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My pride prefers to refer to it as 'extreme gallivantism', a prototype alternative to homelessness.In a way, this story will be a self-referential guide to harshly enjoying being homeless. The struggle was more inside though than it was outside. Ayn Rand followers will shudder after hearing what I've done during this period in my life.I was -- actually still am -- homeless for a time being. My current disposition is that I live with my struggling parents here in West London with my fiancée whom I met while gallivanting around the United Kingdom. I am not technically out of my gallivantism since I share the room with four other people; my parents, my sister, and my fiancée. This just accommodates one room in a four-bedroom council flat shared by maybe five others plus around three who only frequent during the weekends after their work duties. That's a total of at least twelve people in a four-bedroom flat. It's a tough circumstance so prepare for a tl;dr.(Feel free to edit grammatical errors)Act I - Pure MiseryI'm not the type of person to use the term 'homelessness' because I was not born poor, so to speak. I was one of those privileged middle class whose family dreamt of being more that what they are and ended up crashing and burning. Hard. I spent more than half of my life in Davao City in the Philippines while my father worked as a branch accountant in a national corporation that monopolises the legal gambling around the country. For all the rampant corruption in the country, it makes my head scratch wondering why our situation isn't as pleasant as one could hope. My father, when he retired early at fifty years of age, cited the reason that he doesn't want us, his children, to peruse the money gained in a rather immoral business. He's quite a principled man; doesn't smoke or do drugs, occasionally drinks, makes occasional nerdy statements about life, like for example "You, son, hold the future to our success." as if he was Gandalf and I was Frodo being handed the One Ring. Ironically, he's been with the business for half his life. Together with my mother, with the money he'd accumulated for his early retirement, they'd set up a family business of building a restaurant that lasted a mere less than five years, all because, I reckon, greed consumed their ambitions for a better life for all of us.My mother, contrary to my father, is an atrocious money-handler. She'd magically turn money to a Louis Vuitton handbag or a spanking new shiny brooch with a rare whatever-carat diamond in the middle without my father's approval, constantly and with ninja-accurate stealth. Protip: If you enter a relationship and you have no idea where your money goes, lose your partner and find someone who is good at counting. My father of course is not completely oblivious to this, he just assumes that the money would rebound as quickly as mother spent it. My mother has this uncanny gift of gab, so to speak, and she can speak her way out of anything in life, except when shit hits the fan and the odds are no longer in her favour. He trusted her knowing this, ended up poor as hell.The business was no longer booming. Remember the restaurant? It's a chicken business. Everyone loves their chicken. But do you know why it failed? Entrepreneurship 101 taught us that location is a good variable for a successful business, right? So my business-savvy parents, with their immaculate power of wit, built their first restaurant in front of McDonald's and some other rivalling local restaurants that are twice as big and had karaoke, too.They put all the money into that business while me and my sister study under prestigious schools locally. Eventually, we all had to move because our house was being sold for an undisclosed reason. This is my biggest problem with them; even now at the tender age of 26, they never once included me in their 'adult' conversations about how to handle our lives. My mother would argue against me by using the Filipino word, 'diskarte', to describe their methods of living. My usual argument goes like this, 'Well, I'm just drifting along the tide of your failures.' Protip: Never argue with anyone unprepared. Always rehearse your lines beforehand. After the house where I grew up in was sold, we had to resort to living on the cabin of the restaurant. Imagine waking up every morning to the sweet smell of streets and beer. At this point in my life, they had began their conquest to relocate us all to another country and fulfill the destiny of unparalleled wealth. They chose the United Kingdom; my father's sister was there, easier for us all then to be petitioned.It took us quite a while to get there because of fucking visa and whatnot. My father's was the easiest. He had already been away for two years paving the way for my mother and sister, who got petitioned by him. I was left there in my country all alone, just about to finish my university and easily got my first, second, and third jobs before moving to London. I was being passed from house to house by family friends who were then included in the family business. I was left behind because of age, stating I was no longer dependent, so it had to be that I would be left to fend for myself. Everything that we owned, instead of handing some of it to me, was sold, including accommodation and transportation. Protip: Don't expect anything from life/ Except more challenges, even in your most happiest day.I waited for more or less