need to be made in America this is the a100 chip from the U.S giant Nvidia it's one of the world's most advanced Computing processors which helps develop artificial intelligence that's used in everything from self-driving cars to making drugs and even building weapons and this is one of its newest competitors made by a Chinese startup industry analysts who track the speed of Chip say this model is even faster than the a100 based on initial tests It produced performances that were significantly more competitive than previous AI chips coming from China here's how the design and capabilities of these two chips compare as the race for dominance in Tech is ramping up the U.S has been a Pioneer in the semiconductor industry for over 70 years the U.S essentially gave birth to the semiconductor industry and the semiconductory economy Wayne lamb is the director of research with tech consulting firm CCS insight for over a decade he has been researching American chip technology the U.S was an ideal place because it started much of the research and core Sciences in the late 1940s American scientists invented the first transistor the fundamental technology behind all chips early versions of chips fit inside computers that helped calculate projectiles and get NASA space programs off the ground but the industry really took off in the 1960s with the rising demand for consumer goods like televisions and corporate computers that boom also drove chip companies to spring up across Asia with Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company now leading the industry making more than 90 percent of the world's most advanced chips still today the U.S is home to some of the world's leading chip designers and they help power everything from our smartphones to laptops and data centers China on the other hand has long been trailing the U.S and for several decades it is actually relied on American companies as well as chip makers in Taiwan and Japan in 2021 China imported more than 430 billion dollars worth of chips exceeding that of oil so Chinese president Xi Jinping has made it a top priority to change that it's absolutely important on a strategic basis Gregory Allen is a senior fellow at the center for strategic and International Studies a think tank based in Washington DC he's been following beijing's Ai and semiconductor policies for about seven years what they essentially wanted in the semiconductor industry was for more of the chips that were used in China to be made in China so to become more self-reliant Beijing promised to provide about 180 billion dollars in state funding to support its domestic chip industry the goal is to design chips that can be as fast as the American ones like this AI chip from Nvidia and this model released in August by b-ren is the latest demonstration of China's progress like its American rival the b-ren chip is also a graphics Processing Unit or GPU and both are designed to help computers perform complex tasks faster so what makes a chip powerful to improve their performance both companies are using the same type of transistor it's the fundamental unit that basically controls the flow of electronic signals and that allows the chips to store data or run calculations but unlike the first transistor invented in the 1940s the ones today are so small that they are measured in nanometers which is a fraction of the width of a human hair seven nanometer transistors are now the base for both Nvidia and b-ren's high-end chips so smaller to the transistor the more transistors you can pack into the same surface area of a silicon the American ship is designed with more than 54 billion transistors over a plate of about 800 millimeter square whereas the br100 is slightly bigger with about 77 billion transistors packed into about 1 000 Square millimeters while there are many factors that determine a Chip's performance industry experts say having a higher number of transistors can help increase the Chinese processor's speed brn says its chip can perform more than one thousand trillion operations per second at its peak write it out that's 15 zeros that's about three times the stated speed of nvidia's a100 but whether biren will be able to dominate the market will require more than designing chips producing them is also a huge challenge because it requires precise manufacturing to squeeze these billions of transistors onto a tiny surface semiconductor manufacturing is perhaps the most technologically complicated thing that the human species does one of the most complex processes is called lithography which blasts UV light through photo masks and prints patterns on Silicon Wafers adding layers to form the transistors you need to be precise some of the layers in the semiconductor transistors are only one atom thick so Nvidia and biren both look to another company for manufacturing you may have guessed that's the Taiwan semiconductor Manufacturing Company the world's largest contract chip producer but Buren's Reliance on tsmc is becoming a hurdle on its way to rivaling Nvidia it has been sort of a cautionary tale for the Chinese Semiconductor in history a couple of months after the Chinese startup releases chip the Biden Administration imposed new export restrictions the rules barred Cutting Edge semiconductors made with American Technologies from being sold to China and because tsmc uses equipment from U.S companies Buren is at risk of losing the Taiwanese chip maker as a supplier this dramatically reduces b-ren's prospects for its future as a leading chip designer Byron didn't respond to a request for comment tsmc says it complies with all laws and regulations but declined to comment on specific customers China also depends on a handful of American companies that dominate the industry for advanced manufacturing equipment with the American government blocking China from buying these machines it becomes even harder for Beijing to build its own high-end chip making factories that development is perfectly an effort to say the least so it would require considerable investment in capital and time to make that happen China isn't alone in facing challenges and trying to become more self-sufficient while the U.S leads in design and research it is also long relied on outside manufacturers like tsmc and Samsung in South Korea and the vulnerability of that dependence became an issue during the pandemic when a chip shortage hit companies large and small prompting President Biden to promise that more semiconductors would be produced in the U.S this is infrastructure so look we need to build