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Syria is a small, poor, and crowded country. On the map, it appears about the size of Washington state or Spain, but only about a quarter of its 185,000 square kilometers is arable land. That is, “economic Syria” is about as large as a combination of Maryland and Connecticut or Switzerland. Most is desert—some is suitable for grazing but less than 10 percent of the surface is permanent cropland.The bottom line is that the population/resource ratio is out of balance. While there has been a marginal increase of agricultural land and more efficient cropping with better seed, neither has kept up with population growth. Moreover, as the number of people in the country has increased, they have been unable to agree on how to divide what they have. So it is important to understand how their “social contract”—their view of their relationship with one another and with the government—evolved and then shattered.Since before history was written, Syria has been fought over by foreign empires—Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Persians, Macedonian Greeks, Romans, Mongols, Turks, British, and French. Only during the Umayyad Caliphate in the 7th and 8th centuries A.D. was it the center of an empire. But that relatively short period left Syria with its Islamic heritage. For many centuries, the society has been overwhelmingly Muslim.Syria also has historically been a sanctuary for little groups of peoples whose differences from one another were defined in religious and/or ethnic terms. Several of these communities were “leftovers” from previous invasions or migrations. During most of the last five centuries, when what is today Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire, groups of Orthodox, Catholic, and other Christians; Alawis, Ismailis, and other sorts of Shia Muslims; and Yazidis, Kurds, Jews, and Druze lived in enclaves and in neighborhoods in the various cities and towns alongside Sunni Muslim Arabs.During Ottoman rule the population was organized in two overlapping ways. First, there was no “Syria” in the sense of a nation-state, but rather provinces (Turkish: pashaliqs) that were centered on the ancient cities. The most important of these were Damascus, which may be the oldest permanently settled city in the world today, and Aleppo. The concept of a state, much less a nation-state, did not enter into political thought until the end of the 19th century. Inhabitants of the various parts of what became Syria could move without feeling or being considered alien from one province of the Ottoman Empire to the next. Thus, if the grandfathers or great grandfathers of people alive today were asked about what entity they belonged to, they would probably have named the city or village where they paid their taxes.During the First World War, Great Britain and France were at war with the Ottoman Empire, which had sided with Germany and Austria. The war was hard fought, but long before victory was in sight, the British and French concluded what became known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement to divide the Middle East between them. Britain subsequently made other, conflicting deals with the leaders of the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire that would have modified the agreement, but France insisted on effecting most of its terms. (Subsequently, France lost to Britain the mainly Sunni Muslim Arab and Kurdish area of what was to become northern Iraq.)The map shows how the Middle East was to be divided among the Great Powers. Most of what became Syria which the French gave to the British at the peace conference to remind them of the deal.First, the French created a “Greater” Lebanon from the former autonomous adjunct provinces (Turkish: sanjaqs) of Mount Lebanon and Beirut. To make it their anchor in an otherwise hostile Levant, they aimed both to make it Christian-dominated and big enough to exist as a state.But these aims were incompatible: the populations they added, taken from the pashaliq of Damascus, were mainly Muslim, so the French doomed Lebanon to be a precariously unbalanced society. Then they split Syria into detached administrative units: In 1921, they separated Alexandretta, in the northwest, and later ceded it to Turkey (where it was renamed Hatay); they split off the hinterland of the port of Latakia, a partly Alawi area, and in 1922 briefly made it a separate state; and they made the Druze area (Jabal ad-Druze) in the southwest an autonomous part of their colony. Finally, they divided the two major cities, Damascus and Aleppo, making each the capital of its neighborhood.When French policies did not work and nationalism began to offer an alternate vision of political life, the French colonial administration fell back on violence. Indeed throughout the French period—in contrast to the relatively laissez-faire rule of the Ottoman Empire—violence was never far below the outward face of French rule.The French bombarded Damascus, which they had regime-changed in 1920, in 1925, 1926, and 1945, and they pacified the city with martial law during most of the “peaceful” intervals. Constitutions were proclaimed periodically, only to be revoked, and independence was promised time after time until it was finally gained—not by the Syrians nor given by the French but bestowed on Syria by the British army.Because the French administration was under the control of the Vichy government and had abetted German activities, the British invaded in 1941 and overthrew Vichy France’s administration. However, they left behind the “Free French” who continued essentially the Vichy regime. The last French soldier did not leave until April 17, 1946, which became Syria’s national day.It is not unfair to characterize the impact of the 26 years of French rule thus: the “peace” the French achieved was little more than a sullen and frustrated quiescence; while they did not create dissension among the religious and ethnic communities, the French certainly magnified it and while they did not create hostility to foreigners, they gave the native population a target that fostered the growth of nationalism. These developments have lingered throughout the last 70 years and remain powerful forces today.The majority of those who became Syrians were Arabic-speaking Sunni Muslims. Since the road to worldly success was through the Arabic-speaking army or bureaucracy, Syrians, like the inhabitants of empires throughout Asia, found conversion to Islam and becoming Arabic-speaking—if they were not already members of this community—attractive.The earliest estimates we know suggest that between seven and eight in 10 Syrians saw themselves as Muslim Arab—and, under the growing influence of nationalism, saw being a Muslim Arab as the very definition of Syrian identity.What was unusual about Syria was that the other two or three in 10 Syrians did not feel the same way. As in Ottoman times, they continued to live in economically autarkic areas of the countryside and in quarters of most of the cities and towns of the country.Nationalists took this diversity as a primary cause of weakness and adopted as their primary task integrating the population into a single political and social structure.But the nationalists were deeply split. The major Islamic movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, argued and fought for the idea that the nation must be Arab Sunni (or “Orthodox”) Muslim. Minorities had no place except in the traditional and Ottoman sense of “protected minorities.” The more conservative, affluent, and Westernized nationalists believed that nationhood had to be built not on a religious but on a territorial base. That is, single-state nationalism (Arabic: wataniyah) was the focus of Syria’s statehood.Their program, however, did not lead to success; its failure opened the way for a redefinition of nationalism as pan-Arab or folk nationalism (Arabic: qawmiyah). As it was codified by the Baath Party, it required that Syria be considered not a separate nation-state but a part of the whole Arab world and be domestically organized as a unified, secular, and at least partly Westernized state. This was a particularly difficult task because the dominant Muslim community, initially as a result of French rule and later as a result of domestic turbulence and foreign interference, regarded the members of the minority communities, particularly the Jewish community, as actual or potential turncoats.Looming over Syrian politics and heightening the tensions among the contenders for dominance throughout the post-war period has been the modern, powerful, and American-supported state of Israel; regular wars between Syria and Israel began in 1948, almost before either state had achieved full independence, and were repeated in 1967 and 1973.Border clashes, informal fighting, and limited ceasefires were interspersed among these major confrontations. And since 1967, Israel has occupied the 1,200 square kilometers (460 square miles) of Syrian territory known as the Golan Heights. In 1981, Israel proclaimed that it had annexed the territory, a move not recognized by the U.S. or other states, and moved nearly 20,000 settlers there. Meanwhile, intermittent peace talks have been secretly held from time to time without result. A ceasefire, negotiated in 1974, has held, but today the two states are still legally at war.It was in answer to the perceived weakness of Syrian statehood and the disorder of Syrian political life that the first Assad regime was established in 1970 by Hafez al-Assad, the father of the current leader.The Assad family came from the Alawi (a.k.a. Nusairi) minority, which includes about one in eight Syrians and about a quarter of a million people in both Lebanon and Turkey. Like the Jews, the Alawis consider themselves the “chosen people,” but they are regarded by Orthodox Muslims as heretics.Under Ottoman pluralism, this mattered little, but as Syrians struggled for a sense of identity and came to suspect social difference and to fear the cooperation of minorities with foreigners, being an Alawi or a Christian or a Jew put people under a cloud.So, for Hafez al-Assad, the secular, nationalist Baath Party was a natural choice: it offered, or seemed to offer, the means to overcome his origins in a minority community and to point toward a solution to the disunity of Syrian politics. He therefore embraced it eagerly and eventually became its leader. Consequently, to understand Syrian affairs, we need to focus on the party.The “Resurrection” (Arabic: Baath) Party had its origins, like the nationalist-communist Vietnamese movement, in France. Two young Syrians, one a Christian and the other a Sunni Muslim, who were then studying in Paris were both attracted to the grandeur of France and appalled by the weakness of Syria. Like Ho Chi Minh, they wanted to both become like France and get the French out of their nation. Both believed that the future lay