five years before seeing my family again. At this point, I learnt so much of independence. I had problems in life confronting me that I've never encountered before; bills, money, food, work, relationships, loneliness, etc. If you've seen my photos of me during the time spent as an independent than the time spent before that, you would easily mistake me as a lead replacement for Christian Bale in the film, The Machinist. The day I saw my mother again, after all those years, I couldn't even recognise her as she was standing a few metres away from me for ten minutes. I literally stared at her waiting for me to appear but none of us seemed to recognise one another. Protip: Not being able to recognise people who's been with you your entire life is a symptom of deterioration and therefore is something that one should always try to avoid in life. It's emotionally worse than the news of cancer, I promise. My mother was a survivor of it.A couple of weeks later, the paperwork was swift since my mother found new work as an immigration consultant even without prior experience or education. She graduated with AB (Bachelor of Arts) in English and failed to pursue a law degree because, hey, I was born! It's my fault all along! Money was easier for her then because of the high number of students wanting to work outside of the country. I graduated in Nursing like 80% of the outgoing university students in hopes to turn their lives around by working in a first-world nation. Protip: If you went to university for something you are not passionate about, it will be an indication of future circumstance and will affect your morale in everything you do. She had an unbelievably high amount of applications that it was difficult to manage everyone and not expect a lot of failures along the way. The awful part of this was that she kept accepting money from applicants even without any assurance of success.So about a month after she came, we both found ourselves boarding a flight to freedom and eternal luxury. Note that my visa application for the United Kingdom was not permanent, but merely a student visa, for me to study English as a Second Language even though I have been required to learn the damn language ever since I was three. I had to gulp my pride and accept an easy way in despite my personal objections. I left a stable job with dignity there including all my newfound relationships that I struggled to build for some years. In short, I did not wholly want the offer of British glory. My life was satisfactory as it was despite the struggle. Here in London, I was a student again and nothing and no one at all.My visa was good for a year but I soon realise that their life here was no different than life back home, much worse even. My parents were aging and had no stable job or income, my sister was still in university, the flat plain sucks, everything was meconium-stained back to zero. Worst of all, my mother, the most atrocious finance manager in the world, managed to spend all that money accumulated from past earnings with little to no explanation as to how or why. It became a sort of vinyl carousel whenever my parents have arguments. After a year, they applied another extension for me which went up to two years this tim. Nothing from that point forward up until this point was productive in our lives.My mother eventually lost the business when her partner left her to rut and fend for herself against the barrage of applicants asking for their longstanding refunds. My father intermittently finds jobs here and there that are cash-in-hand, normally kitchen porting and demanding responsibilities for a man his age. My mother ended up hiding from public view due to the embarrassment caused and took up nanny jobs from some posh British Arabs living here in London. My sister is working her way up as we speak, having recently found work in a bank just to make her ends meet. I, on the other hand, still struggle to keep up even from the slow pace. I cannot work because I am already way past the visa limits. My parents are applying for my indefinite visa and are -- I shouldn't even be saying this online but I'm so sick of it already -- making it seem like I'm dependent and borderline insane and in dire need of parental guidance. For me, I just want to go back home, but it's much and more complicated now.Exactly a year ago, I finished my theatre studies here in London. I took up theatre studies to rebel against my parents' desire to further my nursing. I foolishly picked up studies wherein I need not really sit and study, which is easy and popular and something that deep down I really felt I could do but never would. Protip: Never turn rebel without a cause just because you think you can. James Dean died at the age of 24 so do the math. Somehow I managed to convince them while making us drift apart in our relationships as well. I loathed the manner in which they handled the entire thing and they kept treating me as a nonfactor, the idiot savant that they made me appear to be. I was glad that at least for three years of my stay here in London, I lived far away from them as I possibly could because of the negative vibe and the unwelcome feeling of elephants in the can. My father barely provided me with the necessities to be able to let a room somewhere in East London that is close to where I studied (Three Mills Studios). He kept providing for me for three years until he no longer could after losing his job, which was ironically just a few weeks