infrastructure of today not repair the one of yesterday so in August he signed the chips act allocating more than 52 billion dollars in federal aid for Semiconductor research and Manufacturing tsmc later announced that it would invest 40 billion dollars to build two factories in Arizona these Investments are helping us build and strengthen the supply chain here in America and only months after the release of China's br100 Nvidia announced that it will release a super fast new chip which would in turn beat b-runs the long and expensive race to develop chips that'll drive the future of AI is entering a new phase over the years Nike and China's homegrown sportswear brand Anta have rolled out a lot of sneakers and the shoes from the Chinese company have made appearances alongside Nike not only at the Olympics but also on NBA courts in 2021 the companies released their latest signature basketball shoes which showcased the two Brands Flagship midsoles that are designed for pro athletes so we compare the high performance technology from both companies to see how ant is design is one part of its plan to go Global and gain ground on the world's biggest sports brand Nike has nearly 30 years on Anta and was founded by people who love to run a track and field coach and a middle distance Runner the company from its early days focused on designing shoes for professional athletes and on the other hand was set up in 1991 by a father and his two sons to manufacture shoes for other brands but after a few years of that the company decided to focus on creating its own shoes runs a video Channel about basketball shoes on the Chinese equivalent of YouTube and he spoke to us about Anta sneakers which are among the more than 500 pairs he's purchased over the past five years today Anta is China's top domestic sportswear brand selling not just Sneakers but also clothes and as part of its ambition to go Global the company has acquired a slew of international Brands all this has helped make Anta the world's fourth largest Athletic Apparel company by market value so to take on more established Brands and has been rolling out signature basketball shoes like Nike every year each sneaker is named after an NBA player LeBron is for LeBron James who's considered one of the best players in NBA history winning four championships and this is his 19th pair of shoes with Nike KT stands for Clay Thompson a three-time NBA champion with the Golden State Warriors who's famous for his three-point shooting and this is his seventh edition from his partnership with Anta because the sneakers are designed for individual players the technology inside is different too there are three main parts to the shoe and this is where one of the most important feature sits most of all what the midsole will do is prevent injuries Zach Thomas is a podiatrist based in Pennsylvania and he told us about the sneakers that he's bought and sliced in half for his YouTube channel so a good midsole phone has a combination of spring back forgiveness and a little bit of support and stiffness will just make your foot more efficient or make your foot work as more of one unit instead of a bunch of bag of bones and that's especially important when playing basketball because sudden stops can shock the joints the midsole also gives rebound which allows players to jump higher so to make a strong midsole both Anta and Nike have chosen the same ingredient nitrogen but the two companies are using the element differently Nike is focusing on the inert gas itself it's pumped into the midsole of the LeBron 19 sneaker which is made up of two air units in the forefoot and rear foot the Air Max is made from polyurethane and filled with highly pressurized nitrogen that the company says can absorb shocks the Zoom Air is also a pressurized unit and packed with tensile fibers Nike says this helps the wearer spring upwards after pushing down on it and in between these two units is a chamber that connects both so the air flows back and forth so when you compress the forefoot down here that air will shoot back into the heel and vice versa and what that does is it evens out the shoe it's almost like ballast on a ship and so it's going to keep you a little more even but also it's going to produce a little more Rebound in the areas of the shoe where you would need it is also looking to create better rebound but it's using nitrogen to build a different kind of structure the company calls it nitrogen technology and first introduced it with the seventh edition of the Klay Thompson shoes so the midsole is made up of a lot of miniature bubbles of nitrogen that are glued together the company says when pressure is applied the bubbles compress then expand giving the wearer both cushioning and rebound this makes anta's midsole very elastic but because it's not contained in a pod like Nike's air units Jong says the phone can easily lose shape [Music] John and Thomas both agree that the two midsoles perform well on courts and that's because the shoes were specifically designed for professional athletes but that also means these shoes aren't meant for everyone and ultimately it's about making the technology go mainstream and having ordinary people buy and wear them once you develop it for one thing it's pretty easy to to reverse engineer for another sport you just have to then figure out where to put it in the shoe and doing this well has helped Nike maintain a large slice of the sportswear Market since the invention of the Air Max in the late 1980s Nike has plugged it into a wide range of sneakers from training shoes that cost around eighty dollars to basketball shoes that go for two hundred dollars and Nike has developed a fleet of other Technologies for example a really thick midsole with a carbon fiber plate inside that has helped Runners break records but it's also sparked controversies about whether the technology provides athletes with an unfair advantage and Nike also has a lightweight thread material that the company says gives wearers a secure fit Nike doesn't disclose its r d budget but investments in these technologies have helped the company's Revenue more than double in the past decade and Anta is taking a similar path starting with the kt7 which sells for about 150 dollars the company says it plans to apply the nitrogen midsole to 75 percent of its Footwear products by 2025 and it's also starting to build a stable of other Tech like this material that Anta calls the shock absorption molecule which the company describes as bulletproof because it can absorb almost 100 percent of shocks