If there was one incident we may all accepted it as an exception. But we saw three, or more which I cannot count for, in a row in a short period of time. That's something wrong, terribly wrong for Chinese science and technology.

The first is that infamous Professor Chen Jin in Shanghai Jiaotong University. He famously bought the US made microprocessor and erased the trademark and print his own. The most ironic and comic part is what he printed on it, Chinese heart.

The second one is the Chinese tiger story. This tiger is obviously a paper tiger, as Mao famously coined the name. This story also has a comic part, it is also called Chinese Tiger.

The most recent one is the photo supposedly taken by the new lunar device launched by Chinese space agency. The strange thing about this gigantic advance, as called by the Chinese government, is that after many days past and millions of dollars spent, it only send back one photo. More strange is that this only photo resembles that of a NASA photo taken earlier. The comic part of this story is that this lunar device is called Chang'e, the Chinese Moon goddess!

I am sitting in my office and thinking, "God, the poor Chinese! They now used up all the good names for really good things for China, and screwed up everything. What's next?"

I am sure more "Chinese X" will be launched and glorified and most of them will be screw ups and also will be covered up again. In this case, the ironic part will not be how stupid Chinese and their government are. It will be how bad the Chinese science will be. Science will be advancing in the rest of the world, seriously and honestly. The Chinese stories will become the jokes that no one will remember in the history of science.

By xpt

Dec. 5, 2007