after graduation. I then figured from that point on to continue what I've started in theatre and seek inspiration in the form of an adventure, the reason that I have no home to go back to anyway.So my first plan was just to add diversities to my meaningless weeks. It was so dark and negative to the point of me eating chicken wings every day because no one was there to provide for me and I was to distressed about the predicaments of having nothing to do. Olympics was coming up and most of the locals were out of town anyway. That gave me the excuse to go to Edinburgh in Scotland to attend the Edinburgh Fringe, despite without having much money into it, which most of my friends and acquaintances from my studies in theatre were interested in. I figured I could convince a single soul for me to be able to make it through up until my indefinite visa would come. A few days before departure, I so happened to watch Into The Wild to seal the deal of me being this same man that I saw in the film.Act II - MisadventureWho knew homelessness can be so much fun?I had an unorthodox way of going about it and ended up reaping with so much rewards and consequences. Plenty of it are still felt up until this very day.My first few days in Edinburgh were boring, lonely times as the unwilling runaway tourist that I immediately thought of returning back home in a day or two despite the dread. But then, I started meeting people! So lovely people, like-minded folks whose spirits up until that point did not realise intertwined with mine. Protip: Always treasure new acquaintances as if you'd never make new ones. I had enough money for three weeks, but I was away from London for six or seven months.Before running out of the money, I thought of a nifty plan. To become an adventurer in haste! All of the ingredients were in place, I just had to complete the task. I did not want to seem like a parasite to these people I just met so off I go roaming around the Scotland countryside pretending I was Bear Grylls. The most important things with me here were my iPhone and my rucksack. I had a luggage which I left in Edinburgh as a promise or insurance that I would come back, but in reality I just needed a place to hide it.From Edinburgh, I took a coach ride to Inverness. I knew nothing about the place, didn't even google it beforehand, I was completely blank when I got there. Protip: Whenever you are in a new town or city and you haven't a clue what to do, go find the nearest McDonald's. That's what I did, and what do you know, everything revolves around it; hostels, B&B's, tourist attractions, Primark, etc. I stayed in a hostel called Highland Backpackers, got pissed on my first night by hostel buddies I just met and woke up in the hostel reception. I've never stayed in a hostel beforehand so that experience for me was quite shaky but enlightening. I stayed for another night because I realised just how cheap hostel accommodation can become, and also because I was hitting it off with a Dutch lady who had one night left to stay. It was sort of my first Before Sunrise moment.The Dutch woman I met made me aware of the existence of UK's tallest munro, Ben Nevis, which is located in Fort William. My next goal was to reach it, and to climb it and hopefully stay there as a hermit. At least it was in my dreams.The third day I began my silly revelations. I decided to test-walk myself having bought a cheap tent some days before in Tesco. One, I wanted to see if I can actually sleep outside for a change, and two, I wanted to learn how to assemble the tent. From Inverness, where I started my long walk, I went blind walking until I reached Beauly. From there, believe it or not, two beautiful local girls inside the car offered me a ride. How could a single man with warm and potent hormones ever hope to resist such a lovely gift from the heavens above? I was against the thought of hitchhiking despite having researched about it earlier, because who knows when I might need them. I was against it because it was shameful to my pride and couldn't fully accept that I had no money and no means to provide myself. I couldn't even look at the cars passing by without a thought of shame. They took me to a campsite somewhere in Dingwall where I utilised my newfound talent in tent-building. Actually, I spent a whole day learning how to assemble it in a graveyard in Inverness, so much so that I got trapped inside, all the gates were shut and the walls were high as hell.It's been a month and a half since I've been away from home then and it never felt better. Things did happen to me that could never happen during my three or so years of stay with my family. My walk to Dingwall was the first place that really took it up a notch. It was my first encounter with nature all by myself during the walk and all.After a night in Dingwall, I walked westbound until I reached a small town called Strathpeffer and stayed there for another night. This was my first far-away-from-civilisation moment. No roads, no cars, no lights, no farms, not even the moon. Just me, my tent, the surrounding animals, wind, and complete darkness. I brought with me books, just in case. This was to me the perfect homeless getaway.Took a bus from Strathpeffer to Gairloch where I had close encounters with local gangsters and police, not to mention everyone there was all Caucasian and I am there as the only Asian man wandering about. Protip: Do not accept any offers from dodgy persons enquiring whether or not you are