when running and jumping however Nike's continued dominance partly depends on succeeding on antis home turf China is the second largest sportswear market after the U.S and worth more than 50 billion dollars but the American company is facing challenges there last year Chinese consumers took to social media to call for a boycott of Western Brands over allegations about forced labor and China's cotton-rich xinjiang region Nike said its sales in China fell about 20 in its latest quarter though it pointed to supply chain disruptions on the flip side this boycott has created a swell of nationalism towards homegrown products like Anta which pledged to continue using cotton from xinjiang but this dance has put the company in the crosshairs of President Biden who signed a bill that could make it illegal to import products made with cotton from the region and to declined to comment for this video meanwhile Nike in its latest earnings call set the pipeline of its innovative products continues to create the separation between the company and its competitors for now anti says China is its largest source of Revenue and how soon the company can catch up to Nike on the international stage could rely on more than just Tech you have to have that Foundation of solid technology that works but a lot of times it's not that Tech gets who's wearing the tech that's going to push it forward so besides Clay Thompson ant has also been working with other NBA players but to get noticed by more customers the Chinese company will need to sign on even more of the bigger names to its roster of athletes and endorsements this is a nickel and Cobalt battery popular in electric vehicles in the U.S and Europe and this is a Lithium-Ion phosphate battery also known as an lfp battery Which is popular in China it has a shorter range but it's cheaper to make less prone to fires and lasts longer both of these batteries were made by catl a Chinese company that's the world's largest ev battery maker of the 10 biggest EV battery companies six are Chinese China is the dominant force in EV battery production while the US is deeply reliant on foreign batteries the US and China are David and Goliath situation when it comes to battery production we're comparing how the US and China stack up in the four main stages of battery production from Vinyl assembly all the way back to sourcing the raw materials China assembles more than two-thirds of the world's electric vehicle battery cells U.S automakers lag far behind several companies have outlined plans to build plants in the U.S but shifting battery production is difficult Panasonic a Tesla partner learned this when it started building a battery plant at Tesla's gigafactory in Nevada Panasonic found it couldn't just import equipment from Asia different safety regulations and different operating conditions made it a challenge it also had to train workers to make batteries a finicky process where small mistakes can have major consequences after years of its joint battery business operating in the red Tesla and Panasonic's cell production has become profitable and it's now a model for other automakers to follow other companies have found getting EV battery factories up and running takes longer than they expect toward the end of the supply chain is where the US definitely seems like it can make the most inroads and then try to work its way back to traditional Mining and processing from there it's the earlier parts of the supply chain that are more difficult before you can make finished battery cells you need to build all the components that make it work the anodes cathodes separators and electrolytes China is the global leader in producing these components the US is far behind we're talking about working with very specific chemicals and materials and turning them into vital products so there's a lot of safety testing and everything has to be very carefully done so that's another reason China having years of leadership in this space is so critical because they have the know-how they're able to adjust to new technologies and they've been doing this for a really long time both of those together make it a really Herculean task for the US to catch up the U.S government has invested billions in companies that are trying to do this domestically but companies can need years to develop the technology and ramp up manufacturing automakers accustomed to slower development Cycles are trying to revise battery development strategies in response to changing mineral prices and Technology for example companies have two main choices when it comes to cathodes the battery cells most expensive component nickel and Cobalt used widely in the US and Europe or lfp common in China U.S companies have historically preferred nickel and Cobalt batteries for their long range but volatile mineral prices have led some automakers to turn to lfp batteries while these batteries can't travel as far between charges they typically last longer and have better thermal stability meaning they're more resistant to heat some U.S automakers are particularly interested in them for entry-level Vehicles iron phosphate is in Vogue now but companies are really investing in Next Generation batteries as well companies are always innovating and trying to change battery chemistries that's why getting a glimpse of the supply chain now and how it might change is really challenging before you can make components like cathodes and anodes you need to process and separate the raw materials that make them up the US currently does little of this while China is is the world leader and companies often have trouble building chemical processing facilities in the U.S the bureaucracy here between local state and federal regulations and then rules all of that is a messy process that will take time to work through and a lot of resources then you have local opposition oftentimes to these facilities if there are concerns about consuming huge amounts of water or energy or even damaging the local environment and the last big one is just labor and supply chain issues like we've seen throughout the coronavirus pandemic and then there's the matter of getting the raw materials most of the minerals in electric vehicle batteries aren't mined in the U.S or China they're imported from countries like Australia Indonesia and Congo China has strong relationships with these countries where it can get raw materials the US is building new minds domestically and also building International Partnerships but both approaches have challenges it can take up to a decade or more to get