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World Band senior vice president Vinod Thomas Friday called for more coordination between governments to ensure global economic recovery, and warned against quantitative easing (QE), currency wars and fiscal deficit expansion.
In an interview with Xinhua, Thomas said deficit and debt-laden countries, especially OECD industrial sates, had little room to expand fiscally.
Thomas said QE had limits because it created a lot of money that tried to move to other countries for better interest rates, including Brazil and China.
"You cannot use it as a way to increasing growth," he said.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Federal Reserve started a controversial plan to buy 600 billion U.S. dollars in Treasury bonds, known as the QE2 monetary policy, to jumpstart the sluggish U.S. economic growth.
Thomas, also director general of the WB's Independent Evaluation Group, told Xinhua that if all countries tried to make their exchange rates lower, the effect would be canceled.
He said the growth of emerging economies was critical to reestablish global economic prosperity and for that purpose trade openness is important.
He said the recovery of growth in the United States, Europe and Japan, depended on not only trade remaining open, but improvements in domestic demand.
He also warned about a possible food and agriculture crisis, which would be major concern for emerging and low-income countries amid global climate change.
He said the world needed to find a way to generate more productivity, reduce energy waste, improve infrastructure or improve quality education.
"Policies to generate productivity and growth would seem to be the best way," he said.
Thomas said China's macroeconomic picture had tightened, but it was still robust compared with other countries.
He said the fundamental question for China was the quality of growth and it was critical to keep the growth inclusive and to avoid increasing wealth gaps.
Source: Xinhua
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Saturday, November 20, 2010
Friday, November 19, 2010
Avoiding Depression: Sleeping in Dark Room May Help
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redditExposure to a dim light at night, such as the glow of a TV screen, may prompt changes in the brain that lead to mood disorders, including depression, according to a new study in hamsters.
While more work is needed to see if the results are true of humans, the findings might explain why night-shift workers and others constantly exposed to light at night are at increased risk for mood disorders, the researchers said.
The findings are being presented today (Nov. 17) at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego.
Over the last century, artificial nighttime lights have become ubiquitous in industrialized countries, but it's not clear whether exposure to illuminated darkness affects the brain.
To find out, Tracy Bedrosian, a doctoral student in neuroscience at Ohio State University, and colleagues placed hamsters in two environments. In one, hamsters were exposed to 16 hours of daylight and eight hours of complete darkness each day. In the other, the animals experienced 16 hours of daylight, but at nighttime, a dim light was kept on, about the intensity of a TV screen lighting up a dark room, the researchers said.
After eight weeks, the researchers tested the hamsters for behaviors that would suggest they were depressed. For example, they looked to see whether the hamsters still engaged in activities they normally enjoy, such as drinking sugar water.
In people, loss of enjoyment is known as anhedonia and is a major symptom of depression.
Hamsters in both groups were given a choice between drinking tap water or sugar water. The hamsters exposed to light at night drank similar amounts of tap and sugar water — they'd lost their preference for the sweet treat.
"That suggests to us that they are not getting the same pleasurable and rewarding feeling from drinking their sugar water, and that it may be interpreted as a depression-like response," Bedrosian said.
These changes in behavior were associated with changes in the brain region known as the hippocampus. The hamsters exposed to night light had a reduced number of so-called dendritic spines on the surface of cells in this region. Dendritic spines are hair-like protrusions that brain cells use to communicate with one another.
The findings agree with studies on humans that have found the hippocampus to be involved in depression. A patient with major depression has a smaller hippocampus, Bedrosian said.
The brain changes in the hamsters might arise from fluctuations in the production of the hormone melatonin, Bedrosian said. Melatonin signals to the body that it's nighttime, but a light at night dampens its production. The hormone has been shown to have some antidepressant effects, and so a decrease in melatonin might spur depression symptoms, Bedrosian said.
If the same mechanism is at work in people, then "people might want to try to avoid falling asleep with their TVs on all night, or they might want to try to minimize light exposure during the night," Bedrosian said.
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While more work is needed to see if the results are true of humans, the findings might explain why night-shift workers and others constantly exposed to light at night are at increased risk for mood disorders, the researchers said.
The findings are being presented today (Nov. 17) at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego.
Over the last century, artificial nighttime lights have become ubiquitous in industrialized countries, but it's not clear whether exposure to illuminated darkness affects the brain.
To find out, Tracy Bedrosian, a doctoral student in neuroscience at Ohio State University, and colleagues placed hamsters in two environments. In one, hamsters were exposed to 16 hours of daylight and eight hours of complete darkness each day. In the other, the animals experienced 16 hours of daylight, but at nighttime, a dim light was kept on, about the intensity of a TV screen lighting up a dark room, the researchers said.
After eight weeks, the researchers tested the hamsters for behaviors that would suggest they were depressed. For example, they looked to see whether the hamsters still engaged in activities they normally enjoy, such as drinking sugar water.
In people, loss of enjoyment is known as anhedonia and is a major symptom of depression.
Hamsters in both groups were given a choice between drinking tap water or sugar water. The hamsters exposed to light at night drank similar amounts of tap and sugar water — they'd lost their preference for the sweet treat.
"That suggests to us that they are not getting the same pleasurable and rewarding feeling from drinking their sugar water, and that it may be interpreted as a depression-like response," Bedrosian said.
These changes in behavior were associated with changes in the brain region known as the hippocampus. The hamsters exposed to night light had a reduced number of so-called dendritic spines on the surface of cells in this region. Dendritic spines are hair-like protrusions that brain cells use to communicate with one another.
The findings agree with studies on humans that have found the hippocampus to be involved in depression. A patient with major depression has a smaller hippocampus, Bedrosian said.
The brain changes in the hamsters might arise from fluctuations in the production of the hormone melatonin, Bedrosian said. Melatonin signals to the body that it's nighttime, but a light at night dampens its production. The hormone has been shown to have some antidepressant effects, and so a decrease in melatonin might spur depression symptoms, Bedrosian said.
If the same mechanism is at work in people, then "people might want to try to avoid falling asleep with their TVs on all night, or they might want to try to minimize light exposure during the night," Bedrosian said.
- Leaving Night Light On Could Cause Weight Gain
- Depression: Causes, Symptoms and Treatments
- 11 Surprising Things That Can Make Us Gain Weight
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Thursday, November 18, 2010
4G service from YTL upbeat, Lower prices for Internet services?
Coming up Friday 4G service, five times faster than current 3G
By TEE LIN SAY
linsay@thestar.com.my
Launch set to make big impact on high-tech market
TweetKUALA LUMPUR: It will be five times faster than the current 3G network but the price will be compatible ... very affordable and the best price.
That is all YTL Communications Sdn Bhd executive chairman Tan Sri Francis Yeoh will say for now about the rates of the much-anticipated 4G wireless broadband service or Yes to be launched Friday.
It will have the lowest rate in the industry with no monthly commitment and conditions, he said, in an interview with StarBiz, adding that the product line-up for the launch would include a 4G smartphone developed with Samsung (called Yes Buzz), USB dongle, MiFi device and a desktop WiFi router.
Yes, the next generation high-speed data service, is expected to have a coverage of up to 65% of the peninsula from day one while the states or areas which are not yet included will be covered not too long from now, according to Yeoh. The company has spent some RM2.5bil for the Yes 4G infrastructure.
“It will be five times faster than the current 3G network but the price will be compatible ... very affordable and the best price,” says YTL Communications Sdn Bhd executive chairman Tan Sri Francis Yeoh during the interview with StarBiz.