police or media personnel. I went to a pub from where the bus stopped and all eyes were literally on me and dogs started barking ominously making me seem to appear as a great evil. It was difficult to drink my pint of Guinness with that thought, almost peed on my pants, all the while not knowing a family had just drowned 500 metres from where I stood.I took my first bus heading to basically anywhere just to run away from that very disastrous heavy feeling. I ended up returning to Inverness.Act III - Bad RomanceI didn't know what to do while I was back in Inverness. I did not want to stay in a hostel to save what is left of my money. I wanted to go around Loch Ness to see what the deal was with that monster that everyone's been talking about. I assured myself I was going to stay for just one night in a place called Bazpackers. There were only a few people booked in which was nice, much smaller and intimate than Highland Backpackers, which people there referred to as a shithole. You wouldn't believe the number of times I heard the word 'shithole' during the entire duration of my trip. Glasgow? Shithole. Edinburgh? Shithole. London? Shithole. The entire continent of Europe? Shithole! Protip: Never respond with, 'Yes, it is a shithole.' Just nod and change the topic. The relationship you make with locals will be much better off without any negative thoughts. There inside was an American tourist (woman), a German tourist (woman), a Canadian staff (man), and a British receptionist (man). Plus me (nobody).Eventually we all partied in a pub called Hootananny despite my financial woes, it was the same pub where I got pissed the first night I arrived there. This time, not only did I learn how to dance the Scottish way, it also happened to blossom into a relationship between me and the German lady.The thing was, she turned out to be as penniless as me, and she was cray-cray. Both of us went to Edinburgh before she departed for Germany, but there was just no way for us to become a couple. Not because of love, but she literally had mental issues that needed to be resolved. Protip: Sometimes it's never you, it's them, so stop blaming yourself all the time.What a way for me to return to where I started. She left me on a Friday when her flight was to be on a Sunday, all because she wanted to wait and sleep in the airport for not having money. She basically took what's left of mine and ran away. To top it all off, I got mugged on my way to my friends' place by teenage girls who had zero clue that I was ten times poorer than them. That event prompted me to even ask this question on Quora: Is it justifiable to hit women if they try to rob you?I've never been mugged in my country before, but in a span of six months, I had two occasions here in the UK where I was attacked and barely escaped with minor scratches. I was also mugged a few months before doing this trip when I was on my way home from my parents' flat to mine in London. Protip: When in the heat of a serious incident, remember every single detail rather than thinking whether or not to fight or flight.It would have been worse if I'd never met the people that I did when it counted the most. They were the ones who saved me when I was basically down and out in everything. The sad part is that I could not even get myself to admit to them that I had no money, nothing to go back home to, and I'm using them as an excuse to make myself feel better. To them, I am Czen, from London, from Philippines, the adventurer.Act IV - Constant RebuildThe urge to start afresh again crawled inside me after the incident in Edinburgh. The next day, I had a bus ticket heading to Glasgow to make that dream possible. It was lucky for me to have come during the first week of university. I had another close encounter with the police when the hostel where I stayed had a completely naked and homeless man pooping across our room. Meanwhile, the mingling here was easier than Edinburgh or Inverness as it was easier to meet people through incoming students and I only had to disguise myself as one to become accepted into that circle. I attended a céilidh from the University of Strathclyde and had a hearty buffet. All I had to do was say I just arrived from my country and I don't have the proper identification yet. They even gave me the university prospectus and stuff. So much laughter was to be had that day.I met so many people that day. Eventually, some Chinese girls whom I met through a German mate I met offered me a place to stay for some weeks. I ended up becoming their house pet, making unintelligible jokes while eating their food. It didn't last too long, though. I was beginning to feel that while it would be nice to just stay and take advantage of their hospitality, my real goal was to finish the trip that I started; the one with the Dutch woman's idea of conquering Ben Nevis. The hospitality took its toll on me. I was beginning to feel the shame. I moved to a hostel nearby called Euro Hostel for a few days because of this feeling. I have to thank the American lady I met in Inverness for this proposal, she was also in her own soul-searching event.The hostels in Glasgow are loathsome in that they are the only city in Scotland with hostels that are not mixed between men and women. Imagine staying in a room with fourteen other men who barely wash and are a wee bit dodgy. I've heard of similar complaints from the women's department, only the problems were much shallow than ours (conversations about