in unity and socialism.For Michel Aflaq and Salah Bitar, the forces to be defeated were “French oppression, Syrian backwardness, a political class unable to measure up to the challenge of the times,” according to the British journalist Patrick Seale’s account in The Struggle for Syria. Above all, disunity had to be overcome.Their answer was to try to bridge the gaps between rich and poor through a modified version of socialism, and between Muslims and minorities through a modified concept of Islam. Islam, in their view, needed to be considered politically not as a religion but as a manifestation of the Arab nation.Thus, the society they wished to create, they proclaimed, should be modern (with, among other things, equality for women), secular (with faith relegated to personal affairs), and defined by a culture of “Arabism” overriding the traditional concepts of ethnicity. In short, what they sought was the very antithesis of the objectives of the already-strong and growing Muslim Brotherhood.Like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Baath Party spread among young students.Western people was astonished at how vigorous the student political movements were and how seriously, even violently, the students played a national role. Hafez al-Assad was one of the first student recruits of what would become the Baath Party, and quickly became a local hero for his dedication to its cause. As Seale describes, “He became a party stalwart, defending its cause on the street … he was one of our commandos.” And he almost paid with his life for his bravery when a Muslim Brother stabbed him. So, pardon the pun, his antipathy to the Muslim Brotherhood began early and went deep.Like many young men of his generation, Hafez al-Assad first put his hopes in the military, which seemed, more than political parties, even the Baath, to embody the nation. He avidly studied his new profession and became a fighter pilot, but he quickly realized that the military was only a means of action and that what it did had to be guided by political ideas and organization. So, he used his military affiliation to energize his party role. This, inevitably, caught him up in the coups, counter-coups, and sundry conspiracies that engaged Syrian politicians and army officers during the 1950s and 1960s. Emerging from this labyrinth, he skillfully maneuvered himself into the leadership of his party and domination of the political and military structure of the country by 1971. And his assumption of the presidency was certified by a plebiscite in that year.His survival, much less his victory, was nearly a miracle, but he had not managed to solve the fundamental problem of Syrian ethnicity and particularly the role of Islam in society. Finally, the Islamic forces were ready to challenge the regime in a total war. An army unit sent to the Muslim Brotherhood's stronghold in the city of Hama was ambushed. The local Muslim guerrilla leader gave the signal for a general uprising. During the night, the city was involved in a vile insurrection "without prisoners". The regime was fighting for his life.This problem, which is so tragically and bitterly evident in Syria today, found an early expression in the writing of the new constitution in 1973. The previous constitutions, going back to French colonial times, had specified that a Muslim should hold the presidency. Despite his dedication to secular politics, Hafez al-Assad made two attempts to cater to Muslim opinion. In the first, he got the clause in the former constitutions conditioning the presidential office to a Muslim replaced by a redefinition of Islam of sorts. “Islam,” the new language stressed, “is a religion of love, progress and social justice, of equality for all…” Then, in the second move, he arranged for a respected Islamic jurisconsult (not from Syria but from Lebanon, and not a Sunni but a Shia) to issue a finding (Arabic: fatwa) that Alawis were really Shia Muslims rather than heretics. This was not merely an abstract bit of theology: as heretics, Alawis were outlaws who could be legally and meritoriously killed—as we have seen in recent events in Syria.The Muslim Brotherhood was furious. Riots broke out around the country, particularly in the city of Hama. For some years, Assad managed to contain the discontent—partly by granting subsidies on food and partly by curbing the already-hated political police—but the fundamental issue was not resolved. Muslim Brothers and other disaffected groups organized terrorist attacks on the government and on Assad’s inner circle, killing some of his close collaborators and exploding car bombs at installations, including even the office of the prime minister and the headquarters of the air force.Fear, loathing and a river of spilt blood ruled out any thought of truce … that explain[s] the terrible savagery of the punishment inflicted on the city. Behind the immediate contest lay the old multi-layered hostility between Islam and the Ba’th, between Sunni and ‘Alawi, between town and country…. Many civilians were slaughtered in the prolonged mopping up, whose districts razed, and numerous acts of savagery reported…. Government forces too suffered heavy losses to snipers and many armoured vehicles were hit by grenades in the rubble-strewn streets … between 5,000 and 10,000 [people died].Except for a narrow belt along the Mediterranean, the whole country is subject to extreme temperatures that cause frequent dust storms and periodic droughts. Four years of devastating drought from 2006 to 2011 turned Syria into a land like the American “dust bowl” of the 1930s.That drought was said to have been the worst ever recorded, but it was one in a long sequence: Just in the period from 2001 to 2010, Syria had 60 “significant” dust storms. The most important physical aspect of these storms, as was the experience in America in the 1930s, was the removal of the topsoil. Politically, they triggered the civil war.Before the heavy fighting began, Syrian oil fields produced about 330,000 barrels per day, but Syrians consumed all but about 70,000 of that amount.Sales supplied about 20 percent of GDP and a third of export earnings. Production subsequently fell by at least 50 percent, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.Syria’s oil is of poor quality, sour, and expensive to refine. Industry, (mainly energy-related) employed about a third of the adult male population and provided a similar percentage of the national income.Before the war, moves were being made to transport oil and gas from farther east across Syria to the Mediterranean; obviously, these projects have been stopped. Now there is a sort of cottage industry in crude refining of petroleum products for local use and smuggling.The Bush administration signaled a new anti-Syrian policy in 2002 when the president included it in what he proclaimed to be the “Axis of Evil.”Covert activities were stepped up and, the following year, Bush threatened to impose sanctions (which he did impose two years later).In 2003, Israel used American aircraft in a strike on a Palestinian refugee camp just outside of Damascus.It was the first of a sequence of humiliating attacks that the Syrian armed forces were unable to prevent.The American Congress rubbed salt into that wound by passing the Syria Accountability Act, which charged the Syrians with supporting terrorism and occupying much of Lebanon as well as seeking chemical weapons.At the same time, diplomatic moves were made to reduce tensions. In 2006, relations were resumed between Syria and Iraq (by then under an American-imposed Shia government; the two countries remain cordial today).In 2007, senior EU and U.S. officials, in an informal version of recognition, visited Damascus, while Syria, seeking to end its split with conservative Arab governments, hosted an Arab League meeting.But the issue of weapons of mass destruction quickly soured these demarches, particularly when it came to relations between the U.S. and Syria.In a still-controversial charge that North Korea was building a nuclear weapons facility at a remote northern site, Israel again bombed Syria in 2007. But six months later, French President Nicolas Sarkozy invited al-Assad to Paris to work toward re-establishing diplomatic relations.Tensions were then once more eased with high-level visits and, in 2010, the U.S. sent an ambassador to Syria. Three months later, however, Washington imposed new sanctions on the country.The sanctions aimed to diminish government revenues, particularly from oil exports, and to increase public opposition to the regime. The Syrian regime had not changed, but there seemed to be no clear or consistent policy by the U.S. or the EU toward it.Years of devastating drought beginning in 2006 caused at least 800,000 farmers to lose their entire livelihood and about 200,000 simply abandoned their lands, according to the Center for Climate & Security. In some areas, all agriculture ceased. In others, crop failures reached 75 percent.And generally as much as 85 percent of livestock died of thirst or hunger. Hundreds of thousands of Syria’s farmers gave up, abandoned their farms, and fled to the cities and towns in search of almost non-existent jobs and severely short food supplies. Outside observers including UN experts estimated that between 2 and 3 million of Syria’s 10 million rural inhabitants were reduced to “extreme poverty.”Aside from “conspiracy theory,” some observers believe that the radical groups, mainly Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State of Iraq, have been equally beneficial to Assad's regime as they have been equally harmful to the moderate FSA and the alluring image of the Syrian revolution.For many, Assad, who helped al-Qaeda affiliates gain access to Iraq during the 2003 U.S. invasion, is now using them in Syria to strengthen his military and political position in the ongoing war.Such rationale seems very plausible, taking into consideration the prevalence of the radical groups in the war in Syria and how their presence there has helped in distorting the image of the Syrian revolution and consequently making the West reluctant to provide the FSA with lethal weapons.In his recent televised speech, President Assad said the crisis in his country could only be solved by striking terror with an “iron fist.”“No solution can be reached with terror except by striking it with an iron fist,” Assad said, adding, “I don’t think that any sane human being would think that terrorism can be dealt with via politics.”A political solution for the Syrian unrest is not a choice for al-Assad, or a preferable choice, as violence would be more rewarding for the embattled president, at least to remain in power till the end of his term.Assad knows that transforming the ongoing war in Syria into a fight against terrorism would ensure him more international appeal support from Syrians already anxious over the presence of radical groups in their country.So Assad has declared a war against terrorism. In other words, he is building a cause for himself and his regime.Syria turning into a failed state is actually in the interest of Assad and that is why he is working on prolonging the war to achieve his unannounced “plan B” of an Alawite state in the port city of Latakia.