Unlike current offerings where mobile data and voice are separated, we will bring everything into one plan with no additional charge. There will also be mobile TV at the end of next year, he said.
Yes will put Malaysia on par with the South Koreans, Singaporeans and Japanese on the technology front, Yeoh said, adding that the multiplier effect of such a technology was that it raised efficiency and productivity. With every 10% increase in broadband penetration, this increases the GDP by 1.3%, he said.
The response has been more than encouraging so far. Even prior to the launch, YTL Comms has received tens of thousands of pre-registrations three times above expectation which Yeoh said could partly be a reflection of the frustrations over the current wireless Internet speed.
3G is a legacy service. It is developed using voice technology and it can't cope with the massive amount of data that consumers are demanding. Devices such as iPhone and iPad have put a massive strain on current 3G networks. How many times have we tried to open files and experienced the buffering and streaming taking forever? The speed of our Yes' network is just amazing. Once people taste it, they won't go back to the old service, Yeoh said.
Under the Education Partner Programme, YTL Comms is providing free broadband services to 400,000 university students.
Quite interestingly, YTL's 4G network will be SIM-less. Simply put, Yeoh said the network runs on a user ID that comes with its own mobile number.
You don't need a SIM card and you're not locked on to one device. All you need to do is log-on using your user ID (we call this the Yes ID) and all your information is accessible on any device. You can log on to multiple devices, all at the same time. It's possible for you to receive a call and have it ring on your hand phone, your computer ... or your home phone, all at the same time. You pick the device most convenient to answer the call or make a call from, he said.
Yeoh said the market is spoilt by the voice network and that Malaysia's mobile call rates are far more expensive than Indonesia's. So many people make so much money on voice. That is why there is no innovation on data, he elaborated.
Under the mobile number portability, existing mobile phone users of other operators can port over their numbers to YTL Comms to enjoy 4G performance and innovation.
Internet is here to stay. That's the business of the future. We are targeting the youth market ... to engage the students. They are the customers we want. We are not targeting customers like my father, he said.
On how YTL's 4G differentiates from existing data networks, Yeoh said that Yes is a fully converged mobile network, and there is no other WiMAX operator in the country that is mobile.
In fact the services offered by Yes are among the first in the world. And this is just the beginning. We will continue to innovate and bring new services into the market, said Yeoh.
For 2011, Yes will offer the world's first wireless quad-play service giving its subscribers access to voice, data and television all on a mobile network.
The next big thing is making the Internet relevant. This entails looking at creating content and developing applications and service to take advantage of the enormous flexibility that the Internet has to offer, and we are ahead of the curve on this. Eventually, everyone will focus on this, because performance will be a given.
Speed is fundamental but everyone will eventually be able to deliver this. The differentiator will be what can you go with that performance, how easy it will be for subscribers to use and how to make it as affordable as possible for everyone, he said.
Analysts expect YTL Comms' entry into the telco sector to galvanise the industry further, heightening competition particularly in the cellular broadband space, given the company's strong financial backing and track record.
Friday November 19, 2010
Lower prices for Internet services?
TweetBy LEONG HUNG YEE
hungyee@thestar.com.my
PETALING JAYA: Competition in the mobile and Internet business is expected to heat up with the entry of YTL Communications Sdn Bhd's Yes service, and some analysts believe that a price war may erupt.There's a potential (for a price war). With YTL coming into the market, the probability is higher, CLSA Securities Malaysia Sdn Bhd head of research Clare Chin said.
She said the new entrant would also raise competitiveness among telecommunications companies while broadband operators would be worried about their margins.
Expectations surrounding the launch of Yes sent shares in YTL Comms' parent company, YTL Power International Bhd, to their highest level in almost three years in early trade yesterday. The counter ended eight sen, or 3.19%, to RM2.59 but off the intra-day high of RM2.64.
An analyst said the new entrant did not bring in competition automatically. He said telcos would up the ante against each other to woo customers in a saturated market and that was where the competition or price war would kick in.
In crowded markets where penetration (of voice) exceeds 100%, it can be difficult for an operator to distinguish itself from its competitors if it can only offer the same services.
To differentiate, it needs to be able to offer something new and different with better value proposition, the analyst said.
While competition is good for the consumer, it is not so for the local telcos which have spent the last few years battling each other in a price war, where consumers ultimately reaped the benefits in terms of low mobile call and SMS rates.
Every player's nightmare would be a price war, as margins would be pushed lower, hurting revenue, an analyst said.
YTL Comms' Yes 4G wireless broadband service would charge customers nine sen for a minute of call, one SMS or 3MB of data.
And that's before our rebates kick in, YTL Comms said in a teaser yesterday.
According to analysts, at nine sen a minute the service could be the cheapest in the market. However, they prefer to await confirmation from YTL on the price.
Sources said YTL would also be throwing in a rebate as high as 30% for its subscribers.
The more you use, the more rebate you'll get. For example, if you hit a threshold of 3GB, the price will drop and if you hit another threshold at 5GB, the price will continue to drop, the source said.
A simple calculation shows that nine sen per 3MB works out to about RM90 for 3GB, giving users roughly about 2,000 emails.
CLSA Securities' Chin did not discount consumers migrating to the latest network since cellular voice had already reached saturation.
She said consumers may want to choose a service provider that could offer them a better value proposition.
Investors are getting too excited, too early, Chin said, adding that today's event was just a launch and the hybrid TV would only be launched by end-2011.
Analysts said the triple play, which offers television, Internet and telephone in a single connection, would be the next wave that could change the traditional consumption pattern among Malaysian users of telecommunications services.
Apart from coming up with new products and services to steal customers from rivals, they would also have to entice their existing customers to spend more.
Yes is expected to cover up to 65% of the peninsula from day one. The other areas would be covered later.
The company has spent some RM2.5bil for the Yes 4G infrastructure.
The 4G network will be SIM-less with the 018 prefix.
In a report, OSK Research said that YTL Comms would need to capture at least 300,000 subscribers based on the assumption of average revenue per user of RM100 a month, given the steep initial investment outlay and operating expenditure.
Although the prices of WiMAX equipment and devices have fallen by over a third in the last two years, we believe YTL Comms would probably have to provide a steep upfront subsidy to lure subscribers given the stiff market competition as well as high mobile penetration rate, it said.
YTL Comms is also launching its flagship store at Lot 10 in Kuala Lumpur today after the official launch of the new service.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Half of rare earth exports went to Japan
BEIJING - China exported 16,000 tonnes of rare earth to Japan in the first nine months of the year, equivalent to 49.8 percent of its total rare earth exports, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said Tuesday.
The figure was a 167-percent year-on-year rise, MOC spokesman Yao Jian said at a press conference.
China exported 32,200 tonnes of rare earth in the first nine months of the year at an average price of $14,800 per tonne.
Yao said the Chinese government has tightened regulations concerning the development, production and export of rare earth out of concern for the environment.
China cut its 2010 rare earth export quota 39 percent year on year while rare earth development and production capacities were reduced by 25 percent and 23 percent, respectively, he said.
In addition, China has added a 15- to 25-percent export duty on rare earth exports while banning the export of 41 rare earth-related processed products.
China's restrictive policies have been criticized by Japan, the United States and European countries. They said China's restrictions on rare earth exports violate World Trade Organization rules. China refutes such claims.
"China's restrictive measures comply with WTO rules, as the steps were taken in the whole process of exploitation, production and export," Yao said.