makeup and the size of their bosoms). There I met some German blokes who were into the same idea as mine. They told me about the West Highland Way, a popular long-distance walk from Milngavie, Glasgow to Fort William. I also met some people while crossing the street at 3 AM and had similar conversations with positive feedbacks. I knew this was the plan all along. The advantages of having nothing in your life is that you can put it all on the line and still have a smile on your face.Act V - West Highland WaySo I was prepping myself to take part on a solitary long walk that would take at the very least four days to finish without barely any money. I couldn't even resort to petty crime to save myself and figured I would just die from either hunger or a freak accident. I took a bus from Buchanan Bus Station in Glasgow and headed to Milngavie at noon. When I arrived there, I didn't even know where to go and relied heavily on my iPhone and signages. I bought some food to go and found the sweet entrance and began my journey with other people who happens to be passing by.The wonderful thing about this journey was realising how warm locals can be around this area; plenty of hi's and hello's, offers of assistance, donation tables, etc. My first day was spent walking for a total of ten miles before stopping to rest as the sunset happened particularly as early as four in the afternoon. There was absolutely little to do beyond reading and resting after dark. For some days, I sleep more or less sixteen hours, and then keep walking after waking and tidying up. Remember I had little food and zero money, I had to resort to the bounty offered to me by nature. Water was no problem as Scotland offers the best natural water than anywhere else. I had Mars bars and some crisps to lend me energy to hopefully reach another town before I pass out. Protip: Whenever you feel like passing out, reach for the closest highway. That way, when you happen to collapse, someone will be there to easily find you. At one point, I came across a bothy and contemplated whether or not I should stay for some time before moving on.The wonderful thing about this trip was how diverse and beautiful it got every single day. I kept thinking to myself, 'Man, I'm the luckiest person there is,' and then realise that in reality I'm not. I travelled so far for four days surviving on Mars bars before finally finding people to walk and share things with at the fourth day, just before setting up camp and sunset somewhere in Inveroran. It was an overwhelming pleasure to be in a place where notable people like Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin once stood. Thinking back now, it was quite funny because the place was seemingly in the middle of nowhere.To be a homeless man as I had been was a tremendously rewarding experience. From the fifth day to the end of my walk on the seventh, a couple from Wales (a German man and a Chinese woman) accompanied me and made me feel like a brother to them, providing me with alms and snacks to keep me from weakening, even providing for my hostel and tickets for a return to Edinburgh which I did not unfortunately use.We arrived in Fort William on Halloween and spent the holiday there in costume with the other hostel guests. By this time, I began to be attractively linked to a French woman who was also staying there. I was not able to use the train ticket to Edinburgh that the couple gave me because of this. She was on her way to Glasgow and I wanted to go with her.Act VI - Almost ThereBoth me and the French girl went to Glasgow together on my third day in Fort William. We booked for a night in Eurohostel but unfortunately did not share the same room as was in Fort William. We also started to drift apart as a potential love affair that fast for some reason. It didn't really matter to me because we knew each other for, like, three days.I was going to cook some tuna pasta for myself in the kitchen using some of the groceries I hid before I left the place a week ago, even though I did not anticipate coming back, when I came across a woman from Korea who struck a conversation with me by asking, 'Are you Japanese?' That one conversation that we had changed everything for me. We had been inseparable up to this very day and she'd become my fiancée even though I could not hope to afford a wedding.What happened to the French girl? She left, but not before saying how my tuna pasta sucked. Protip: Cooking is never personal, okay?Act VII - Rest Of My LifeThis is the final act of the story of when I was homeless.That event had been more or less seven months ago now. Me and Ms. Korea decided to travel to London because I reckoned no one could not maintain a relationship without any strong support from anyone, and the best thing I could come up with was to swallow my pride and return home. She did not know of my predicament, I let things unfold itself for her to see, which turned out good in the long run otherwise I would have easily alienated her early on. Our problems as a couple did not end there. Worker ants or bees had things easier than my family. My parents were still jobless and could barely afford to pay for the flat. Most of the money used to pay were coming from the other flatmates in the other rooms.Due to the arrival of my girlfriend, my father had to sacrifice the comforts of sleeping in a single bed to sleeping on the ground to better accommodate her. I had to sleep beside her on my father's bed to not make her feel