Mr. Avinash P. GandhiMr. Avinash P. Gandhi received his Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra and he has completed Senior Management programmes at Indian Institute of Management and Administration Staff College of India.Mr. Gandhi served as a Special Advisor to Asia Automotive Acquisition Corp. since June 20, 2005. From 1998 to 2002, Shri. Gandhi had been the President of Hyundai Motors India and from September 1994 to June 1997, he served as the Chief Executive Officer of Bhartia Cutler Hammer (now a part of Eaton Corporation). From June 1997 to June 1998, Mr. Gandhi was Group Chief Executive of a Conglomerate of seven companies having tie-ups with leading global electrical products manufacturers.Mr. Avinash P. Gandhi has rich years of experience in engineering and various managerial positions. He held top leadership positions in prestigious organizations for nearly two decades in a professional career spanning forty years. From 1969 to 1994, he served in a number of positions with Tata Motors and Escorts Limited including that of Director on Board of Escorts Claas, a start up joint venture project with the largest Indian self propelled combine harvester company.Mr. Gandhi’s other positions of eminence include:The Chairman of the Board of Directors of Fag Bearings India Ltd.Independent & Non-Executive Director of Havells India Ltd.Director of Uniproducts (India) Ltd.Member of Advisory Board of NuVeda Learning Pvt. Ltd.His other Directorship’s include Independent Lumax Industries Ltd., Fairfield Atlas Ltd., Panalfa Automotive Pvt. Ltd., Continental Engines Ltd., Mahavir Aluminium Limited, Minda HUF Ltd., Indo Alusys Ltd., Avinar Consulting Pvt. Ltd., Avinar Service Pvt. Ltd. and Pan Alfa Auto Ektrie Pvt. Ltd.Mr. S. N. AgarwalMr. S.N. Agarwal, a graduate engineer from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra and an alumnus of Harvard Business School (AMP- 1985) is the Chairman of the BHORUKA Group.He has been a Senior Executive Committee Member of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry, (FICCI) since 1985. He has been the Chairman of various National Committees of FICCI on Power, Non-conventional energy, Logistics etc. He is the President of Karnataka State Council of FICCI-New Delhi and he is also the Vice President of SAARC Chamber of Commerce & Industry representing India.Mr. S N Agarwal’s other positions include Member, Governing Board - Indian Institute of Management (Bangalore), Chairman of the Committee on Finance and Campus Development of Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM-B), Member - World Presidents Organization. He was also the Past President of All India Organization of Employers, (AIOE).Dr. Ganesh NatarajanDr. Ganesh Natarajan is Deputy Chairman and Managing Director of Zensar Technologies Limited, a Global firm that transforms Technology and Processes for Fortune 500 companies. Dr. Natarajan has been one of the most successful professionals in the Indian Information Technology Industry, having earlier been part of two major success stories in IT Training and Consulting, NIIT and APTECH. During his ten-year stint as CEO of Aptech he grew the company’s revenues fifty times and listed it on the Indian and London Stock Exchanges.A Gold Medallist in Mechanical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra he has completed his PhD in Knowledge Management at IIT Bombay. He is the author of three McGraw Hill Books on Business Process Reengineering and Knowledge Management and has also authored a book titled “Winds of Change”. He is a regular columnist for India’s premier Business and IT magazines.Dr. Ganesh Natarajan was named “CEO of the Year” by the Asia Pacific HR Conference in 1999 and received the Wisitex Foundation’s CEO of the Decade – Knowledge Award from India’s Minister for Information Technology in 2000. In July 2005, he received the Asia HRD Congress Award for Contributions to the Organisation through HR. He was one of nineteen finalists at the Ernst & Young Entrepreneurs of the Year Award 2005 where he was recognized for his exemplary leadership skills and business acumen.Dr. Natarajan chairs the Outsourcing Forum of the Confederation of Indian Industries in Western India and is also a member of the Executive Council of NASSCOM, India’s premier IT and BPO Association. He has been elected Chairman of the NASSCOM Innovation Forum for 2005-07.Mr. Deven SharmaMr. Deven Sharma holds a bachelor's degree from the Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, having graduated in Mechanical Engineering in the year 1977. He holds a Master's degree from the University of Wisconsin and a doctoral degree in Business Management from Ohio State University.Deven Sharma was named president of Standard & Poor's in August 2007. Standard & Poor's, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, is the world's foremost provider of financial market intelligence, including independent credit ratings, indices, risk evaluation, investment research and data. With approximately 8,500 employees, including wholly owned affiliates located in 21 countries, Standard & Poor's is an essential part of the world's financial infrastructure and has played a leading role for more than 140 years in providing investors with the independent benchmarks they need to feel more confident about their investment and financial decisions.Prior to being named president, Mr. Deven Sharma served as Executive Vice President, Standard & Poor’s, where he was responsible for Investment Services and Global Sales. The businesses include Investment Data & Information, Research and Portfolio services. Prior to this, he spent five years as Executive Vice President, Global Strategy for The McGraw-Hill Companies, where he led the expansion into digital markets, geographies and new growth areas, as well as acquisitions. He also oversaw McGraw-Hill Ventures.Mr. Sharma joined The McGraw-Hill Companies in January 2002 from Booz Allen Hamilton, a global management consulting company, where he was a partner. During his 14 years with that firm, he provided guidance to client companies on business strategy and globalization, as well as on branding and sales management. Much of his experience includes work with global corporations in U.S., Latin America, Europe and parts of Asia. Prior to Booz Allen, he worked with manufacturing companies, Dresser Industries and Anderson Strathclyde.Mr. Sharma has authored several publications on competitive strategy, customer solutions, sales and marketing. He is a Board member of CRISIL, The US-China Business Council and Asia Society Business Council.Mr. Gurdeep Singh PallMr. Gurdeep Singh Pall is the corporate vice president for the Office Communications Group at Microsoft Corp. and part of the Microsoft Business Division's senior leadership team. He is responsible for vision, product strategy and business development, and R&D for Microsoft's Unified Communications offerings, including Microsoft Office Communications Server, Microsoft Office Communicator, Microsoft Office Live Meeting service and Microsoft Office Communications Online.Mr. Pall joined Microsoft in January 1990 as a software design engineer. He has worked on many breakthrough products in his tenure, starting with LAN Manager Remote Access Service. He was part of the Windows NT development team, working on the first version of Windows NT 3.1 in 1993 as a software design engineer, all the way through Windows XP in 2001 as general manager of Windows Networking. During his work on Windows, he led design and implementation of core networking technologies such as PPP, TCP/IP, UPnP, VPNs, routing and Wi-Fi, and parts of the operating system. He co-authored the first VPN protocol in the industry – Point-to-Point Tunnelling Protocol (PPTP) – which received the prestigious Innovation of the Year award from PC Magazine in 1996. He also authored several documents and standards in the networking area in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards body in the mid-1990s. Mr. Pall was appointed general manager of Windows Real-Time Communications efforts in January 2002 and helped develop a broad RTC strategy that led to the formation of the Real Time Collaboration division and acquisition of PlaceWare Inc. (now called Microsoft Office Live Meeting). Since then, Pall has led acquisitions of Page on media-streams.com AG and Parlano and key industry partnerships. Microsoft's Unified Communications efforts have received many technical and design industry awards. He was named one of the 15 Innovators & Influencers Who Will Make A Difference in 2008 by Information Week. Mr. Gurdeep Singh Pall recently co-authored "Institutional Memory Goes Digital," which was published by Harvard Business Review as part of "Breakthrough Ideas for 2009" and was presented at the World Economic Forum 2009 in Davos, Switzerland.Mr. Pall has more than 20 patents (in process or approved) in networking, VoIP and collaboration areas. He holds a master's degree in computer science from the University of Oregon and a graduate degree in computer engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi in India.Mr. Sanjay NayakMr. Sanjay Nayak is the Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer of Tejas Networks, a leading optical networking product company from India. Mr. Nayak is a technologist with over 18 years of industry experience in India as well as the USA. Prior to founding Tejas, he held senior management position in globally leading Electronic Design Automation companies such as Synopsys (where he was the Managing Director of Synopsys-India) and earlier at Cadence Design Systems. Mr. Nayak holds an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh and B.E in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra.Mr. Sukant SrivastavaSukant Srivastava is Managing Director and Country Manager for Convergys Corporation’s Customer Care business in India. He is responsible for overseeing the operations of Convergys’ eight contact centres and 11,000+ Customer Care employees in India, directing relationships with National Government officials and representing Convergys in key industry forums and associations. Additionally, he focuses on driving Convergys’ Relationship Management brand position in India, enabling talent acquisition and continued leadership in the rapidly growing business process outsourcing market. Mr. Srivastava reports to Clint Streit, president of Customer Care, and is located in Gurgaon, India. Prior to joining Convergys, Mr. Srivastava served in a variety of global leadership roles with Keane, Inc. His most recent assignment was as managing director for Keane’s Indian