The IF Blog

For the sixth year the government of China is increasing state pensions, and more importantly Beijing will now allow workers to transfer pension accounts across provinces and when switching jobs. (South China Morning Post, 12/23/09)

Analysts of Chinese consumers’ spending habits have often cited a fear of lack of savings in old age as a reason for China’s high private savings rate.  Beijing’s increases of pension payments as well as making the pensions mobile will help address the retirement concern and potentially boost personal consumption expenditures in the communist state – a stated goal of the Beijing government in light of depressed export demand.

Michael Hines

You haven’t often heared open source and China in the same sentence…until now.

Beginning in 2001, the Institute of Computing Technology in China started developing the Loongson chip – also known as the Dragon chip – with the goal of creating a chip versatile enough to drive anything from industrial robots to supercomputers.  The first chip appeared in a computer in 2006, and the third generation chip, currently in the prototype stage, will be used to power a petaflop supercomputer.  To encourage the adoption of the processor, the Institute of Computing Technology is adapting everything from Java to Open Office for the Loongson chip and releasing it all under a free software license.  (Wired, 1/10)

The first-generation Loongson chip is being used in a netbook built by Chinese company Lemote.  By releasing everything under a free software license, China is creating a platform for low-cost solutions for the domestic market as well as in Africa and other emerging economies.  This will be a challenge for other chip makers and software providers counting on those markets for future growth.

Eric Zavolinsky