like an outsider. I had to find small-scale work just to make our ends meet. It's much more difficult because of her status and now I'm adding a new mouth to feed and more expenses to be made. I begged my father to allow us to relocate to a new room somewhere more convenient for us. We did, only for a month before he ran out of money to provide. I was earning below minimum of £5 as someone who hands out cards from a taxi company door-to-door. It was £15 for three hours, 9 AM to noon, and it was a week before it finally started to snow in London, which means no work.After the one month was spent, we returned again to my parents' room. This time with the intent of taking back my old room which was occupied by tenants. I managed to take away the room after some weeks but instead of occupying it, I personally made a listing in Gumtree for an available room in West London so that I could take the monthly fee for myself. My parents were not able to do anything as the room was already technically my room to begin with. Protip: Do not do this at home, seriously. Quite sneaky of me, I admit, but were it not for this move, we would have been in a much worse situation. An Italian couple is current occupying my room while me and my girlfriend are currently planning for another trip outdoors. Maybe somewhere in Wales, and at the very least have some money okay for a few weeks.Still homeless strictly speaking. All I've been wanting to do now is find a job that understand my situation and is willing to giving me a shot. I've always wanted to continue pursuing what I've already started in theatre. Recently I've been using my Top Writer status here on Quora as an added advantage to no avail. Life is tough and I barely scratched the surface in explaining in proper detail the entire situation. Like for example my girlfriend being pregnant and losing it within the same span of seven months. It's a sodding roller coaster.I'd like to thank all the people that supported me during this enduring time. Quora was one of the things that kept me in touch with the world even though I didn't make it seem here like something was wrong. I had it all made cryptically here and there. I thank my fiancée for enduring every step with me, even though I could only offer so very little. Thanks to Jan Leadbetter for making me aware of this question. This is probably the longest I've ever written, and good lord, my head hurts like hydrocephalus. Protip: Rest after 500 words.And finally, to all would-be unwilling homeless people out there, instead of wallowing in self-pity and torment, make mountains out of air. Reach out to anything beyond your means, there is nothing to lose. Told myself that if I should die or eventually get over this situation, I will be ruthless in the attempt to stay away from this kind of life ever again. I never once begged in the streets (my pride just wouldn't allow it) even though I did sleep in the middle of a park in Edinburgh (and it was hellish) or in a toilet stall in Kings Cross station (pick your poison).

We designers get to do a lot, applying our creative minds to a huge range of tasks. Posters, packaging, websites, apps, magazines, infographics, UI & UX, advertising, marketing—just to name a few.Yet for me, the biggest draw of being a designer was the promise of doing something new every day. And I’ve never regretted my decision to follow this creative path.Our number one goal as designers is communication. Effective logo design must do that, and more.Think about it. Any company, product or service wants to share with the world how wonderful it is. But audiences encounter an insane amount of images everyday. Logo design needs to say a lot to many different people in a very crowded visual space.So why bother? Isn’t a brand so much more than logo design anyway?Well, yes, it absolutely is.But let’s take a moment to discuss what a brand is, because it’s difficult to contextualize logo designwithout doing so.Branding, essentially, is the collective, perceived experience/s associated with an organization, a person, a product or a service. In the words of Marty Neumeier, it’s the gut feeling an audience has about something (an iPhone 6), or someone (Barack Obama). Clients pour an insane amount of time, effort and cash into creating and cultivating brands and brand perception. Why, because so much rides on what we think of stuff.We form views about brands in our environment in response to our values. Specifically, how they align (or mis-align) with the values projected and experienced. BP can tell us they’re driving toward a greener future, one “beyond petroleum” as they did as part of their 2001 rebrand. But when one significant collective experience involves a hell of a lot of dead wildlife and the destruction of thousands of livelihoods along the Gulf Coast? There’s a clear discrepancy there. The brand aspiration and brand experience do not align.Obviously, that’s not particularly good for business. So, that’s where PR practitioners come in: experts in steering brands through troubled waters.So where does logo design fit in?A nice way to think about a logo is as a focal point to a brand. Simply put, a logo is the simplest visual expression of an organization, a person, a product or a service. But organizations, people, products and services can be complex beasts and often have a lot to say. They can have numerous values and aspirations.That’s why I believe logo design is the ultimate craft a designer can hope to