the times | Thursday October 15 2020 2GM 29
noted that it was the first time that any
city in the bay area had been entrusted
with the “core engine” function.
“It shows that Beijing hopes to break
the sanctions the West has placed on
high technology through Shenzhen’s
growth,” he told Ming Pao.
In a further sign that Hong Kong is
beholden to Beijing, Carrie Lam, the
chief executive of the semi-autono-
mous territory, cancelled a speech
yesterday in order to attend the Shen-
zhen celebrations.
Even as Shenzhen has become a tech
hub, Hong Kong money still accounts
for four fifths of foreign investment in
the city. Shenzhen’s growth has been
nothing short of astronomical. It has
averaged 20 per cent in annual growth,
with its gross domestic product soaring
to 2.7 trillion yuan, or £310 billion, last
year, up from 270 million yuan in 1980.
In his speech Mr Xi called Shenzhen
“a brand-new city created by the party
and the people. It’s a splendid rendition
of socialism with Chinese characteris-
tics on a piece of blank paper.”The World at Five
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In depth and online line today at 5pm
the times.co.ukAn old Russian satellite and a spent
Chinese rocket are on course to collide
or narrowly miss each other in space
today, potentially creating an explosion
of debris that would threaten working
satellites.
Leo Labs, an American company that
records space debris from a multimil-
lion-dollar tracking station on New
Zealand’s South Island, issued an alert.
It warned that the two objects would
come within 25m of each other and had
up to a 20 per cent chance of colliding.
President Xi has lauded Shenzhen,
Hong Kong’s mainland neighbour, as a
high-tech beacon guiding China’s drive
to challenge the United States and
Europe in shaping the future.
The city would become a “socialist
model... with Chinese characteristics”,
Mr Xi told a ceremony marking its 40th
anniversary. He pledged new privileges
to allow it to eclipse Hong Kong as the
powerhouse of southwest China.
“This is the historic mission be-
stowed upon Shenzhen by the party in
the new era,” he said, hinting at China’s
ambitions to become a global player in
fields such as telecoms, bio-tech, elec-
tric cars and renewable energy.
Mr Xi’s speech caps a remarkable
turnaround for Shenzhen. It was little
more than a fishing town when in 1980
it became an experimental zone to help
China to reconnect with the world: a
backdoor manufacturing base for the
former colony’s businesses.
Now, a metropolis of 13 million pople,
its rise appears to signal Hong Kong’s
fall after Beijing crushed dissent with
the imposition of its national security
law. The aim appears to be for Hong
Kong talent to drive Shenzhen’s rise.
To Lau Siu-kai, a Hong Kong sociolo-
gist, the pivot was expected, given the
unwelcome western influences in
Hong Kong at a time when Beijing and
western democracies are increasingly
at odds.
“China needs to have a strategy that
relies on its own powers to develop,” Mr
Lau told Ming Pao, a Hong Kong news-
paper. “Beijing sees Hong Kong as a
pawn of the West to check China. Its
role as a bridge between China and the
West also has been diminished by west-
ern sanctions,” he said. “Shenzhen will
become more important than Hong
Kong in the future.”
Johnny Lau, a Hong Kong commen-
tator and a veteran China watcher,Xi tells Shenzhen
its star is rising as
Hong Kong falls
NG
KONGSSSHENZHENZ
CHINA
Hong
Kong
Lantau Island
IslandPopulation
Economy (US$bn, 2019)
GDP per capita (US$)
Shenzhen Hong Kong
1 3m
$396bn (+7.6%)
$373bn (-1.2%)$26,516
$ 49 , 334- 5 m
Space junk on 17,000mph collision course
cur the debris produced would be “very
bad”.
Richard Easther, a physics professor
at Auckland University, said that if they
did collide it would be “a mess. So lots
and lots of uncontrollable pieces of
debris.” The pieces would be travelling
at more than 17,000mph, much faster
than a bullet, he told New Zealand’s
Stuff website.
A collision would create a huge num-
ber of very small objects that would be
floating around in uncontrolled orbit,
which could result in more collisions
and make it hard for future satellites to
use certain orbits, he said.They have a combined weight of nearly
three tonnes.
The tracking station, which opened a
year ago, is capable of monitoring
250,000 objects, from as small as 2cm in
diameter. The company said the pieces
would meet over the Weddell Sea in
Antarctica at an altitude of 991km.
Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysi-
cist at the Harvard-Smithsonian
Centre for Astrophysics in the US, iden-
tified the objects as a retired Parus navi-
gation satellite launched in 1989, and
the ChangZheng-4C Y4 third-stage
rocket launched in 2009.
He tweeted that if a collision did oc-New Zealand
Bernard Lagan Sydney
China
Didi Tang Shenzhen
A yuan for your thoughts
on China’s brainwave cap
Didi Tang
China has unveiled a device that it
claims allows someone to type
letters using only their
brainwaves, opening up
possibilities for a ma-
chine to read minds.
The technology
made its debut at the
Digital China Summit
and Exhibition in Fuz-
hou. A worker wearing a
headset attached to elec-
trodes, right, apparently
managed to input “CEC
Brain” on to a computer screen
without touching it.
Han Jin, an employee at the exhibi-
tion, said: “It picks up human brain-
waves through the brain-computer in-terface and decodes the thought to con-
duct activities such as brain-controlled
typing, or controlling an external piece
of equipment. There are many
applications, such as equip-
ment control in space and
recuperative medicine.”
The machine was
developed by Tianjin
University and CEC
Brain, a technology
company.
In 2018 Chinese
companies said that
they had developed tech-
nology to read brainwaves to
detect fatigue and loss of atten-
tion at work, to boost productivity.
NeuroSky, a US company, sells a
movie player that allows users to influ-
ence the plot by focusing the mind.emails forced his campaign to deny his son had introduced a Ukrainian business contact to him while he was vice-president
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tionatworktoboA tweet by President Trump implied
Joe Biden should be in a care home