China continued to export rare earth in recent years even as environmental pressures grew and resource-depletion approached, he added.
He said China hopes other rare earth-rich nations will develop their own resources while adding that China is ready to cooperate with other nations to mine and process rare earth in an environmentally-friendly way.
Rare earth is a key component in the manufacture of high-tech products ranging from computers to airplanes. But mining rare earth is a highly-polluting process.
With a 90 percent share of the world rare earth trade, China's export quotas are a sensitive issue. In early November, the MOC denied suggestions there would be a drastic reduction in 2011 rare earth export quotas.
(Xinhua)
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Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Father of modern China: Dr Sun Yat Sen's historic Penang conference, Untold Tales
Dr Sun Yat Sen's historic Penang conference
THINK ASIAN By ANDREW SHENG
TweetIN November 1910, the Chinese revolutionary Dr Sun Yat Sen was in many ways a disappointed and desperate man – a persona non grata, banned from Japan and in exile from China for 15 years.
He had relied much on raising funds successfully in the United States, but factional infighting within the Tongmengui caused him to turn to the overseas Chinese in Malaya (Nanyang).
He came to Singapore in July, but found that his support there was weak. He decided to move to Penang on July 19, where his key supporters, Wu Shirong (Goh Say Eng) and Huang Jingqing (Ng Kim Kheng) enthusiastically welcomed him.
In the five months in Penang, before he was expelled from the Straits Settlement by the British colonial government in December 1910, Dr Sun gathered his key supporters together, including his brother Sun Mei, Huang Xin, Hu Hanming and Wang Jingwei, to raise funds for his revolutionary work, change the Tongmenhui constitution and also founded the oldest Chinese newspaper overseas, the Kwong Wah Yit Poh.
He needed at least 100,000 Straits dollars, and in the end he raised nearly one-third from Canada, one-quarter from British Malaya and Singapore and the rest from Dutch East Indies, Siam and Indochina. Only one-eighth of the funding came from the United States.
On Sunday, Nov 12, 1910, his birthday, he convened the famous Penang Conference to plan the Second Guangzhou Uprising. Before that, he was almost in despair.
"I have written so many letters and have gotten no support. I have failed in all eight uprisings. There appears to be little hope for the Revolution. But the people of Penang provided me with protection and collected money for the ninth and successful uprising."
Most people do not realise that Qing Dynasty reformers found support and help from overseas Chinese in British Malaya. For example, after the failure of the Hundred Days' Reform Movement in 1898, Kang Youwei escaped and stayed in Penang from Aug 9, 1900 to Dec 7, 1901.
He left behind a four-character epigraph carved in stone at Kek Lok Si Temple in Penang, which stated "don't forget the motherland" dated June 29, 1903.
There were two reasons why there was such overseas support for reforms in China. First, the overseas Chinese who found their fame and fortune in Malaya and South-East Asia (Nanyang) were mostly refugees who escaped poverty and corruption in China.They welcomed change in China.
Second, the British government was interested in helping reform in China to further its trade interests. Dr Sun came to Penang probably five times – the first in 1906, shortly after he founded the Singapore branch of the Tongmenhui.
By 1910, the revolutionary cause was on a knife's edge. Dr Sun had out run of friends, barred from nearly all countries in the region, pursued by the Qing government and his family was forced to leave Hong Kong by the British administration.
In Burma, the Tungmenghui had been declared illegal. When he arrived in Singapore, his wealthy supporters were tired of pressure from the growing influence of the Manchu government overseas and some doubted his ability to overthrow the Manchu regime.
Because Dr Sun's ideas appealed mostly to the petty traders and the working class, the conservative Chinese lobbied the British to outlaw the Tungmenghui.
Finally in 1910, pressure was so intense in Singapore that Dr Sun decided to move the Tungmenghui Nanyang headquarters to Penang. Thus, it was Penang that offered the Tungmenghui and the Sun family both sanctuary and respite during the darkest period of the Revolution.
The Sun family had the opportunity to re-unite when Sun Mei, Dr Sun's older brother, arrived bringing Dr Sun's second wife, Chen Bijun and his daughters.
Although Penang was not as rich as Singapore, her Chinese community comprised both the wealthy elite who were co-opted into the Manchu bureaucracy (such as Chang Bishi), or those who supported reformists such as a parliamentary monarchy like Kang Youwei.
But Dr Sun's oratory and revolutionary zeal was able to gain his most ardent supporters in Wu Shirong (Goh Say Eng), son of a wealthy Straits-Chinese businessman, and founding chairman of the Penang Tungmenghui.
Described as a "pillar of the revolutionary movement in Malaya", Wu also founded the Penang Philomatic Union, a reading club that was the front for the Tungmenghui. Wu even sold his wife's heritage house to finance Dr Sun's cause.
In July 1910, Dr Sun had founded the Zhonghua Geming Dang (Chinese Revolutionary Party), to supercede the banned Tongmenghui.
Despite opposition from the conservative businessmen, Dr Sun's Penang supporters raised 11,000 Strait dollars and many volunteered for the "Last Battle."
In April 1911, the Guangzhou Huang Hua uprising failed when 72 martyrs were executed. Out of the 72, nearly a quarter came from Nanyang, including four from Penang. But in August, the sacrifice inspired the WuChang rebellion on Oct 10, which led to the fall of the Manchu dynasty. On Dec 29, 1911, Dr Sun was elected Republican China's first president.
The 100th anniversary of the historic Penang Conference will be celebrated by the Penang Heritage Trust with the 22nd Joint Conference of Sun Yat Sen and Soong Ching Ling Memorials.
An exhibition celebrating Dr Sun and Soong Ching Ling will also be organised at 57, Macalister Road, next to the Penang Philomatic Union. This exhibition brings to Penang a collection of Dr Sun's letters and other documents related to Penang's contribution to the making of modern China. Perhaps, most significant of all, the Sun family will be having a reunion in Penang.
Visitors to Penang will be able to see the schools and newspaper that Dr Sun helped founded and the buildings where the historic revolutionary plans were hatched.
Penang is where I now live, because it has its history immersed in China, India, the Middle East and trade in the old Malacca empire.
Today, Penang has been awarded the Unesco World Heritage site and is also a growing reputation as the best hidden gourmet secrets in Asia, hosted in historic buildings. I welcome you to visit on this historic occasion.
● Tan Sri Andrew Sheng is adjunct professor at Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, and Tsinghua University, Beijing. He has served in key positions at Bank Negara, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, and is currently a member of Malaysia's National Economic Advisory Council. He is the author of the book From Asian to Global Financial Crisis.
By JEREMY TAN
THE many former tin mining towns in the Kinta Valley hide a wealth of stories – of unsung heroes whose sacrifices helped Dr Sun Yat-sen change the history of China.
Perak may not have been Dr Sun’s base, like Singapore and Penang, but its thousands of tin mine and rubber estate workers were instrumental in raising funds for the revolutionary’s activities.
Dr Sun, who played a key role in inspiring the 1911 Revolution which brought an end to the Qing Dynasty, the last imperial dynasty of China, is best remembered as the founding father of Republican China. But not much is known about his activities in then Malaya.
The words of Dr Sun Yat-sen are inscribed on a wall of the Sun Yat-sen Gallery in the Perak Cave Temple. Stories from small, old towns are normally carried down the generations by word of mouth. Much information may have been lost along the way, and even the descendants of Dr Sun’s supporters have little to tell.