new minds up and running in the U.S Andromeda materials are only useful once they can be processed U.S companies are also trying to go to other countries and say look we'll develop a mine here in a country like Ghana or in Africa and then we'll ship that material to the U.S to be processed the challenge is a lot more difficult to do even the processing facilities in the U.S in the U.S it's really difficult to get new mines built and permitted because there's a lot of environmental opposition and people just generally don't like mines in their backyard some companies though are focused on an alternative source of materials instead of mining new materials they're salvaging minerals from scraps and dead batteries in the United States right now we have some lithium but really no nickel no Cobalt and on grand scheme relative to all the lithium that we're going to need we don't have that much Ascend elements is a U.S startup focused on producing engineered EV battery materials it currently operates a recycling facility in Georgia and is building a larger one in Kentucky that may cost up to 1.5 billion dollars the company says it can produce enough cathode precursor and active materials to equip 250 000 EVS per year recycling startups are among the more promising American Battery materials suppliers but they're far from matching the output of factor trees in China the world's largest battery recycler and their years from contributing a meaningful amount of material to the market the recycled materials look exactly like a cathode material made from Virgin material which is you know mind material send it to a third-party lab or whatever you couldn't distinguish between the two Ascend elements takes used batteries discharges them and shreds them to recover the critical components like lithium nickel and Cobalt while separating out materials like copper aluminum and plastic they call the remaining powdery material Black Mass through this process Ascend says it recycles up to 98 of the critical battery materials and does it with a significantly smaller carbon footprint than Mining and traditional cathode manufacturing methods it's currently focused on making nickel manganese Cobalt cathode precursors and active materials recycling may not enable the US to outpace Chinese production but it could still will be an important part of its domestic supply chain the question isn't really whether the U.S can catch up to China it probably can't ever catch up really at this point given how far ahead China is but it will take many years for this to play out a realistic goal is to just clean up the U.S supply chain so there is some domestic production of all these critical components right now they're just basically at the mercy of China and these other countries this is much more about security of basic Supply so that battery shortages don't become a pinch point in the energy transition this is Frontier the U.S supercomputer that was crowned the world's speediest this year by the top 500 project which ranks supercomputing systems globally and the Machine is able to do one quintillion calculations per second write it out that's 18 zeros and that means it's about 2 billion times faster than a typical laptop China's tienho 3 didn't participate in this ranking but some computer scientists say the machine may be as fast as Frontier the supercomputers are utilized to solve some of the most pressing challenges that humanity is society faces whether it's developing more advanced spacecraft or figuring out a Greener future both countries are racing to build faster machines so to better solve the challenges the US has opened up Frontier to scientists around the world and we got access to look inside it in order to compare its design with Tian hu 3 and see what it takes to build one of the world's speediest supercomputers we want to provide this level of compute capability that has never never been achieved before Thomas Zechariah is the director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee a lab sponsored by the U.S department of energy he's worked on over a dozen supercomputers in the US and now leads the team that oversees the operation of Frontier U.S has been a leader in in super Computing for a long long time since the 1960s U.S supercomputers have mostly dominated the field until China joined the race China really started dealing with high performance computers in a serious way back in 2001. Jack dongara is a computer scientist based in the U.S and he's one of the founders of the top 500 project he's been closely watching China since it made its debut on the list in 2001. it's quite a change over a very short period of time roughly 20 years going from nothing to being dominant China hasn't revealed how much it's invested in super Computing but since 2006 Beijing has put it into the country's Five-Year Plan which is a blueprint for China's Economic Development today the country has more Super computers on the top 500 lists than the us but this year Chinese researchers didn't submit tn03's results and some computer scientists say given how quickly Chinese machines have improved Tian ho 3 may be as fast as Frontier reaching the speed of a quintillion calculations per second scientists call this exascale performance and to do that both the U.S and China started with this part A compute node is fundamentally the building block of a supercomputer an individual compute node is basically like your personal computer and take Frontier as an example it mainly has two sets of chips the central processing units or CPUs are the heart of the machine that carries out instructions and accelerators help boost the performance of the CPUs so you can imagine supercomputer stacking up a whole bunch of those individual Shooters with a very very fast Network so this is what a frontier cabinet looks like frontiac has got 74 cabinets each cabinet is about 8 000 pounds it has 9408 nodes the nodes are connected to everyone each other and can transfer information very fast Tiano 3 also has cabinets with compute nodes but China hasn't disclosed the size of its machine some computer scientists say that based on state media footage and presentations by Tien HUD 3's researchers the machine may have a hundred cabinets and more than 50 000 nodes but what really differentiates these two massive supercomputers are the tiny chips inside because they're key to deciding the speed and Computing capabilities and that's an area where the US has an advantage over China American scientists have access to some of the most cutting-edge Technologies