operations. In this position he served as a transformation agent for enterprise-wide change initiatives, including a shift to a globally integrated business model. Previously, he was vice president of Global Services Integration for Keane.Mr. Srivastava holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology in Ranchi, India and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of North Florida.Dr. Shree K. NayarDr. Shree K. Nayar did BE in electrical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, India in the year 1984. He received his PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in 1990. He is currently the T. C. Chang Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University. He co-directs the Columbia Vision and Graphics Center. He heads the Columbia Computer Vision Laboratory (CAVE), which is dedicated to the development of advanced computer vision systems. His research is focused on three areas; the creation of novel cameras, the design of physics based models for vision, and the development of algorithms for scene understanding. His work is motivated by applications in the fields of digital imaging, computer graphics, and robotics.Dr. Shree K. Nayar has received best paper awards at ICCV 1990, ICPR 1994, CVPR 1994, ICCV 1995, CVPR 2000 and CVPR 2004. He is the recipient of the David Marr Prize (1990 and 1995), the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship (1992), the National Young Investigator Award (1993), the NTT Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award (1994), the Keck Foundation Award for Excellence in Teaching (1995) and the Columbia Great Teacher Award (2006). In February 2008, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.Dr. Arup Roy ChoudhuryDr. Arup Roy Choudhury is a firm believer in achieving team-excellence through transformational shift to proactive, positive and personalized approach. Having experience in private and public sector organizations, Dr. Arup Roy Choudhury has an illustrious career of about 35 years during which he has been holding the position of CEO for over thirteen years. An engineering graduate from BIT-Mesra, he completed his post graduation and doctorate from IIT-Delhi and fol lows the motto “Sankalpa Shuddha Hi Siddha” i.e. if your intentions are pure, you are bound to succeed.Becoming the youngest CEO of a CPSE at the age of 44 years, he scripted a stunning turnaround story as CMD when he transformed NBCC, which was a sick company with negative net-worth and salary backlog in 2001, into a blue-chip enterprise having 'Schedule A’ and ‘Mini Ratna’ status bestowed upon it by the Government of India. The transformational turnaround of the Company brought about by him enabled NBCC’s turnover grow about 10 times and net-worth over 500 times during his tenure of nine-and-a-half years at the helm (Annexure-I). He pulled NBCC out of the abyss and catapulted it into the distinguished league of ‘Top Ten CPSEs’. Under him, NBCC broadened its business horizons and paid its maiden dividend to the Govt. of India for the year 2006-07, after 45 years of its incorporation.Dr. Choudhury now heads NTPC Limited, the 10th largest power producer in the world and ranked as #1 Indepedent Power Producer by Platts (part of the prestigious McGraw Hill Group). NTPC is acknowledged as the best company in the world for capacity utilization. NTPC is also one of the seven largest Central Public Sector Undertakings of India, designated as a ‘Maharatna’.Since taking over as CMD-NTPC in September, 2010, Dr. Choudhary has been positioning the enterprise on course to become the largest and best power producer in the world.In a period of three and a half years of Dr. Choudhury’s leadership, NTPC has already added about 10,800 MW, which is over one fourth of its total installed capacity of over 43,019 MW built in over 38 years. NTPC’s turnover is around Rupees 68,800 crore (about USD 12.5 Billion). NTPC's financial performance in 2012-13 has been exceptionally strong with a Profit After Tax (PAT) of about Rs. 12,600 crore (about USD 2.3 billion), an increase of about 37% over the previous year's PAT.Dr. Choudhury steered the process of ‘Offer for Sale’ for disinvestment of 9.5% stakes of the Government of India in NTPC, garnering over USD 2 billion (About Rs. 11,500 Cr). This was oversubscribed by 1.7 times with 45% coming from foreign investors. NTPC's issue for Tax Free Bond of Rs. 1,000 crore in December, 2013 received overwhelming response from the investors with oversubscription of 3.37 times.Dr. Choudhury, as Chairman of Standing Conference of Public Enterprises (SCOPE) - the apex forum of over 200 Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs) in India - for two consecutive terms of two years each (From April 2009 to March 2013) effectively led policy advocacy for greater empowerment of these enterprises. He led a team of select CEOs to the Prime Minister and still remains the flag-bearer of Central PSUs.Dr. Choudhury figures at # 40 among 'India Inc's 100 Most Powerful CEOs 2013' in the list released by The Economic Times.Dr. Choudhury has received several national and international awards, including the Award for ‘The Best Organizational Turnaround’ from Hon. President of India in 2006, ‘Top Ten PSU and Turnaround Award’ from Hon. Prime Minister of India in 2007 and ‘Best Individual Leader of a Public Sector Enterprise’ from Hon. Prime Minister of India in 2010.Dr. Choudhury has captured his rich experiences and insights into a very well received book titled – 'Management by Idiots'.Mr. Anjan LahiriMr. Anjan Lahiri serves as President and CEO of MindTree’s IT Services business and is stationed in Bangalore. In this role he is responsible for all aspects of MindTree’s IT Services business around the world.Prior to relocating to Bangalore in 2008, Anjan spent five years in London setting up and then growing MindTree’s European Operations. In 1999 when he joined MindTree as a part of the founding team, he helped set up MindTree’s New Jersey office and then led MindTree’s US West Coast Operations from San Jose, California from 2000 to 2003 before relocating to London.Prior to MindTree, Anjan was a Director with Cambridge Technology Partners. He was part of the initial group, which started Cambridge’s internet services consulting practice. Anjan started his professional career with Wipro Infotech in 1987. By 1991 when he left to pursue higher studies in the US, he was a Territory Manager in Wipro’s Kolkata office.Anjan Lahiri received a BE in electronics engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi.Mr. Pawan Bhageria1983 Mechanical Engineering-Gold Medalist and MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur His 26 years of experience in Automotive / IT Industry includes Manufacturing, New Plant Commissioning Projects & all aspects of Information Technology with special focus on automotive & manufacturing industry. He has held leadership positions in large corporations of repute in India and abroad in Global cross-cultural business and technical environment.Key areas of work :Business aligned IT strategic planning and its execution,Process re-engineering & Efficiency Modeling .ERP (SAP/Oracle/Others) Global Implementation.IT Operations Managemen.IT Audits & ComplianceLarge Contract Negotiations & Vendor ManagementOrganization Change ManagementHe was Head of IT for Tata Motors & Strategic Account Manager at Tata Technologies before joining General Motors in 2006. Currently part of GM International Operations as IT Director.Mr. Himanshu KapaniaMr. Himanshu Kapania has been the Managing Director of Idea Cellular Limited since April 1, 2011. Mr. Kapania served as Deputy Managing Director at Idea Cellular Limited until April 1, 2011. He served as the Chief Operating Officer - Corporate and Director of Operations for Idea Cellular Limited.Mr. Kapania joined Idea in September 2006 with over 21 years of industry experience. He worked with Reliance Infocomm as their Chief Executive Officer for Northern Operations covering Punjab, Haryana and HP as for three years, with IDEA Cellular Ltd., as Chief Operating Officer for over six years, with Network Ltd., as Dy. General Manager - Marketing for three and a half years, with Shriram Honda as Manager Marketing for over three years and with DCM Toyota as Sr. Executive for five years. Mr. Kapania serves as a Director of Idea Cellular Limited. He is a BE in Electrical & Electronics from Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi and a postgraduate from the Indian Institute of Management, BangaloreM. M. Singh (Batch of 1974)M M Singh is the Chief Operating Officer, Maruti Suzuki India LimitedHe leads Production vertical at Maruti Suzuki India Limited. He is responsible for rolling out 1.2 million cars from Maruti stable every year with assets under control (AUC) of USD 5 billion (Rs 30,000 crores). All manufacturing facilities at Gurgaon, Manesar , Gujarat reports to him. He leads a team of 20,000 people at 10 plants consisting of more than 150 departments.His leadership led to production of high Quality cars which were exported to EU, Latin America and Middle East, and Topping CSI and APEAL ratings in India. Every year Maruti exports about 120,000 cars made in India. During his leadership an Indian manufactured car became World’s largest selling auto brand, Alto, beating models like Polo and Accord.He is Chairman of SIAM ( Society of Automobile Engineers) Logistics, Co-chairman of FICCI Manufacturing National Committee and Chairman of CII North manufacturing committee.He has received inspired manufacturing fraternity with his patented thought process called “Production Managament System” which has set revolution in manufacturing sphere by combining Japanese practices with Indian wisdom and capturing the passion of western management.M M Singh is from the BIT BE (ECE) Batch of 1974Sudhir Mohan TrehanSudhir Mohan Trehan is Executive Chairman of Avantha Power & Infrastructure Limited and Vice Chairman of Crompton Greaves Limited.A gold medallist in mechanical engineering, he graduated from Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi. He received his Master’s degree in operational research from State University of New York at Stony-Brook, U.S.A., and successfully completed the Advanced Management Program (AMP) from Harvard Business School, Boston, U.S.A.He joined Crompton Greaves Limited in 1972 and, over the years, has held several positions of responsibility. He was appointed Managing Director of the company in 2000 and, on his retirement in June 2011, was named Vice Chairman. He is a member of the Avantha Management Board, which formulates strategy at the Group level. He is also Chairman of the Board of Governors at Thapar University.Sudhir is a highly respected and widely recognised business leader. He was named “Outstanding Chief Executive” for 2000-2001 by the Indian Institution of Industrial Engineering. In recognition of his contribution to the