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Comment by mkolodny | Hacker News Reader

From this article: https://thehackernews.com/2017/08/quantum-satellite-data.htm...

> From past two decades, Quantum technology has been a top strategic focus in China's 5-year economic development plan. While the U.S. invested about $200 Million a year in quantum research, China spent $101 Billion in quantum physics in 2015.

If you'd like to learn more about quantum technology, this article gives a good summary: https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/06/19/quantum-entangleme...

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That number sounds really, really outlandish. China, officially at least, spent about $130 billion on their defense in that same year. I highly doubt they would spend that much on some research project which will bear fruit in the distant future. Even if they are willing to spend that much money, where would they even spend that much money?

It probably comes, directly or indirectly, from WSJ, who now have

> Corrections & Amplifications:

> Funding for basic research in China, including quantum research, was $10.1 billion in 2015. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said it was $101 billion. (8/20)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-latest-leap-forward-isnt...

Maybe they spent $101 billion up to 2015, i.e. it is the total sum of money spent for the last two decades. $5 billion a year for the last 20 years sounds too high still though (but feasible)

> U.S. invested about $200 million

> China spent $101 Billion in quantum physics in 2015.

Wow that's pretty staggering

Because it's a typo. China spend $101 Billion on all research in 2015. A small portion of that was more quantum physics.

WSJ issued a correction, as noted in a different comment in the thread.

Thank for the correction - that number seemed unreasonably large.

That's because it's a fraudulent number with zero supporting evidence. There's no actual public data on what China is spending on "quantum physics."

$100 billion in 2015 would be more than all venture capital in the entire country that year. It'd be equal to 70% of all of their claimed military spending for that year.

That's what they do; Ask any economist or financial analyst.

Not only are the numbers fluffed up, there is zero transparency on what exactly the figure represents, what the progress made was, what the outcomes were - all to please their "benevolent" dictator

Nice summary. Talk about something *indistinguishable from magic"

According to everything I read "spooky action at a distance" isn't really a thing - there is no magic here, unfortunately.

I have read about this topic a ton. My understanding is that quantum communication is impossible and is being claimed here. Does not compute.

What do you mean by "quantum communication"? Quantum key distribution/cryptography as done in that satellite experiment certainly is real, there's even some companies selling early commercial implementations already.

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