from semiconductor designers and producers at home and Frontiers 2 chips come from one of the leading American Semiconductor developers Advanced Micro Devices Zechariah says the company has worked closely with the lab to design these chips and that partnership has held Frontier officially become the first exascale machine these are the latest in their evolution they are designed and manufactured processors specifically with a view to building the supercomputer and delivering the performance that is needed China on the other hand has not had a home field advantage with chips it used to rely on American companies like Intel and Nvidia but that became impossible in 2015 when the US barred its semiconductor makers from selling to Chinese institutions that develop supercomputers Inc including the one that builds tn03 so the Tien have people who were planning to build the next machine decided that they needed to because they couldn't use western parts they had to design their own chips China's national supercomputer Center didn't respond to a request for comment about the performance and Chip design of tienho 3. But ultimately building these supercomputers isn't just about achieving fast speed it goes back to science and doing the best science so countries that have the fastest supercomputers can carry out simulations which have greater Fidelity and they can get results back much quicker for example getting those results quickly was critical during the pandemic Frontier was deployed to analyze 11 million genomes to better distinguish and predict variants it has given us Clues to develop the next generation of vaccines the next generation of Therapeutics to not only you know treat and prevent covid but also for other kind of ailments and to better solve some of the world's most pressing challenges the lab is awarding scientists from around the world time to use Frontier based on the Merit of their research and in turn they're required to publish their findings it's an important part of doing science is exchanging information we express our ideas and show one choice as we better than another and through that exchange we hopefully end up with a better situation China has also said it welcomed scientists from other countries to run research on Tien ho3 but so far the machine has only been used by institutions backed by the Chinese government like the country's top research group the Chinese Academy of Sciences the annoying thing is that you know we don't hear much about these computers in the west it's a problem I would say I'm waiting for the time we can have more interchanges until then this segregation of research could slow down progress even as both the U.S and China are united in finding ways to accelerate their supercomputers China has the largest high-speed rail network in the world spanning over 40 000 kilometers and of the 10 fastest trains in the world four are in China and China's busiest high-speed train the Beijing Shanghai rail runs 217 miles per hour the U.S however tells a much different story its high-speed rail system spans 700 and 35 kilometers and its fastest train Amtrak's Acela Express goes just 150 miles per hour and only for a few minutes on part of the track since 2008 China has rapidly built up its high-speed rail network the US in that time has had several High-Speed Rail projects shelved or delayed here's how the US has fallen behind China in High-Speed Rail technology one key difference between the U.S and China has to do with the tracks the trains run on in the case of the U.S as we can see a lot of the north sister corridors are based on hundreds years of the old tracks there are also tunnels and a curvatures and bridges that are really owed that cannot really allow the trains to run at a faster speed these tracks were originally built for Freight and passenger trains to use at the same time so they have many points of intersections and crossings and the Acela runs on this track but China has tracks that are dedicated to High-Speed Rail they are really requires to have a more smoother curves has also they needed to have a more slower gradients and so that allowed the trains to roam smoothly and safely one of the reasons trains in America can't reach their top speeds is because of how the tracks are designed even though the trains are capable for Amtrak to run 186 they'll never see more than 160 miles per hour because the infrastructure is still being developed and isn't quite there yet to Curves on the tracks many conventional passenger trains in the U.S only operate 10 to 15 miles per hour faster than freight trains on the curved portion of tracks but China built its High-Speed Rail on elevated tracks traveling on what's called viaducts so the tolerance is in high speed are pretty pretty precise pretty tightly defined and so the track and overhead wires need to be designed in a way to be able to allow those higher speeds there's also a difference in where stations are located in China stations for high-speed rails are located in both suburban and rural areas of the country whereas in the U.S stations are primarily located in urban centers like New York City Boston and Washington DC when you're looking to identify where a high speed line should go it really starts with where are the two population centers you're trying to connect and the magic formula is really fine two City pairs that have a minimum of three million people on either side and a distance of about two to five hundred miles in order to achieve a higher speed definitely a dedicated passenger rail system is more needed despite the fact that the US has been slow to develop High-Speed Rail railroads actually used to dominate Interstate Transportation but that shifted during the mid 20th century when the interstate highway system was born since then American history has been littered with High-Speed Rail plans that never really took off automobile and air travel and the car travel is essentially become the major modes of travel in the U.S to make that kind of behavior change that basically needs a lot of efforts to help people understand why this is a need to have another mode and what are the benefits of that China's High-Speed Rail however consistently had backing from the government investing billion millions of dollars including initial partners with foreign firms contracts were awarded on the condition that foreign companies assembled the trains and also trained Chinese Engineers so they're trying to understand that the foreign Technologies how it works but they're also trying to make certain