Indian industry in general and the management movement in particular, the Bombay Management Association (BMA) unanimously conferred upon him the “Management Man of the Year Award” for 2005-2006. He was named Business Standard CEO of the Year for 2008-09.Sudhir has worked in various capacities with industry bodies, including BMA, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Indian Electrical and Electronics Manufacturers Association (IEEMA) and Nashik Industries & Manufacturers’ Association (NIMA). He was Chairman of CII’s Western Region.His interests include golf, cricket and reading.Mr. R. K. Gupta (Batch of 1965)Founder & Chairman, Laxmi Publications Group & President Emeritus BITOSA DelhiMr. Gupta is founder of Laxmi Publications Group. He has over 35 years of publishing experience. A wellknown figure in the Indian Publishing Industry, he was Ex-President, Federation of Educational Publishers in India. Apart from a distinguished personality in publishing industry, Mr. Gupta has actively taken part in promoting sports in India. He has head many international delegations. He was Secretary, Winter Games Federation of India, President, Ice Skating Association of India, Secretary, Winter Games Federation of India, Member, and Indian Olympic Association. He did Mechanical engineering from BIT Mesra.Mr. Pramod Taparia (Batch of 1966 )Founder & Chairman, Wintech TapariaMr.Pramod Taparia (popular as PT) is an entrepreneur, facilitating the food processing industry, by doing required pioneering work in India. At an age of 35 years, in 1985, PT got an award from the Vice President Shri Ramaswamy Venkataraman of India for being a "Self made Industrialist", at Delhi. Collaborating with the Swedish, in 1986, he founded a company offering international Technology & Equipments at an affordable price in India. This company, together his Scandinavian partners, pioneered Potatoes, Vegetables and Seafood processing & packaging in India. In addition to a formal degree in engineering, he went in the year 1993, for an Advance Management Program of few weeks, to a well known institute in Stockholm, Sweden.Mr. Niraj Sharan (Batch of 1976)Founder, Chairman & CEO Aura Inc.Mr. Niraj Sharan is the Founder-Chairman and CEO of Aura Inc., since 1989, a leading Global enterprise catering to the global ENERGY sector through Engineering, Manufacturing & System Integration. He is also Founder & Co-Chairman, Aurys s.r.l, Italy, a leading Technology Consulting and full service Engineering Company in Oil & Gas sector. He sits on advisory Board of several For Profit and Non-Profit companies out of USA, India & EUin Technology, Health Care and Clean Energy verticals. He is “Member, Technical Expert Committee - Government of India,under Department of Science & Technology since June 2009.”, “Special Invitee” to the US Endowment Board on US – India Joint Commission on Science and Technology formed under agreement of President Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.Mr. Sunil Jain (Batch of 1977)Chief Operating Officer & Head-Wind, Green InfraSunil is the COO of Green Infra. He has over 27 years of experience in the engineering industry, particularly in the auto and infrastructure sectors. He has extensive experience in business development, both in the domestic and international markets, and in handling commercial negotiations with customers and vendors alike. Mr. Sunil is also the President, Northern Region Council and Member National Council of Indian Wind Power Association. Sunil is a Mechanical Engineer from BIT Mesra and holds an MBA from Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University.Mr. Rajiv Nag (Batch of 1971)Founder and Chairman, CyberQ Consulting & Senior Advisor at KPMGSenior Advisor of KPMG ,The founder and Chairman of CyberQ Consulting Pvt. Ltd., Dr. Rajiv Nag is amongst the world's top-notch consultants in the areas of Process consulting who has helped organizations put their processes in place. With over 25 years of experience around the world in the areas of Software Project Management, Quality Assurance and System Testing, Development of Software Integrated Management Systems, Functional and System Integration, Application Systems Development, System design, Strategic management consultancy, Development of Quality Management Methodology and Information Security initiatives.Shri T. Venkatesh, I.A.S. (Batch of 1979)Chief Vigilance Officer (CVO) & Board Member, NTPCShri Venkatesh is an Indian Administrative Service officer of 1988 batch of U.P. Cadre. Prior to his assignment as Jt. Secy. (DOPT) in the Ministry of Personnel & Public Grievances & Pension, he held various administrative posts including DM (Bareilly), Commissioner (Gorakhpur) and Secretary (PWD) in the state of Uttar Pradesh. He is looking after the work of CVO and also on Board of Directors of NTPC since October, 2009. He has done Mechanical engineering from BIT Mesra and is post graduate in same.Mr. Ashutosh Pande (Batch of 1983)Managing Director (India) and Global Vice President & GM ISBU at CSR Technology (India)Mr. Ashutosh specializes in market creation for new technology and products. Strategist, visionary and sharp thinker, he is currently Member Governing Council at Association of Geospatial Industries and also heads an incubation unit within the company where they are exploring avenues that will allow CSR to diversify beyond chipsets into services. He holds MS in Electrical Engineering from University of Alberta, USA and B.E. in Electronics & communication from BIT Mesra.Mr. Nirankar SaxenaDirector, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI)Mr. Saxena heads the Business Information Services Network Division (BISNET) at FICCI and manages multiple project portfolios. His responsibilities include networking with leading senior Government officials,industrialists‟ and the diplomatic corps in India as well as the visiting foreign dignitaries. Prior to joining FICCI, he was Chief Executive Officer of Osprey Software Technology (P) Ltd and Director of Team Computers (P) Ltd. He holds a Page on b.e.in ComputerSciences from BIT Mesra.Mr. Ajay Pathak (Batch of 1977)Joint Secretary, Ministry of Road & Surface Transport, GOIFormer Joint Secretary at Ministry of Finance, he is now Jt. Secretary at Ministry of Road and Surface Transport. He has done his Civil Engineering from BIT Mesra.Mr. Jagdish Mitra (Batch of 1988)Chief Executive Officer of CanvasMAt CanvasM, he leads a team of over 600 associates that are focused on providing solutions that enable customers and enterprises take advantage of the mobile ecosystem. With over 20 years of experience in the areas of business development and marketing in the global information services market. Under his leadership, CanvasM has been awarded the “Best Start-Up Company” at the Mobile Content Awards 2008 held in London.Mr. Atul Kansal (Batch of 1984)Founder and Managing Director, INDUS EnviroMr. Kansal is Founder and Managing Director of INDUS Enviro and is responsible for its activities in India and the neighboring countries. He has more than 18 years of diversified consulting experience in Environmental Health & Safety (EH&S) Management particularly in EH&S Compliance and Due-Diligence Auditing. Over last 18 years, he has worked on more than 350 environmental projects in a variety of sectors. He has done his Civil engineering from BIT Mesra and Masters from IIT Roorkee.Mr. Annup Damani (Batch of 1979)Managing Director at Alloy CastMr. Damani is Managing Director at Alloy Cast (P) Ltd. Today, under his leadership, the company now boast of a capacity of over 3, 50,000 to 4, 00,000 castings per month. It has factories to cater diversified range of products and services encompassing industries like automotive, hardware, plumbing and heating controls.Mr. Abhishek Sinha (Batch of 1995)Co-founder & CEO of Eko India Financial Services Private LimitedEko democratises access to formal financial services using mobile phones as a financial identity for people at the bottom of the pyramid. Eko stands out for simplicity of user experience while still ensuring secure transactions.Eko has partnered with 1,500 retail stores bringing banking services at the next-door grocer for close to 1 million customers. Eko processes over $ 1 million every day and has processed close to half a billion dollars in transactions so far! Eko listed amongst top 10 most innovative companies in India by Fast Company | Business + Innovation!SOURCE:- www.bitmesra.ac.in

Why can't Western nations catch up with China?I think this question has two sides to it. On the one hand, China has its work cut out to catch up with some of the western countries in various technologies and I will just illustrate with several examples. On the other, in the newer technologies, China is progressing well and quickly.Industrial processes.In the field of heavy gas turbines for example, the west had already pioneered gas turbines by 1939 and used it in military ships, aircraft carriers, hydropower generators and wind turbine generators, and this heavy-duty gas turbine technology has been blocked by the west for 70 years, until China achieved a breakthrough by 2008. But it still required breakthroughs in structural mechanics, material sciences and aerodynamics, thermodynamics, rotors, fluid mechanics and so on to create the larger turbines which required the manufacture of the rotor blades to withstand temperatures of 1600 deg C. Western technology has used nickel- cobalt alloys to the blade to withstand the high temperatures and Siemens and Dutch companies are at the forefront. China took 10 years to break through to become the 5th country to manufacture such turbines, and only by 2019 did China’s first 50 MW heavy duty gas turbine come through production, but it will take another 10 years to produce the 200-300 MW class of turbines now manufactured in the west. Still there is progress.For another example, in order to develop renewable energy on a large scale and rely less on coal-fired plants which are more polluting, China needs to use natural gas but since this is found in the Tarim Basin, Qaidam Basin and Sichuan Basin, it requires building a pipeline to the east and south of China. It took six years from 2001 to 2007 to complete the domestic natural gas transmission pipeline covering 15,000 km and 20 provinces and cities. There was a problem. The USA, Japan and Germany held the monopoly on ethylene compressor manufacturing technology, and without domestic manufacturing, China was held ‘hostage’ to these countries for repairs and servicing. So China had to set up research in TianJin, Zhenhai and Fushun to make these ethylene compressors. Only by 2010 after some 60 years behind the west, did China achieve a breakthrough with the first million ton ethylene compressor, the 4th country in the world to do so; and even made some new improvements with centrifugal compressor blower shell assembly technology in the welding process to withstand the