excel in.A good logo is one that distills much of those values and aspirations down into one mark. Yet, that’s no mean feat. It’s incredibly difficult. Perhaps one of the most difficult things a designer can get right. But when you get it right, nothing comes close to the level of satisfaction. It’s totally worth the effort.Let’s jump back in history to the twentieth century. We’ve got the likes of Otto Neurath and Gerd Arntz, whose incredible work on pictograms and isotypes gave rise to some of the best known graphic designers of that same century. Otl Aicher’s pictogram work for the 1972 Munich Olympics, and Paul Rand’s contribution to the likes of IBM, UPS, Yale, Westinghouse, abc (and many more—Rand is almost single-handedly responsible for the emergence of “corporate identity” as a sought-after and well-funded facet of the graphic arts industry) clearly tap into the work of Neurath and Arntz.In a similar vein, there’s a lot to learn from the art world in relation to abstraction and representation. Picasso’s bull is an excellent visualization of an often-employed technique of logo designers: paring something down to its most basic form while still displaying just enough of the trademark form so that something—in this case, a bull—is still recognizable.Good logos share two significant characteristics. One, they are identifiable, and two, they are memorable.Good Visual Language“We employ the visual tools at our disposal to achieve this uniqueness—typography, colour, form—and we draw on the points of difference that distinguish an organisation’s individual culture, ethos, activities and mission.” —Michael Evamy (in ‘Logo’, a brilliant tome from Laurence King Publishing)It’s a lot to ask of a logo—to capture all that a thing stands for, in one identifiable, memorable mark. How is that even possible? Well, that’s one of the great challenges of logo design and a fulfilling part of being a designer.The peace you need to make with yourself as a logo designer is that sometimes it’s just not possible, or appropriate, for everything an organization, a person, product or service aspires to be, to manifest in one all-singing, all-dancing mark. That’s why an expanded toolkit available to creatives in any kind of brand work, includes things like language & tone of voice (the art of copywriting), photography & illustration (including patterns and graphic elements), texture (fabric, paper stock, building materials), and a crafted user experience (the way a site or app responds to a user interacting with its content, and how their basic needs are being met), to name a few tools.Along with a logo, these constitute a brand’s visual language. A good visual language will support logo design by helping to promote the values a brand wishes to project. In other words, the visual language exists to help bring life to a brand. It’s comforting to know that a visual language can be developed to help out at the party, so to speak.Additionally, a good visual language will carry through the tenets of a good logo: the elements of that language need also to be identifiable and memorable. And the whole thing—logo design and visual language, combined — need to sing from the same hymn book. In other words, there needs to be a cohesion to it all. Cohesion doesn’t mean a carbon-copy replication across applications. Rather, considered adaptation that respects the application and remains a team player to the rest of the brand elements.Identity DesignFortunately, the internet is littered with truly excellent examples of identity design, which incorporate logos and visual language. These are great to look at and study but don’t dwell too long on the eye candy available. One of the downsides to all of the beautiful work online is that it tends to yield a lot of copycat work. Sometimes not intentionally, either.I’ve always found a better place to start a logo brief is to dwell in the details of the brief to hand. That is, sit with it and digest for a bit, then get cracking with some old fashioned pen-to-paper concept development work. After all, you can’t beat word mapping and rough sketches.It’s a leap of faith for someone just starting out. Nevertheless, there must willingness for novices to trust and value their own insights. It’s one of the most valuable things we offer our clients, and it’s what the best client-agency relationships are built on: perspective. It’s why good graphic designers tend to be very well read, curious and in-tune with their world: this all contributes to our filters—the way we interpret information and, ultimately, visualize concepts.We all see things differently. It’s why we get, in a class of 23 students, 23 different design solutions to the same design problem. It’s fascinating.And it’s a never-ending source of learning, for designers both new and old.So then to round up — what the hell does all of this mean?Logo design is difficult. It demands a lot of work — research, concept development and, understandably, technical skill. It takes time, too. But these shouldn’t be deterrents. It’s a view commonly held by employers of designers that their logo design portfolio and brand identity portfolio is the best indicator of that designer’s ability. The way a designer thinks, interprets, distills and crafts — including working at an intimate level with type, color and form — all of these things are on show in identity work. That’s pretty good motivation to work at it.

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.