Innovations on top of that eventually China developed its own train Manufacturing Company the crrc and now the crrc is one of the largest train manufacturers in the world in the case of china because it's a central government system so large infrastructure projects like high speed rail system can be really developed based on a kind of consistent plan the U.S has also had foreign companies come to the country to develop a high-speed rail network but it's been met with several challenges take for example Illinois back in 2019 Nippon shario of Japan tried to build a high-speed rail in the states however the companies struggled to adapt designs to the US and faced delays in getting new rail cars and changing administrations doesn't help California approved a plan in 2008 to build a high-speed rail network but the project has been delayed because of a lack of funding and inconsistent support the train technology is already here but what we're seeing right now in the U.S at this specific moment in time is not that dissimilar to what was happening in Europe in the 1970s where there was initially a lot of concern or objection about trying to do something new and it wasn't until the first system started to be put in place and people saw the real promise that you know high speed was able to deliver on and then once the political and public support was behind it it really took off and grew this is how big Tech in the U.S envisions the future of the internet avatars like this one playing games buying digital assets socializing ah yes the metaverse and Chinese tech companies are piling in too their versions of avatars and Virtual Worlds look pretty similar but because of China's strict regulations players in the two countries are said to have very different experiences analysts estimate the metaverse industry could be worth as much as 8 trillion dollars in each country but it's still early days for both Chinese and American Tech firms the visual effects seen in promo videos for a metaverse platform being built by Chinese Tech Giant Baidu are still pretty pixelated and lego-like quite a ways off the smooth immersive World some have in mind similarly Facebook's parent company meta's avatars are still legless and not particularly realistic in the early version of its VR platform Horizon worlds which lets people build custom environments to hang out or play games in and is already available in the US and Canada both meta and Baidu have set an official launch for their respective platforms will take another five to ten years Microsoft in the US and tencent in China which both own a number of video gaming properties are also gearing up to develop their own virtual worlds but for companies in China the transition to the metaverse is expected to be a little more complicated Chinese companies are subject to more regulations than in the US Winston ma is the author of China's mobile economy and managing partner at new york-based cloudtree Ventures which invests in metaverse related Tech like 3D video recording companies are taking a more cautious approach because of regulatory considerations that's a big difference between the US and China compared to China companies in the US generally have more leeway from regulators and people in the industry say that gives metaverse developers more free reign in terms of innovation meaning China's rules are expected to affect the user experience in other words these two avatars won't necessarily be able to see say and do the same things [Music] universes and the Western Metal versus sir Khan Toto is a gaming industry consultant he says video games offer a window into what the metaverse will be like and in China games have to go through a rigorous approval process by authorities before they can be released he pointed to a violent first-person shooter game in the version of the game available to play in China the blood is green instead of red because of beijing's content regulations that restrict Gore and violence rules in China also limit how long the country's hundreds of millions of kids under 18 can game as Regulators have said they want to prevent user addiction these rules and regulations that are already in place are going to be transferred over to the metaverse there's no motivation for the Chinese government to soften their stance just because the game is embedded inside the metaverse Chinese officials have already indicated that some strict rules will apply to the metaverse and established a subcommittee that according to policy experts aims to create specific standards for these Virtual Worlds those authorities didn't respond to requests for comment and state media was quick to Tamp down the hype after a recent rally of Chinese metaverse related stocks warning Society not to get too wrapped up in metaverse speculation Chinese Regulators are also extremely cautious about digital payment systems which are already how people buy things in metaverse-like platforms available in the US such as Roblox sandbox or decentraland in the U.S lots of metaverse place involve in-game crypto tokens and nfts but in China cryptocurrencies are strictly regulated last year the Chinese government declared cryptocurrency transactions illegal saying it was concerned that cryptos decentralized Anonymous transactions could give way to fraud and money laundering authorities have instead promoted the use of a central bank issued virtual un so buying art or digital concert tickets with crypto isn't possible in China and that could contribute to further insulating China's own metaverse platforms at the moment at least if companies like tencent are building metaverses there's not going to be any kind of tokens in them these companies are challenged now to come up with Alternatives that the Chinese government is going to tolerate in this context analysts say metaverses like baidu's probably won't face direct competition from meta or Microsoft in the Chinese market which when it comes to the internet is already separate from the rest of the world Facebook and Google for example don't operate in China because of strict censorship Microsoft and meta didn't respond to requests for comment on their metaverse plans for China the future of the Chinese meta verses will be a reflection of the Chinese internet today there's really going to be a huge wall between these metaverses this is Jeff base blue origin rocket ship that takes tours to the edge of orbit and this is a model from cast space a Chinese company that's been tapped by the government to send its first tours to space as soon as 2024. we