high pressure under gas compression. Even Siemens came to offer a handsome reward for the welding process developer, Yang Zhenhua’s technology. A large 1.2 million ton compressor needed only 2 months to build compared to the west. But it took China 60 years to catch up.Another area that China has to catch up is the manufacture of round spheres. This requires ultra-precision polishing processes using mechanical, chemical and electrochemical processes. In high end wafer manufacturing, the substrate is only 1 millimeter thick, with hundreds of thousands of integrated circuits on it. So it is in the nanoscale of microcrystalline silicon that China is now trying to manufacture the steel disc used to grind the material to micron level nanometer precision. The thermal barrier and shrinkage deformity at high speed is a real barrier. Currently Japan and the USA are at the forefront of this ultra-polishing technology used in the global electronics manufacturing industry. China is trying to catch up and in 2011 using cerium dioxide microspheres particle it has been trying to find solutions to the grinding disc. China needed 6 years to break through on pen steel ball technology for ball point pens, so you can understand why China needs to use so many engineers and technicians. So, China is not at the forefront in many areas but they are trying very hard.What about the military?China has to catch up with the modernisation of its military. This was brought about in the 1990s when they saw the demonstrations of US military power during the Gulf War and the Taiwan Strait Crisis, and the catch up required improving access area denial (A2/AD), transforming the PLA into an integrated fighting force with first rate naval and air capabilities. 70 % of the PLA navy ships are considered modern by the Rand Corporation in 2017. And aircraft carriers are being built, together with nuclear submarines. The air force has grown and some advanced equipment including unmanned aerial vehicles, bombers, airborne warning and control systems, stealth aircraft have been commissioned, with Rand estimating that about half of China’s fighters and bombers were modern.China has an estimated 290 warheads in 2019, and has developed anti-ship ballistic missiles that could target U.S. warships in the Western Pacific, as part of its A2/AD strategy. China reportedly has the most midrange ballistic and cruise missiles, weapons. The PLA is also developing hypersonic missiles, which can travel many times faster than the speed of sound and are therefore more difficult for adversaries to defend against. While Russia is the only country with a deployed hypersonic weapon, China’s medium-range DF-17 missile is expected to be operational in 2020.Strategic Support Force. Established during the 2015 reforms, the Strategic Support Force manages the PLA’s electronic warfare, cyberwarfare, and psychological operations, among other high-tech missions. With an estimated 145,000 service members, it is also responsible for the military’s space operations, including those with satellites. Much of the PLA’s equipment is now built domestically. In fact, China is estimated to be the world’s second-largest arms producer, trailing the United States and ahead of Russia, according to a 2020 report by SIPRI.During Jiang’s tenure, because China could not even maintain the army properly, the PLA was allowed to become involved in business. This gave rise to problems like corruption. It was only when Xi Jinping came to power that he was able to clean up the service with a wide anti-corruption campaign which saw him punish more than thirteen thousand PLA officers including one hundred generals for bribery, in the process making the PLA much more professionally oriented.States compete to develop, field, and maintain the most advanced military platforms possible. When a country develops a new military technology, its competitors will devise countermeasures and counter-innovations to limit, and possibly eliminate, the advantage their enemy derives from its innovation. Counter-innovations such as anti-air defence systems force innovators to further improve the performance of their technology. The history of military innovation is, in the end, the history of innovation, counter-innovation, and further innovation. While imitation can ride on the research and technology of innovators, avoid the mistakes made previously by innovators, and utilise resources thus saved since it is cheaper and faster, in truth this is no longer the case. Since the second industrial revolution, the complexity of military technology has increased exponentially. This dramatic increase has changed the nature of innovation and of imitation, making the latter much more difficult to implement.Anticipating, detecting, identifying, understanding, and addressing all possible technical problems when designing, developing, and manufacturing an advanced weapon system pose major challenges. Addressing them without creating new problems is an even greater challenge. More challenging still is the need for weapons producers to design platforms that can incorporate cutting-edge and yet-to-be-developed technologies, and to limit their vulnerability to subtle and effective enemy countermeasures and counter-systems. In the 1930s, a combat aircraft consisted of hundreds of components, a figure that surged into the tens of thousands in the 1950s and to 300,000 in the 2010s. As the number of components expands, the number of potential incompatibilities and vulnerabilities increases geometrically. Ensuring the proper functioning and mutual compatibility of all the components and of the whole system thus becomes increasingly difficult. And what about the sophistication- ‘a virtual systems of systems’.The production of today’s aircraft engines is so technologically demanding that only a handful of producers around the world possess the necessary technical expertise. Consider that in turbofan engines, a “close clearance between [a rotary] part and its surroundings can be critical. One-tenth of 1 millimeter [i.e., 0.00393 inch] variation in dimension can have a significant impact on system compatibility.” The same is true of materials, electronics, and software, where minor imprecision can have dramatic consequences. For example, in modern jet fighters, software controls everything, from the operation of radars to the supply of oxygen. The expansion of on-board software functions is reflected in the increase in the number of software code lines from 1,000 in the F-4 Phantom II (1958), to 1.7 million in the F-22 (2006), and to 5.6 million in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter/Lightning II. The technical problems are immense.Because of the increase in complexity, however, innovation has progressively been the result of scientific and engineering research, as well as of accumulated experience in design, development, and manufacturing. Consequently, arms producers working on the technological frontier have had to develop in-house technological knowledge bases, or systems integration capabilities, which only a few countries are now capable of doing. The entry barriers are incredibly high. Economies of scale and exorbitant capital investments still represent major barriers for most countries seeking to enter the defence sector. Lacking the necessary know-how for weapon systems production has, in fact, become a major obstacle for actors trying to imitate foreign technology—wealthy countries included. Today, states need to master, to an unprecedented level, a much broader range of disciplines and activities.The increase in the complexity of weapon systems has exponentially raised the absorptive capacity requirements to assimilate foreign know-how and experience and to imitate foreign military platforms. The stock of accumulated knowledge has, in fact, expanded to the point of becoming a “burden” for those seeking to assimilate it. The number of disciplines involved has increased dramatically, going well beyond those necessary for weapon systems development, and reaching into new, unexplored fields related both to the environmental conditions where the platform is expected to operate and to interactions between human beings and technology (e.g., ergonomics, human physiology, and cognitive sciences). The increase in complexity has also made manufacturing processes more specific and possibly unique. Because of the requirements that military platforms need to meet, today’s production processes must achieve stringent levels of precision that are alien to most industries, so not many countries can do it now.Because of the increase in the complexity of military technology, the technological knowledge of how to design, develop, and produce a given weapon system has become increasingly tacit. Tacit knowledge cannot be codified. It entails knowledge derived mostly from experience and hence is retained by people and organizations: for this reason, it does not diffuse either easily or quickly. , Even if a country had access to all the blueprints and designs of a given weapon system, many crucial aspects would still be lacking, because the best efforts to describe complex technologies... cannot capture all of the details that engineers and technicians understand. Designing, developing, and manufacturing advanced weapon systems has become a collective effort involving hundreds and possibly thousands of highly educated and skilled individuals with backgrounds in different fields and with decades of experience. China has required more than two decades to develop its fourth /fifth generation stealth aircraft which shows how difficult it is nowadays to develop a weapons platform, in particular the super-cruising thrust-vectoring engines. China is also lagging in another key realm of fifth-generation fighters—avionics. China’s difficulties in this realm stem from the fact that aerospace sensors and software development currently pose some of the most daunting engineering challenges in software problems.Countries cannot simply free ride on the research and development of the most advanced states: they first have to develop the industrial, scientific, and technological capabilities required for becoming first-tier weapons manufacturers; then, they must go through extensive trial and error to address the multitude of extremely small but challenging problems that weapons development entails. The key question for the future is whether the fourth industrial revolution will bring about a paradigmatic transformation in production, and if so, how this transformation will change the dynamics of innovation and imitation. Given that as the capabilities of autonomy increase... considerable system complexity will be created as the software and hardware is expanded.The Economy.How many people have an idea about the state China was in about a century ago? For a good expose on this, please read Zhou Wenda’s answer to the following question and look at the photo