So it is not surprising that few have heard stories like Dr Sun’s romantic link with his bodyguard’s sister, Chen Cuifen, while in Nanyang (South-East Asia).
Chen from Fujian met Dr Sun when she was 17. Extremely dedicated to Dr Sun and his cause, Chen was his constant companion in Nanyang. She washed, cooked for many of Dr Sun’s comrades, delivered important documents, and even smuggled dangerous explosives.
Chen and Dr Sun’s first wife, Lu Muzhen, treated each other like sisters. Although not officially married, she was known as Dr Sun’s Nanyang wife to his descendants.
Family photos: A picture of Chen Cuifen and Dr Sun Yat-sen at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Museum in Guangzhou. On her death, she was allowed to be buried in the Sun’s family cemetery in Cuiheng village, Guangdong, China.
Chen adopted a daughter, Su Zhongying, from a rubber estate worker in Perak. Su later married Sun Qian, a grandson of Sun Mei who was Dr Sun’s elder brother.
Renowned historian Prof Yen Ching-hwang said in his doctoral thesis, Chinese Revolutionary Movement In Malaya 1900-1911, that Dr Sun’s first trip to Ipoh in 1906 ended abruptly when he was threatened by well-known tin miner Foo Choo Choon who was backing a different political camp in China. Dr Sun returned to Kuala Lumpur the following day.
According to the late Foong Choon Hon, a director of the Sun Yat-sen Nanyang Memorial Hall in Singapore, on one occasion, stones and cow dung were hurled at the car carrying Dr Sun in Menglembu near Ipoh.
Foong said Dr Sun had also stayed in a shop belonging to his supporter Lee Guan Swee in Old Town, Ipoh. He would only leave the shop at night using the back lane for fear of assassins.
Chen Cuifen’s adopted daughter Su Zhongying was from Perak. Dr Sun’s bad experiences with rich merchants made him realise that his core support came from the middle and lower social groups of overseas Chinese communities. His supporters organised themselves into small groups and were active in propaganda activities in the Perak towns of Lahat, Papan and Tronoh.
One of Dr Sun’s most loyal supporters was entrepreneur Teh Lay Seng from Ipoh.
When Teh passed away in Nanjing, China, in 1940, the Chinese Republican Government posthumously decorated him with words of praise: Benevolence and Loyalty, Honour and Peace were inscribed on his tombstone at the Hokkien Cemetery in Tambun. His sundry shop Keat Seng Leong is still being run by his descendants in Jalan Bijeh Timah, Ipoh
Lee Guan Swee, also from Ipoh, was another prominent supporter. The English-educated Lee was one of Dr Sun’s most trusted aides in South-East Asia. He spared no effort in raising funds for the revolution. Other supporters from Ipoh included Ke Shuijin, Ou Shengang, Li Xiaozhang, Tang Boling, Liu Yexing, Huang Yiyi and Liang Shennan.
Dr Sun also had the backing of Lu Wenhui and Chen Zhian from Taiping, and Yang Chaodong from Kampar.
The Perak Cave Temple with a gallery on Sun Yat-sen in Ipoh. Together they formed the Tung Meng Hui (the revolutionary Union League) in towns in the Kinta Valley, clubs and drama troupes, to spread their propaganda. One such drama troupe in Ipoh was the Perak Chisin Seah which later became the Perak Chinese Amateur Dramatic Association.
Dr Sun’s supporters addressed the general public at street corners, along roadsides and parks, and attacked the Qing government and Qing reformists, besides preaching revolutionary doctrines.
Dr Sun’s political career was marked by a series of failed uprisings. Between 1907 and 1910, several revolts at the Sino-Vietnamese border and Guangdong in China failed because of insufficient financial support and military supplies.
The now-defunct Straits Echo in Penang condemned Dr Sun and the revolutionary movement, saying that Dr Sun was all money talk and did not have anything to show for the stream of gold that flowed his way.
Dr Sun’s supporters also met with resistance from merchants who were sympathetic to calls for political change in China, but who were aligned to reformist Kang You-wei. Many of the rich were supporters of the Qing government which offered honorary titles and positions to them.
The house where Chen Cuifen and Dr Sun Yat Sen stayed when they were in Taiping which is now a coffee powder factory. On Nov 13, 1910, Dr Sun held the important “Penang Conference” at Armenian Street in Penang. He made an emotional appeal for funds but many rich Chinese businessmen were reluctant to associate with revolutionary politics as they were under the watchful eyes of the British in the Straits Settlements. The Penang contribution only came up to $11,500 (Straits dollars).
After the conference, fundraising campaigns were carried out in Ipoh, Taiping and Kampar, and they managed to hit the targeted $50,000 – a princely sum then.
The tin mine workers in the Kinta Valley, who were driven out of their homeland in China by poverty and the corrupt Qing government, were all fired up by Dr Sun’s revolutionary call.
It was said that the workers alone contributed $10,000 following the Second Guangzhou Uprising in April, 1911.
This was no small sum as the workers earned an average $8 to $9 a month.
A certificate signed by Sun Wen, Dr Sun Yat-sen’s birth name, in 1912 presented to the Perak Chinese Amateur Dramatic Association in appreciation of raising funds during the Canton Floods and other charitable acts. After deducting expenses for daily necessities, the worker could at the most save $4. He had to send money home to family members in China, after which he would be left with $1 to $2 a month. Going by the amount collected, the workers must have scrimped and saved every cent they could for the cause of the revolution.
A prominent revolutionary leader Hu Hanmin said: “These workers were so enthusiastic in donating funds. They often donated between $20 and $30 to the revolution. Some even wrote down their names first and tried to pay up later.”
Besides the tin mine workers, other members of the lower social group such as hawkers, rickshaw pullers and beggars also contributed to the cause of the revolution.
The success of the fundraising campaigns in Malaya served as an impetus for similar fund-raisers by the overseas Chinese in other parts of South-East Asia and America.
Some residents in the mining towns even sacrificed their lives for the sake of the revolution.
Gopeng Museum curator Phang See Kong said a Hakka tin mine worker, Wen Sheng-cai, from Kopisan near Gopeng, was so taken by a speech delivered by Dr Sun that he returned to China and tried to assassinate Qing official Admiral Li Zhun in Canton. His attempt failed and he was captured and killed.
Phang said three Gopeng residents, Eu Tong Hong, Wan Sang Choy and Kok King Mak, later took part in the Second Guangzhou Uprising and were killed. Their names are included in the list of 72 martyrs at the Huanghuagang Memorial Park in Guangzhou.
Revolutionary activities were again stirred up when news of the Wuchang Uprising reached the people.
On Oct 10, 1911, the New Army in Wuchang revolted and seized power, marking the start of the Xinhai Revolution or the Chinese Revolution, which eventually saw the end of more than 2,000 years of imperial rule in China.
Large-scale public meetings were held in Ipoh under the auspices of the Tung Meng Hui, the underground resistance movement organised by Dr Sun. As a result of the inflammatory speeches by supporter Teh Lay Seng, more than $8,000 was collected on the spot.
On Nov 3, 1911, mass meetings held to raise funds for the revolution were reported to have attracted some 4,000 to 5,000 sympathisers in Ipoh.
About 2,000 tin mine workers from Perak were said to have left for Guangzhou within a fortnight after the Oct 10 Revolution, to join in the uprising. Those that remained behind did all they could to raise funds for the cause.