compare the two vehicles because the company that can perfect the reusable space rocket and make it cheaper could get one of the first cracks at accessing the larger space economy welcome to space in 2021 a flurry of commercial space flights pioneered by American companies began taking off and they've been working for years to develop their vehicles and recently China decided to join the race last year cast space which was created by the country's top scientific Think Tank laid out plans for its space rocket China's rather a late Comer in space tourism but then also very aggressive in their timelines Blaine Curcio is a space industry consultant and he focuses on the Chinese and U.S markets providing analysis for commercial space companies that look to broaden their footprint caspase they talk about wanting to have their first demonstration flight of their space tourism vehicle in 2022 and then finally space tours like actual space tours and flights by 2024 though a lot of uncertainties lie ahead for this commercial project Curcio says these deadlines aren't impossible in the past few years China's national space program has had a good track record it was the first to land a Rover on The Far Side of the Moon they sent another one to Mars and started building its own space station so to catch up caspase is planning to offer flights too its trips will look less like SpaceX we're seeing the world every 90 minutes and Virgin Galactic foreign but more like blue origin they are going to the edge of space where people have a couple of minutes of weightlessness Quentin Parker's been researching Global space programs for over 40 years and has recently been focused on projects coming out of China the design of these Rockets is driven strongly by what you need to do with it so blue origin and caspase have similar designs and both say the journey is about 10 minutes first the rocket will launch up into the sky then it will release the capsule that carries the Taurus as a rocket comes back down vertically the capsule will continue into sub-orbital flight going across the Carmen line an imaginary boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space then the capsule will return to Earth separately blue origin completed three human flights last year using the same vehicle for each trip while caspase hasn't tested a rocket the company says it's also designing one that will be reusable reusability is what drives down the costs so significantly and makes so many of these plans viable one key to reusability is at the bottom the engines are designed to throttle and restart so they can be fired to take off as well as control The Landing but this is where both companies designs start to look different blue origin relies on only one engine which is worked stably for each of its human flights according to caspase its rocket will use five of these Parker says multiple engines could provide more thrusting points to help ensure that the rocket remains intact if you have five engines then if one uh misbehaves you could possibly compensate with the other four there's another factor that could determine what kind of reusable rocket may become the popular model the rocket fuel blue origin uses a combination of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen while caspase is planning on using kerosene and liquid oxygen and both choices have environmental and financial pros and cons kerosene mixed with liquid oxygen is dirtier than what the blue origin does but it's actually much much cheaper blue origin founder Jeff Bezos has said working with liquid hydrogen is challenging but that this fuel component would be important for the company's future projects caspase said the design of its engine is meant to keep costs low so it's actually if you're going commercial you need to see what is the best option and it becomes a more viable commercial proposition you can make a profit and to make these plans commercially viable blue Origins rocket and the one planned by caspase would use different Landing systems the Chinese company is designing a tower that will catch the rocket whereas blue origin uses fins drag brakes and Landing legs to help it touch down softly these companies are still weighing how much to invest and determining the demand for these types of trips since reserving a seat is expensive but mastering the reusable technology ultimately isn't only about tourism space tourism is a very small part of the overall space economy right now but in terms of the technology side of things reusable Rockets are definitely a really big enabler of a lot of other things the race for a better rocket includes launching satellites and sending crew and cargo to space stations even one day facilitating deep space exploration to the moon or Mars but industry experts say there's currently a launch bottleneck for some of these missions because there aren't enough rockets and building one can take months if not years and costs millions or even billions of dollars so the company that could perfect the reusable technology would not just help relieve that bottleneck but also grab a larger slice of the growing industry blue origin and cast space didn't respond to our requests for comment for China these commercial possibilities could help further open up its Space Program which has been strictly controlled by the government they want commercial companies to play a bigger role in Innovation so I think that's going to be increasingly important even for the things like you know the high-level civil training Space Program and for U.S companies these commercial possibilities May mean a closer relationship with NASA which has already partnered with blue origin for its launch services for now the Space Race For Taurus is just the first step we're still waiting for the game changer in terms of the propulsion technology but reusable rockets and reusable Tech are making big strides around the world and getting more efficient and more reliable and more safe and if this game changer arrives it'll open up the potential of a much larger future in space for both the U.S and China this is the Nancy Grace Roman survey telescope or Roman for short NASA is set to launch it into space in 2027. and this is China's survey telescope chantian that's set to launch a few years earlier than Roman these two telescopes are racing to map the universe in more detail than ever before in the hopes of solving some of science's greatest Mysteries like how a little understood Force known as dark energy helped shape our universe potentially there's even a Nobel