exhibits. Why do some Chinese say that Mao was the greatest man to ever live, when we know for a fact that Mao did things that led to tens of millions of people starving to death?China was basically a basket case at the time, 200 years behind the Industrial revolution, shattered by opium addiction; a tortured state where starvation was the norm whilst natural disasters, foreign hostility, civil war and banditry, world war and famine was ravaging the country. It was still largely an agrarian economy a century ago while the west had already embarked on the first industrial revolution in the 18th century, and the 2nd industrial revolution in the late 19th century which involved electricity, lighting, telephone and communications, and manufacturing. By the time of the 3rd industrial revolution, when computers were developed between 1937-1946, China was still engaged in civil war and world war.So by the time the present regime in China was established in 1949, the economy was suffering from the debilitating effects of decades of warfare. Many mines and factories had been damaged or destroyed. At the end of the war with Japan in 1945, Soviet troops had dismantled about half the machinery in the major industrial areas of the northeast and shipped it to the Soviet Union. Transportation, communication, and power systems had been destroyed or had deteriorated because of lack of maintenance. Agriculture was disrupted, and food production was some 30 percent below its pre-war peak level. Further, economic ills were compounded by one of the most virulent inflations in world history.Between 1949-1952, the goal was simply to restore the economy to normal working order and repair transportation and communication links and revive the flow of economic activity. The banking system was nationalized and centralized under the People's Bank of China. To bring inflation under control by 1951, the government unified the monetary system, tightened credit, restricted government budgets at all levels and put them under central control, and guaranteed the value of the currency. Establishment of state –owned enterprises proceeded apace, leaving about 17% of industrial units outside the state system.A major change in land ownership was carried out. Under a nationwide land reform program, titles to about 45 percent of the arable land were redistributed from landlords and more prosperous farmers to the 60 to 70 percent of farm families that previously owned little or no land. Once land reform was completed in an area, farmers were encouraged to cooperate in some phases of production through the formation of small "mutual aid teams" of six or seven households each. Thirty-eight percent of all farm households belonged to mutual aid teams in 1952. By 1952 price stability had been established, commerce had been restored, and industry and agriculture had regained their previous peak levels of production. The period of recovery had achieved its goals.The initial Five-Year Plans were adopted based on Soviet economic models of state ownership of the modern sector, agricultural collectives and centralised planning. Agriculture was re-organised into large collectives and cooperatives. The key industries of iron and steel manufacturing, coal mining, cement production and electricity generation, machinery and industrial enterprises were established. Then they shifted a great deal of the authority for economic decision making to the provincial-level, county, and local administrations to improve efficiency. A fundamental problem was the lack of sufficient capital to invest heavily in both industry and agriculture at the same time. To overcome this problem, the leadership decided to attempt to create capital in the agricultural sector by building vast irrigation and water control works employing huge teams of farmers whose labour was not being fully utilized. This resulted in the formation of the people’s communes before the implementation of the Great Leap Forward.Unfortunately, the GLF coincided with a severe economic crisis. In 1958 industrial output did in fact "leap" by 55 percent, and the agricultural sector gathered in a good harvest. In 1959, 1960, and 1961, however, adverse weather conditions, improperly constructed water control projects, and other misallocations of resources that had occurred during the overly centralized communist movement resulted in disastrous declines in agricultural output. In 1959 and 1960, the gross value of agricultural output fell by 14 percent and 13 percent, respectively, and in 1961 it dropped a further 2 percent to reach the lowest point since 1952. Widespread famine occurred, and restoring agricultural output became a top priority and technological advancement was the aim. By then increases in supplies of chemical fertilizer and various kinds of agricultural machinery, notably small electric pumps for irrigation were developed in spite of the embargo. By 1961-1965 economic stability was restored. The economic model that emerged in this period combined elements of the highly centralized, industrially oriented, Soviet-style system of the First Five-Year Plan with aspects of the decentralization of ownership and decision making that characterized the Great Leap Forward and with the strong emphasis on agricultural development and balanced growth of the "agriculture first" policy.Then came the Cultural Revolution which was essentially partly a struggle to control the bourgeois and capitalistic elements within the party and for Mao to retain control, and while it did not produce major changes in official economic policies or the basic economic model, its influence was felt throughout urban society, and it profoundly affected the modern sector of the economy. Probably the most serious and long-lasting effect on the economy was the dire shortage of highly educated personnel caused by the closing of the universities. China's ability to develop new technology and absorb imported technology would be limited for years by the hiatus in higher education. By 1975, Premier Zhou emphasized the mechanization of agriculture and a comprehensive two-stage program for the modernization of the entire economy by the end of the century with the four Modernisations at the 4th National Peoples Congress. Between 1976 and 1978, the economy quickly recovered. So by 1978 at the 3rd Plenum of the national party congress, a fundamental but gradual reform of the economic system was initiated. The reform program was not to abandon communism but to make it work better by substantially increasing the role of market mechanisms in the system and by reducing—not eliminating—government planning and direct control, step by step experimentally and by 1987 the program had achieved remarkable results in increasing supplies of food and other consumer goods and had created a new climate of dynamism and opportunity in the economy. Major goals were to expand exports, overcome transport deficiencies, communications, coal and iron and steel industry, building materials and electric power, and redress imbalance between light and heavy industry. Productivity was encouraged, financial procedures including retention of profits for re-investment, collectively owned and operated industrial and service enterprises allowed as well as reforms within the foreign trade and adoption of legal mechanisms for trade and credit.Taking cues from Japan and Singapore and Taiwan, and using Shimomuran Werner Macroeconomic principles, which also harken back to Wang Anshi’s Song Dynasty period, China’s economy has virtually exploded over the next thirty years with the reform program of principles of free market activity and professional managerial autonomy. The state-owned system of commercial agencies and retail outlets coexisted with a rapidly growing private and collectively owned system that competed with it vigorously, providing a wider range of consumption choices for Chinese citizens than at any previous time. Then they established legal protection for private property rights and ignited a major shift in rural –urban domicile. At the same time, they were trying to reduce the wealth imbalance and improve education, medical care and social security.It has primarily focused on increasing affordable housing, easing credit restrictions for mortgage and SMEs, lower taxes such as those on real estate sales and commodities, and pumping more public investment into infrastructure development, such as the rail network, roads and ports. In the online realm, China's e-commerce industry has grown from an insignificant size in 2008 to around RMB 4 trillion (US$660 billion) in 2012. Meanwhile, after Xi Jinping took office, corruption was given a massive drubbing, with the majority of citizens affirming support. The non-democratic and authoritarian political regime in China has meant that it has been possible to embrace western-style free market economics while maintaining control over the political system, which have enabled the government to enact any reforms it feels is necessary. Chinese politicians are said to feel a greater responsibility to the nation than to themselves. Strong leadership from the head of state has been a major factor contributing to economic success. Confucian values of State and society, literacy levels, energy adequacy and renewable energy, economic diversification, natural wealth in raw materials, a population which is hungry to succeed via productivity are all pivotal factors.So now, China is ready to embark on the next leg of its economic journey.Here, I will mention what George Tait Edwards has highlighted which will guide China’s progress. You can read his comment here. What are the reasons of China's slowdown?You can find the explanatory notes on the seven factors mentioned in that article.the MadeInChina2025 policyThe refusal of leadership of China’s refusal to rule the country in the interests of the rich (which is the Spenglerian trap into which nearly all Western nations have fallen)the high external earnings and future high economic returns from the OBOR/B&RI/Other major projectsthe rise in internal fixed Chinese capital from the US-equalling 2017 level of $37tr. to the twice transAmerican level of $75tr. by 2025the likely Chinese domination of the 5G products (both the base stations and the consumer products) due to the capital adequacy of China compared to the no-funds-for-manufacturing-factories position of the Westthe increasing self-sufficiency of China in fundamental high-tech microchipsthe effect of “Big Data” Chinese Government knowledge in China.Science and Innovation.We were all taught in school that the printing press with movable type was invented in Germany by Johannes Gutenberg in about the year 1550. Not so. China not only invented paper but also the printing press with movable set type, which was in common use in China 1,000 years before Gutenberg was born. Similarly, we were taught that Englishman James Watt invented the steam engine. He did