Tin miner Foo Choo Choon, who by then had switched allegiance to Dr Sun, was appointed chief fund-raising officer in South-East Asia and $234,000 was remitted from Malaya and Singapore to help the revolutionaries secure Fujian Province.
Dr Sun termed the overseas Chinese as the “Mother of the Revolution” as their financial contribution was indispensable to the success of the revolution.
In later years, tycoons in Perak, including Datuk Seri Lau Pak Kuan, Leong Sin Nam and Foong Seong, who were Tung Meng Hui leaders, continued to support Dr Sun and his new Kuomintang government.
Perak once had the most number of Tung Meng Hui members in the country.
Ipoh Chinese Chin Woo Athletic Association vice-chairman Datuk Ooi Foh Sing recalls that students in Yit Ching Primary School in Pusing where he studied, used to raise the Kuomintang flag and sang patriotic songs with verses from Dr Sun’s San Ming Chu Yi (Three Principles of the People) every Monday during assembly.
“There was an arch with the image of the Kuomintang flag on one side and the British King on the other side during the Double 10 celebrations,” he says.
Today, many of the buildings in Lahat, Pusing, Gopeng, Papan, Tronoh and Kampar where Dr Sun and his supporters had visited, have been demolished.
Dr Sun and his supporters were said to have held meetings at the Oi Low Club in Gopeng, the Anglo-Chinese Club in Papan, the Wah Seong Kok literary association in Kampar, and Teh Lay Seng’s bungalow in Jalan Sungai Pari, Ipoh.
Today, only remnants of the foundation of the Oi Low Club are visible at the site, while a four-storey building stands where the Wah Seong Kok association once stood. Teh’s residence has also been demolished to make way for development.
Few residents in Lahat remember that a settlement opposite the town was once known as Kap Meng Chun (Revolution Village) because the residents were Dr Sun’s supporters.
A cinema named in memory of Dr Sun, The Sun in Ipoh which locals called Chung Shan theatre beside the Kinta River, has also been torn down.
Other buildings established in memory of Dr Sun, including SJKC Chung Shan school in Ipoh, SJKC Chung Sun in Tronoh and SJKC San Min school in Teluk Intan are still in existence.
The Kin Kwok Daily News building in Old Town, Ipoh, still stands. The now-defunct Chinese newspaper was started by a Kuomintang supporter before World War II. The original masthead of the paper was written by Yu Youren, a Kuomintang scholar.
Perak Cave Temple chairman Chong Yin Chat said Yu was a friend of his father Chong Seng Yee, who was the last batch of graduates of the prestigious Whampoa Military Academy in Guangzhou.
Yin Chat had set up a Sun Yat-sen Gallery at the temple in 1995 in honour of the Father of Modern China.
On display at the gallery are photographs of Dr Sun, a bust presented by the Sun Yat Sen memorial museum in Taiwan, calligraphy works and reproductions of letters by Dr Sun.
An oil painting of Dr Sun in official uniform, graces the hall of the Perak Chinese Amateur Dramatic Association.
A framed certificate with the autograph of Sun Wen (Dr Sun’s birth name) dated 1912, expressing appreciation to the association for its efforts in raising funds for the Canton floods and other charitable acts, hangs proudly from the wall.
In Assam Kumbang, Taiping, the Chang Chun Pu bungalow or Evergreen Mansion, where Dr Sun and Chen Cuifen once stayed, is now owned by Aun Tong Sdn Bhd, a coffee powder manufacturing factory.
As these relics from the past lay largely forgotten by the masses, the few who remember them cherish the rich legacy and their vital links with an indomitable man who eventually became known as the foremost pioneer of Nationalist China.
Several descendants of Dr Sun from all over the world are expected to be in Penang between Nov 19 and 22 to attend the 22nd joint conference of the Sun Yat-sen and Soong Ching-ling memorials in conjunction with the International Centennial Celebrations of Sun Yat-sen’s ‘Penang Conference’.
Related Story:
He had relied much on raising funds successfully in the United States, but factional infighting within the Tongmengui caused him to turn to the overseas Chinese in Malaya (Nanyang).
He came to Singapore in July, but found that his support there was weak. He decided to move to Penang on July 19, where his key supporters, Wu Shirong (Goh Say Eng) and Huang Jingqing (Ng Kim Kheng) enthusiastically welcomed him.
In the five months in Penang, before he was expelled from the Straits Settlement by the British colonial government in December 1910, Dr Sun gathered his key supporters together, including his brother Sun Mei, Huang Xin, Hu Hanming and Wang Jingwei, to raise funds for his revolutionary work, change the Tongmenhui constitution and also founded the oldest Chinese newspaper overseas, the Kwong Wah Yit Poh.
He needed at least 100,000 Straits dollars, and in the end he raised nearly one-third from Canada, one-quarter from British Malaya and Singapore and the rest from Dutch East Indies, Siam and Indochina. Only one-eighth of the funding came from the United States.
On Sunday, Nov 12, 1910, his birthday, he convened the famous Penang Conference to plan the Second Guangzhou Uprising. Before that, he was almost in despair.
"I have written so many letters and have gotten no support. I have failed in all eight uprisings. There appears to be little hope for the Revolution. But the people of Penang provided me with protection and collected money for the ninth and successful uprising."
Most people do not realise that Qing Dynasty reformers found support and help from overseas Chinese in British Malaya. For example, after the failure of the Hundred Days' Reform Movement in 1898, Kang Youwei escaped and stayed in Penang from Aug 9, 1900 to Dec 7, 1901.
He left behind a four-character epigraph carved in stone at Kek Lok Si Temple in Penang, which stated "don't forget the motherland" dated June 29, 1903.
There were two reasons why there was such overseas support for reforms in China. First, the overseas Chinese who found their fame and fortune in Malaya and South-East Asia (Nanyang) were mostly refugees who escaped poverty and corruption in China.They welcomed change in China.
Second, the British government was interested in helping reform in China to further its trade interests. Dr Sun came to Penang probably five times – the first in 1906, shortly after he founded the Singapore branch of the Tongmenhui.
By 1910, the revolutionary cause was on a knife's edge. Dr Sun had out run of friends, barred from nearly all countries in the region, pursued by the Qing government and his family was forced to leave Hong Kong by the British administration.
In Burma, the Tungmenghui had been declared illegal. When he arrived in Singapore, his wealthy supporters were tired of pressure from the growing influence of the Manchu government overseas and some doubted his ability to overthrow the Manchu regime.
Because Dr Sun's ideas appealed mostly to the petty traders and the working class, the conservative Chinese lobbied the British to outlaw the Tungmenghui.
Finally in 1910, pressure was so intense in Singapore that Dr Sun decided to move the Tungmenghui Nanyang headquarters to Penang. Thus, it was Penang that offered the Tungmenghui and the Sun family both sanctuary and respite during the darkest period of the Revolution.
The Sun family had the opportunity to re-unite when Sun Mei, Dr Sun's older brother, arrived bringing Dr Sun's second wife, Chen Bijun and his daughters.
Although Penang was not as rich as Singapore, her Chinese community comprised both the wealthy elite who were co-opted into the Manchu bureaucracy (such as Chang Bishi), or those who supported reformists such as a parliamentary monarchy like Kang Youwei.
But Dr Sun's oratory and revolutionary zeal was able to gain his most ardent supporters in Wu Shirong (Goh Say Eng), son of a wealthy Straits-Chinese businessman, and founding chairman of the Penang Tungmenghui.