Prize there right if you figure out what dark energy is so we unpacked the technology and Behind These telescopes because a country that can capture the best images may lead the future of astrophysics research space telescopes are crucial tools for avoiding the light pollution and Distortion that limits ground-based telescopes when they look out at space from inside the Earth's atmosphere an American physicist first proposed space-based observatories in 1946 and then about two decades later the U.S sent up the first operational Space Telescope the Soviet Union was close behind sending up its own first space telescopes only a few years later since 1990 the field has been dominated by NASA's Hubble until the recent launch of the James Webb Space Telescope or jwst for short both Hubble and genuine St are telescopes that look at a very small part of the sky in a lot of detail Jonathan McDowell is an astrophysicist at the Harvest Smithsonian Center for astrophysics he's worked with NASA and has been monitoring space activities and satellites for three decades they aren't used to kind of look around and go oh I wonder if we'll see something here you look at something you already know is there and you stare at it in detail this is where the race to build the next generation of telescopes comes in with survey telescopes that can map out large areas of the sky NASA's Nancy Grace Roman is named after the agency's first Chief astronomer shontan is China's first ever Space Telescope and translates to survey of the heavens in Chinese let's make no bones about it they're both fantastic and amazing facilities Quinton Parker is an astrophysicist and the director of the laboratory for space research at the University of Hong Kong he's been observing the rapid acceleration of China's space program for over the past decade you know surveys by their nature throw up incredible things you don't know what they're going to find both telescopes are designed to learn more about Dark Energy a mysterious pressure that scientists believe is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe and the galaxies inside it that will let us understand how our galaxy evolved how the chemical elements in our galaxy evolved how we got here but there are currently no telescopes that can detect Dark Energy even though scientists say it makes up around 70 percent of the total energy of the universe so the goal is for scientists to use shuntan and Roman to uncover Dark Energy Secrets we're not collecting signatures from Dark Energy directly we're looking at the way that this interaction with things that we can measure so U.S and Chinese researchers are racing to build telescopes that can answer the same question but each with a different design one difference is in the telescope's mirrors so if you throw a certain amount of light at the telescope right um some fraction of it is reflected by the mirror and some fraction of that is captured by the camera Roman's mirror is larger than shuntians which means it will be able to capture more light giving the final image more detail but even though chantan's mirror is smaller in diameter it has a field of view that's more than three times wider this means it'll be able to image more of the sky over the course of its Mission than Roman Washingtonian may have an edge on image size the quality depends on another important part of the telescope the sensor module the sensor reads and processes the light captured by the mirror and sends back information to Earth for scientists to turn into amazing images like these ones from the James Webb Telescope so having a less powerful sensor can create problems for the images that are produced you are likely to get images with more artifacts in them with more noise with less Sensitivity I can't see quite as faint Stars things like that McDowell says NASA's six Decades of experience creating sensors that work under the extreme conditions of space give it an advantage over China's younger space agency the challenge for China is can they match the the sort of semiconductor technology aspects of NASA's cameras by having more experience with telescopes NASA can also be more ambitious about how far it sends Roman the telescope will orbit the Sun from a distance of about 1 million miles from Earth that means Roman will be able to operate without constant changes in light and temperature and NASA says that allows the telescope to collect data constantly shintan on the other hand will stay close to the Earth and therefore be regularly blocked as it orbits Limited the amount of time it can spend collecting data but being that far away also means Roman can't be repaired if anything goes wrong tan will be near the Chinese space station giving scientists on board access to the telescope if needed you can actually not only can you repair it it gets damaged or if the solar panels gets damaged or something goes wrong you can upgrade it you can replace the camera you can put on new filters new instrumentation give it a new lease of life keep it going for longer however what could be the most important Advantage is shuntan's launch date China space agency says it's going up in 2023 giving it about a four-year head start on Roman they may steal some of the Thunder from what the Roman telescope would have done NASA said in a statement that shuntan's observations will complement its Mission and Roman has unique capabilities for the study of dark energy China's Space Administration didn't respond to a request for comment on shintan's launch schedule and design scientists say both telescopes will play a significant role in learning more about the origins of the universe there's a lot of international recognition if you you know if you start to elucidate what's going on in the in the early universe but only one country can lay claim to being the first to make the biggest discoveries in astrophysics

Channel: Wall Street Journal

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Keywords: china, u.s. vs china, aviation, boeing, tesla, byd, EV, ev batteries, china ev battery, tesla news, tesla battery, boeing vs comac, comac c919, tesla vs byd, EV market, tesla china, china ev market, electric vehicles, nvidia, china chips, nike vs anta, nike lebron 19, china economy, EV batteries, design, engineering, strategy, supercomputers, frontier vs tianhe 3, infrastructure, metaverse, big tech, chip making, jeff bezos, blue origin, china news, china vs usa, china tech, bnss

Id: H2qLoaetLJM

Length: 68min 27sec (4107 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 27 2023