not. Steam engines were in widespread use in China 600 years before Watt was born. There are dated ancient texts and drawings to illustrate and prove the Chinese discovered and documented “Pascal’s Triangle” 600 years before Pascal copied it, and the Chinese enunciated Newton’s First Law of Motion 2,000 years before Newton.The same is true for thousands of inventions that the West now claim as theirs but where conclusive documentation exists to prove that they originated in China hundreds and sometimes thousands of years before the West copied them. Western historians have distorted and ignored China’s dominant role in the world economy until about 1800. There exists an enormous amount of empirical data proving China’s economic and technological superiority over Western civilization for the better part of several millennia. Given that China was the world’s supreme technological power up to about 1800, it is especially important to emphasize that this is what made the West’s emergence possible. It was only by copying and assimilating Chinese innovations and China’s much more advanced technology that the West was able to make the transition to modern capitalist and imperialist economies. As James Petras pointed out, “… the majority of western economic historians have presented historical China as a stagnant, backward, parochial society, an “oriental despotism”.Westerners today justify their unacknowledged appropriation of Chinese knowledge and subsequent claims to ownership on some variant of the proposition that the Chinese invented those things, but never developed or capitalised on them, but the claim is invalid self-serving nonsense since my invention is mine whether or not I choose to develop it. The claim is also untrue. Criticisms of China’s use of its inventions are not so much negating a lack of application but the absence of commercialisation, these Western justifications implying that any nation not immediately striving for profit maximisation of its discoveries is morally negligent, the theft of those discoveries then justified by those who would use them more properly. This is the bank robber taking the high moral ground by claiming he put the money to better use than the bank would have done. To have foregone private commercialisation was neither a character flaw nor a behavioral fault, but a reflection of the pluralistic and socialistic nature of the Chinese people, the same reason that even today China’s patent and IP laws and regulations are so much less aggressive than those of the US. Put simply, China has never been as capitalistic or as individualistic as the West. This emphasis on the greater good and overall benefit to society rather than individual profit, is fundamental to the natural humanity of the Chinese people, and cannot be permitted to be destroyed by the sociopathic Western model so forcefully promoted today on the basis of a fictitious moral superiority.The West chooses to ignore the fact that the 200-year hiatus in China’s innovation was due almost entirely to their own military invasions, when the West was ravaging and destroying the nation. China’s development, social progress, and invention, ceased only from the invasions by both the Americans and Europeans, and most especially with the Jews’ vast program of trafficking in opium in China. During the brief period of the 2nd and 3rd industrial revolution the nation was entirely enveloped in the fundamentals of its economic and social revolution, and in no position to participate, but China’s inventiveness has not ended. With China recovering and once again taking its rightful place in the world, it is continuing where it left off 200 years ago. Ignoring the historical setback, Chinese companies are simply by-passing the earlier stages of innovation by foreign firms and proceeding to subsequent stages where the field is open and foreign patents have not precluded innovation and development.As soon as China found its footing, innovation continued unabated as it had for thousands of years. China missed the computer and Smartphone patents, but was perfectly timed for the solar panel revolution and quickly emerged as the world leader – at which point the US imposed tariffs of 300% on Chinese solar panels in an attempt not so much to kill China’s export sales but to prevent the accumulation of funds for further R&D. Despite US accusations of China copying foreign technology, China’s high-technology achievements were almost entirely home-grown because the US has been so determined to hinder China’s rise that by 1950 it engineered an international embargo on all scientific knowledge and on almost all useful products and processes to China, including legislation that Chinese scientists cannot be invited to, or participate in, American scientific forums, while bullying other Western nations into doing the same.One must keep in mind that no foreign company is conducting cutting-edge commercial or sensitive military research, or manufacturing quantum computers and hypersonic missiles in China. Any technology actually available for transfer would be almost entirely in consumer goods, and hardly constitute great value or threats to US ‘national security’. And, in virtually many of the cutting-edge fields and industries such as quantum computing, 5-G telecom or solar energy, China has already surpassed the US.In 2015, Chinese engineers announced the world’s first quantum communications network, a 2,000 kilometer system linking Beijing and Shanghai with data transmission encoded by quantum key distribution. In August of 2016 China launched the world’s first quantum communications satellite, and succeeded in test communication with the country’s existing ground stations. In September of 2016, Chinese scientists achieved the world’s first quantum teleportation between independent sources, delivering quantum information enciphered in photons between two locations.In 2014, researchers at Nankai University in Tianjin developed a car with a working brain-control unit, with sensors that capture brain signals permitting humans to control the automobile with their minds. In 2016 China launched a fully-operational space lab to conduct the first ever brain-machine interaction experiments in space. Chinese scientists believe brain-computer interaction will eventually be the highest form of human-machine communication, having developed this process much farther than any Western nation and holding nearly 100 patents. In 2015, high school students from Tianjin won an International gold medal for the creation of a microbe biological battery. Their tiny multi-bacteria cell reached over 520 mV, and lasted over 80 hours. Scaled up, their biological battery was able to generate as much power as a lithium battery, with a much longer life and producing no pollution. These are Chinese high school kids.Chinese researchers are developing the technology and processes to make 3D-printed skin a reality, custom-made skin for burn patients, printed according to their wounds. In May of 2019, a Chinese start-up launched a revolutionary AI chip with the computing power of eight NVIDIA P4 servers but up to five times faster, with half the size and 20% of the energy consumption, and costing 50% less to manufacture. Shanghai’s Fudan University developed a transistor based on two-dimensional molybdic sulfide, meaning computing and data storage happen together in a single cell, perhaps eliminating silicon-based chips which are at their limit. DJI Technology, founded by a Chinese university student, has become in only a few years the global market leader in small consumer drones. The country produces nearly 40% of the world’s robots, with vastly improved core technologies, and is the world leader in 5-G technology.Chinese engineers created a supercomputer seven times faster than America’s Oak Ridge installation, the first in the world to achieve speeds beyond 100 PetaFlops, powered by a Chinese-developed multi-core CPU and Chinese software, while displacing the US with the most supercomputers in the top 500. Upon the revelation of China’s super-fast supercomputer, authorities reported the NSA had launched hundreds of thousands of hacking attacks, looking to steal the technology for China’s new microprocessors. China’s megaproject engineering skills are already legendary, with the longest sea bridges, the longest tunnels, the largest deep-water ports.In 2014, architects in Amsterdam began work on what was to be the world’s first completely 3D-printed house, a costly enterprise requiring three years. At exactly the same time in Shanghai, a Chinese company completed ten 3D-printed houses in less than a day, at a cost of less than $5,000 each, using recycled construction and industrial scrap as the ‘ink’. Researchers / journalists have seen these homes; large, elegant, multi-story European-styled structures, and so sturdy they can withstand earthquakes up to level 8 on the Richter scale.We know about China’s fabulous high-speed trains, but few outside China are aware of the intense high quality of the HSR network, built with the highest standards in the modern world, including stability. When traveling by train I sometimes place a coin on its edge on the windowsill, and I have video of the coin remaining stable for four or five minutes before it finally falls over – and this is at 300 Kms per hour. Shanghai has a high-speed Maglev train (430 Kms/hr), while many cities have low-speed Maglevs (200 Kms/hr), and Chinese engineers are ready to produce commercially a 600 Km/hr Maglev. The same pace of development is true of the nation’s urban subway systems. I have lost the source for these figures, but the city of London needed 147 years to build 408 Kms. of subway lines, New York City 106 years for 370 Kms., Paris 110 years for 215 Kms, while Shanghai needed only 20 years to build 500 Kms.These achievements were not sudden, but developed from a deliberate plan in execution for 30 years, though it is only recently that many of these efforts are bearing fruit. More importantly, China accomplished this from a third-world industrial base while under a total Western embargo on technology transfer. Chinese scientists have developed nuclear energy plants, put men into space, photographed the entire surface of the moon, built a space station, designed and launched a private GPS system. We have Chinese-designed and built deep-sea submersibles, and the country is rapidly developing its own aircraft industry. Today, with its science and technological base so much more advanced, and with education spending increasing at nearly 10% per year, and very high R&D expenditures, invention and innovation can only increase. One of the most persistent myths propagated about China, a claim without a shred of supporting evidence, is that Chinese lack creativity and innovation due to flaws in their educational system. The Chinese hope they keep thinking that way, and forget to look at PISA scores.Thanks for A2A.