Described as a "pillar of the revolutionary movement in Malaya", Wu also founded the Penang Philomatic Union, a reading club that was the front for the Tungmenghui. Wu even sold his wife's heritage house to finance Dr Sun's cause.
In July 1910, Dr Sun had founded the Zhonghua Geming Dang (Chinese Revolutionary Party), to supercede the banned Tongmenghui.
Despite opposition from the conservative businessmen, Dr Sun's Penang supporters raised 11,000 Strait dollars and many volunteered for the "Last Battle."
In April 1911, the Guangzhou Huang Hua uprising failed when 72 martyrs were executed. Out of the 72, nearly a quarter came from Nanyang, including four from Penang. But in August, the sacrifice inspired the WuChang rebellion on Oct 10, which led to the fall of the Manchu dynasty. On Dec 29, 1911, Dr Sun was elected Republican China's first president.
The 100th anniversary of the historic Penang Conference will be celebrated by the Penang Heritage Trust with the 22nd Joint Conference of Sun Yat Sen and Soong Ching Ling Memorials.
An exhibition celebrating Dr Sun and Soong Ching Ling will also be organised at 57, Macalister Road, next to the Penang Philomatic Union. This exhibition brings to Penang a collection of Dr Sun's letters and other documents related to Penang's contribution to the making of modern China. Perhaps, most significant of all, the Sun family will be having a reunion in Penang.
Visitors to Penang will be able to see the schools and newspaper that Dr Sun helped founded and the buildings where the historic revolutionary plans were hatched.
Penang is where I now live, because it has its history immersed in China, India, the Middle East and trade in the old Malacca empire.
Today, Penang has been awarded the Unesco World Heritage site and is also a growing reputation as the best hidden gourmet secrets in Asia, hosted in historic buildings. I welcome you to visit on this historic occasion.
● Tan Sri Andrew Sheng is adjunct professor at Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, and Tsinghua University, Beijing. He has served in key positions at Bank Negara, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, and is currently a member of Malaysia's National Economic Advisory Council. He is the author of the book From Asian to Global Financial Crisis.
Thursday November 18, 2010
The Penang factor in China’s revolution
By JEREMY TAN
north@thestar.com.my
DESPITE having no obvious ties, tiny Penang played a role in shaping the history of the world’s most populous and second largest country, China.
For it was on the island, exactly 100 years ago, that Dr Sun Yat Sen convened the Penang Conference to plan the Second Guangzhou Uprising, a key event that eventually led towards the China Revolution of 1911.
Among the events organised to commemorate the centennial of that pivotal moment in history is an exhibition entitled Sun Yat Sen and Soong Ching Ling Memorials: Their Life and Legacy, at 57 Macalister Road from now until Feb 17.
Organised by Min Sin Seah and supported by the Penang Heritage Trust, Sun Yat Sen Penang Base and Penang Zhongsan Association, it will highlight the significance of Dr Sun’s movement in the histories of Penang and Malaysia, as well as the contributions in Chinese education, press and socio-political movements.
State Town and Country Planning, Housing and Arts Committee chairman Wong Hon Wai said Dr Sun was not only a revolutionist, but also a towering global figure.
“This exhibit provides an important channel for Malaysians to learn more about his contributions,” he said at the exhibition’s opening on Saturday.
Min Sin Seah president and event organising chairman Datuk Dr Yee Thiam Sun said Dr Sun’s struggles epitomised the willingness of the Chinese community’s forefathers to sacrifice their time and efforts in contributing to their homeland.
“China’s history would have been very different had Dr Sun not been successful in the revolution.
“Penang played an important role in China’s history, and we would like to carry on his spirit and perseverance,” he said.
Among the other events held in conjunction with the international centennial celebrations are the 22nd Joint Conference of Sun Yat Sen and Soong Ching Ling Memorials from tomorrow to Monday at City Bayview Hotel and the International Symposium on Sun Yat Sen, Soong Ching Ling and Southeast Asia on Sunday at Wawasan Open University.
For it was on the island, exactly 100 years ago, that Dr Sun Yat Sen convened the Penang Conference to plan the Second Guangzhou Uprising, a key event that eventually led towards the China Revolution of 1911.
Among the events organised to commemorate the centennial of that pivotal moment in history is an exhibition entitled Sun Yat Sen and Soong Ching Ling Memorials: Their Life and Legacy, at 57 Macalister Road from now until Feb 17.
Organised by Min Sin Seah and supported by the Penang Heritage Trust, Sun Yat Sen Penang Base and Penang Zhongsan Association, it will highlight the significance of Dr Sun’s movement in the histories of Penang and Malaysia, as well as the contributions in Chinese education, press and socio-political movements.
State Town and Country Planning, Housing and Arts Committee chairman Wong Hon Wai said Dr Sun was not only a revolutionist, but also a towering global figure.
“This exhibit provides an important channel for Malaysians to learn more about his contributions,” he said at the exhibition’s opening on Saturday.
Min Sin Seah president and event organising chairman Datuk Dr Yee Thiam Sun said Dr Sun’s struggles epitomised the willingness of the Chinese community’s forefathers to sacrifice their time and efforts in contributing to their homeland.
“China’s history would have been very different had Dr Sun not been successful in the revolution.
“Penang played an important role in China’s history, and we would like to carry on his spirit and perseverance,” he said.
Among the other events held in conjunction with the international centennial celebrations are the 22nd Joint Conference of Sun Yat Sen and Soong Ching Ling Memorials from tomorrow to Monday at City Bayview Hotel and the International Symposium on Sun Yat Sen, Soong Ching Ling and Southeast Asia on Sunday at Wawasan Open University.
Perak's former tin mining towns linked to Sun Yat-sen
By FOONG THIM LENG
Dr Sun Yat-sen’s numerous supporters in Malaya played a role in the revolution that changed the history of China.THE many former tin mining towns in the Kinta Valley hide a wealth of stories – of unsung heroes whose sacrifices helped Dr Sun Yat-sen change the history of China.
Perak may not have been Dr Sun’s base, like Singapore and Penang, but its thousands of tin mine and rubber estate workers were instrumental in raising funds for the revolutionary’s activities.
Dr Sun, who played a key role in inspiring the 1911 Revolution which brought an end to the Qing Dynasty, the last imperial dynasty of China, is best remembered as the founding father of Republican China. But not much is known about his activities in then Malaya.
The words of Dr Sun Yat-sen are inscribed on a wall of the Sun Yat-sen Gallery in the Perak Cave Temple.So it is not surprising that few have heard stories like Dr Sun’s romantic link with his bodyguard’s sister, Chen Cuifen, while in Nanyang (South-East Asia).
Chen from Fujian met Dr Sun when she was 17. Extremely dedicated to Dr Sun and his cause, Chen was his constant companion in Nanyang. She washed, cooked for many of Dr Sun’s comrades, delivered important documents, and even smuggled dangerous explosives.
Chen and Dr Sun’s first wife, Lu Muzhen, treated each other like sisters. Although not officially married, she was known as Dr Sun’s Nanyang wife to his descendants.
Family photos: A picture of Chen Cuifen and Dr Sun Yat-sen at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Museum in Guangzhou. Chen adopted a daughter, Su Zhongying, from a rubber estate worker in Perak. Su later married Sun Qian, a grandson of Sun Mei who was Dr Sun’s elder brother.
Renowned historian Prof Yen Ching-hwang said in his doctoral thesis, Chinese Revolutionary Movement In Malaya 1900-1911, that Dr Sun’s first trip to Ipoh in 1906 ended abruptly when he was threatened by well-known tin miner Foo Choo Choon who was backing a different political camp in China. Dr Sun returned to Kuala Lumpur the following day.
According to the late Foong Choon Hon, a director of the Sun Yat-sen Nanyang Memorial Hall in Singapore, on one occasion, stones and cow dung were hurled at the car carrying Dr Sun in Menglembu near Ipoh.
Foong said Dr Sun had also stayed in a shop belonging to his supporter Lee Guan Swee in Old Town, Ipoh. He would only leave the shop at night using the back lane for fear of assassins.
Chen Cuifen’s adopted daughter Su Zhongying was from Perak.One of Dr Sun’s most loyal supporters was entrepreneur Teh Lay Seng from Ipoh.
When Teh passed away in Nanjing, China, in 1940, the Chinese Republican Government posthumously decorated him with words of praise: Benevolence and Loyalty, Honour and Peace were inscribed on his tombstone at the Hokkien Cemetery in Tambun. His sundry shop Keat Seng Leong is still being run by his descendants in Jalan Bijeh Timah, Ipoh
Lee Guan Swee, also from Ipoh, was another prominent supporter. The English-educated Lee was one of Dr Sun’s most trusted aides in South-East Asia. He spared no effort in raising funds for the revolution. Other supporters from Ipoh included Ke Shuijin, Ou Shengang, Li Xiaozhang, Tang Boling, Liu Yexing, Huang Yiyi and Liang Shennan.
Dr Sun also had the backing of Lu Wenhui and Chen Zhian from Taiping, and Yang Chaodong from Kampar.
The Perak Cave Temple with a gallery on Sun Yat-sen in Ipoh.Dr Sun’s supporters addressed the general public at street corners, along roadsides and parks, and attacked the Qing government and Qing reformists, besides preaching revolutionary doctrines.
Dr Sun’s political career was marked by a series of failed uprisings. Between 1907 and 1910, several revolts at the Sino-Vietnamese border and Guangdong in China failed because of insufficient financial support and military supplies.
The now-defunct Straits Echo in Penang condemned Dr Sun and the revolutionary movement, saying that Dr Sun was all money talk and did not have anything to show for the stream of gold that flowed his way.
Dr Sun’s supporters also met with resistance from merchants who were sympathetic to calls for political change in China, but who were aligned to reformist Kang You-wei. Many of the rich were supporters of the Qing government which offered honorary titles and positions to them.
The house where Chen Cuifen and Dr Sun Yat Sen stayed when they were in Taiping which is now a coffee powder factory.After the conference, fundraising campaigns were carried out in Ipoh, Taiping and Kampar, and they managed to hit the targeted $50,000 – a princely sum then.
The tin mine workers in the Kinta Valley, who were driven out of their homeland in China by poverty and the corrupt Qing government, were all fired up by Dr Sun’s revolutionary call.
It was said that the workers alone contributed $10,000 following the Second Guangzhou Uprising in April, 1911.
This was no small sum as the workers earned an average $8 to $9 a month.
A certificate signed by Sun Wen, Dr Sun Yat-sen’s birth name, in 1912 presented to the Perak Chinese Amateur Dramatic Association in appreciation of raising funds during the Canton Floods and other charitable acts.A prominent revolutionary leader Hu Hanmin said: “These workers were so enthusiastic in donating funds. They often donated between $20 and $30 to the revolution. Some even wrote down their names first and tried to pay up later.”
Besides the tin mine workers, other members of the lower social group such as hawkers, rickshaw pullers and beggars also contributed to the cause of the revolution.
The success of the fundraising campaigns in Malaya served as an impetus for similar fund-raisers by the overseas Chinese in other parts of South-East Asia and America.
Some residents in the mining towns even sacrificed their lives for the sake of the revolution.
Gopeng Museum curator Phang See Kong said a Hakka tin mine worker, Wen Sheng-cai, from Kopisan near Gopeng, was so taken by a speech delivered by Dr Sun that he returned to China and tried to assassinate Qing official Admiral Li Zhun in Canton. His attempt failed and he was captured and killed.
Phang said three Gopeng residents, Eu Tong Hong, Wan Sang Choy and Kok King Mak, later took part in the Second Guangzhou Uprising and were killed. Their names are included in the list of 72 martyrs at the Huanghuagang Memorial Park in Guangzhou.
Revolutionary activities were again stirred up when news of the Wuchang Uprising reached the people.
On Oct 10, 1911, the New Army in Wuchang revolted and seized power, marking the start of the Xinhai Revolution or the Chinese Revolution, which eventually saw the end of more than 2,000 years of imperial rule in China.
Large-scale public meetings were held in Ipoh under the auspices of the Tung Meng Hui, the underground resistance movement organised by Dr Sun. As a result of the inflammatory speeches by supporter Teh Lay Seng, more than $8,000 was collected on the spot.
On Nov 3, 1911, mass meetings held to raise funds for the revolution were reported to have attracted some 4,000 to 5,000 sympathisers in Ipoh.
About 2,000 tin mine workers from Perak were said to have left for Guangzhou within a fortnight after the Oct 10 Revolution, to join in the uprising. Those that remained behind did all they could to raise funds for the cause.
Tin miner Foo Choo Choon, who by then had switched allegiance to Dr Sun, was appointed chief fund-raising officer in South-East Asia and $234,000 was remitted from Malaya and Singapore to help the revolutionaries secure Fujian Province.
Dr Sun termed the overseas Chinese as the “Mother of the Revolution” as their financial contribution was indispensable to the success of the revolution.
In later years, tycoons in Perak, including Datuk Seri Lau Pak Kuan, Leong Sin Nam and Foong Seong, who were Tung Meng Hui leaders, continued to support Dr Sun and his new Kuomintang government.
Perak once had the most number of Tung Meng Hui members in the country.
Ipoh Chinese Chin Woo Athletic Association vice-chairman Datuk Ooi Foh Sing recalls that students in Yit Ching Primary School in Pusing where he studied, used to raise the Kuomintang flag and sang patriotic songs with verses from Dr Sun’s San Ming Chu Yi (Three Principles of the People) every Monday during assembly.
“There was an arch with the image of the Kuomintang flag on one side and the British King on the other side during the Double 10 celebrations,” he says.
Today, many of the buildings in Lahat, Pusing, Gopeng, Papan, Tronoh and Kampar where Dr Sun and his supporters had visited, have been demolished.
Dr Sun and his supporters were said to have held meetings at the Oi Low Club in Gopeng, the Anglo-Chinese Club in Papan, the Wah Seong Kok literary association in Kampar, and Teh Lay Seng’s bungalow in Jalan Sungai Pari, Ipoh.
Today, only remnants of the foundation of the Oi Low Club are visible at the site, while a four-storey building stands where the Wah Seong Kok association once stood. Teh’s residence has also been demolished to make way for development.
Few residents in Lahat remember that a settlement opposite the town was once known as Kap Meng Chun (Revolution Village) because the residents were Dr Sun’s supporters.
A cinema named in memory of Dr Sun, The Sun in Ipoh which locals called Chung Shan theatre beside the Kinta River, has also been torn down.
Other buildings established in memory of Dr Sun, including SJKC Chung Shan school in Ipoh, SJKC Chung Sun in Tronoh and SJKC San Min school in Teluk Intan are still in existence.
The Kin Kwok Daily News building in Old Town, Ipoh, still stands. The now-defunct Chinese newspaper was started by a Kuomintang supporter before World War II. The original masthead of the paper was written by Yu Youren, a Kuomintang scholar.
Perak Cave Temple chairman Chong Yin Chat said Yu was a friend of his father Chong Seng Yee, who was the last batch of graduates of the prestigious Whampoa Military Academy in Guangzhou.
Yin Chat had set up a Sun Yat-sen Gallery at the temple in 1995 in honour of the Father of Modern China.
On display at the gallery are photographs of Dr Sun, a bust presented by the Sun Yat Sen memorial museum in Taiwan, calligraphy works and reproductions of letters by Dr Sun.
An oil painting of Dr Sun in official uniform, graces the hall of the Perak Chinese Amateur Dramatic Association.
A framed certificate with the autograph of Sun Wen (Dr Sun’s birth name) dated 1912, expressing appreciation to the association for its efforts in raising funds for the Canton floods and other charitable acts, hangs proudly from the wall.
In Assam Kumbang, Taiping, the Chang Chun Pu bungalow or Evergreen Mansion, where Dr Sun and Chen Cuifen once stayed, is now owned by Aun Tong Sdn Bhd, a coffee powder manufacturing factory.
As these relics from the past lay largely forgotten by the masses, the few who remember them cherish the rich legacy and their vital links with an indomitable man who eventually became known as the foremost pioneer of Nationalist China.
Several descendants of Dr Sun from all over the world are expected to be in Penang between Nov 19 and 22 to attend the 22nd joint conference of the Sun Yat-sen and Soong Ching-ling memorials in conjunction with the International Centennial Celebrations of Sun Yat-sen’s ‘Penang Conference’.
Related Story:
Mighty struggle
PM to launch Sun Yat Sen heritage trail
GEORGE TOWN: The Prime Minister will be in Penang on Nov 20 to launch the Sun Yat Sen Heritage Trail at the Bayview Hotel Georgetown.
Penang Heritage Trust (PHT) treasurer Lim Gaik Siang said Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak would launch the trail at 11am in the presence of more than 400 people, including representatives of museums from other countries.
The trail, which includes places that Dr Sun or his followers had visited here, is a PHT project which was made possible with a RM100,000 grant under the George Town Grants Programme.
Lim said the trail consisted of 16 sites and would be expanded when more information was gathered.
"Among the sites are 94, Datuk Keramat Road; 65, Macalister Road; the Penang Chinese Town Hall; 16, Malay Street; 18, Malay Street; 224, Beach Street; and 145, Acheen Street.
"Plaques displaying the background of the sites and their connections with the Chinese revolutionary leader will be placed in front of the buildings. The explanation will be in three languages," she told a press conference yesterday.
PHT president Khoo Salma Nasution said the trail was not only held for tourists but also to educate the local public.
The trail's launch is organised in conjunction with centennial celebrations to mark the 100th anniversary of the Penang Conference on Nov 13, 1910, when Dr Sun planned an uprising of a larger scale in Guangzhou.
Penang Heritage Trust (PHT) treasurer Lim Gaik Siang said Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak would launch the trail at 11am in the presence of more than 400 people, including representatives of museums from other countries.
The trail, which includes places that Dr Sun or his followers had visited here, is a PHT project which was made possible with a RM100,000 grant under the George Town Grants Programme.
Lim said the trail consisted of 16 sites and would be expanded when more information was gathered.
"Among the sites are 94, Datuk Keramat Road; 65, Macalister Road; the Penang Chinese Town Hall; 16, Malay Street; 18, Malay Street; 224, Beach Street; and 145, Acheen Street.
"Plaques displaying the background of the sites and their connections with the Chinese revolutionary leader will be placed in front of the buildings. The explanation will be in three languages," she told a press conference yesterday.
PHT president Khoo Salma Nasution said the trail was not only held for tourists but also to educate the local public.
The trail's launch is organised in conjunction with centennial celebrations to mark the 100th anniversary of the Penang Conference on Nov 13, 1910, when Dr Sun planned an uprising of a larger scale in Guangzhou.
Monday, November 15, 2010
What a financial planner's credentials mean for you?
What’s in a name?
What an adviser’s credentials mean for you
By Chuck Jaffe, MarketWatch
BOSTON (MarketWatch) — Say you’re nearing retirement age, and you want to improve your portfolio to make sure it lasts a lifetime and helps meet your personal goal of putting the grandkids through college someday.
SPECIAL REPORT
Getting good advice
Here are seven common mistakes you can avoid when hiring a financial adviser.
• What credentials really mean
• Glossary of credentials
• See the full special report
Confused? You should be.
There are more than 100 professional designations and credentials for financial advisers, and that doesn’t count some of the flimsy, half-hearted, or just plain silly things that some advisers latch on to as a way to impress you. Every few months, there seems to be another new designation, as if consumers or the financial-services industry need them.
Advisers use financial licenses and designations to market themselves to you. Oh, they’ll say that they got the credential in order to be more qualified to handle a specific financial task or job — and there may be some truth to that — but they know that the more credentials they have, the more they can impress potential customers, and the more services they can offer their clients.
If credentials are truly important to you, and you have the needs laid out in the hypothetical above, you’d hire a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) who is also a Certified College Planning Specialist (CCPS), a Certified Divorce Planner (CDP), an Enrolled Agent (EA, for your tax needs), a Chartered Investment Counselor (CIC), a Certified Estate Planner (CEP), and a Certified Annuity Specialist (CAS).
Social Security cuts may hit 20-year-olds
President Obama's deficit-reduction commission is proposing a slew of changes to Social Security, including benefit increases for some people. But most people in their 20s and younger today would see benefit cuts compared to what they'd get under current law, if the proposals are adopted. MarketWatch's Andrea Coombes reports.Yet the truth is that an ordinary financial planner with a customer base that is mostly people of your age and assets and concerns could probably do the job, without having a single advanced credential. You may feel more comfortable with someone who has additional training to meet your needs, but you can also overvalue that additional training and pick an adviser more on his or her credentials than his or her true worth as a counselor.
Don’t sell experience short and give too much credit to letters after the adviser’s name. Some titles and designations have valuable significance; but others are misleading, or worse. As a consumer, you should know that titles and credentials can misrepresent an adviser’s ability to give you appropriate, knowledgeable advice.
Credential confusion can leave consumers vulnerable to unsuitable recommendations and costly investments; state and federal regulators have reported a huge increase in deceptive practice cases, particularly involving senior citizens, who swallow the alphabet soup as if it’s truly meaningful. They believe that advisers with a credential that makes them some type of expert on the finances of senior citizens makes for the perfect helper; however, it may also open the door to rogues and scoundrels. As a result, some states have implemented new regulations that limit the use or mention of credentials by certain types of advisers.
Even if you know what a CFP is, you probably don’t know what an adviser does to earn the designation. And CFP is a common credential, unlike most of the 100-plus designations that most consumers have never heard of.
In general, legitimate credentials prove that an adviser is furthering his or her education; with the rules and regulations of finance changing nearly every day, current information and knowledge is crucial.
Simply having credentials doesn’t make someone worthy of being your adviser.
Instead, think of credentials as a starting point and not the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
All of these letters are supposed to be “professional designations,” which is a misnomer because--with the exception of lawyers--none of the members of your financial team truly is a “professional.”
Most dictionaries define “profession” as a vocation or occupation that requires advanced training either in sciences or the liberal arts. You do not need an advanced degree to practice as a financial planner, insurance agent, real estate agent, stockbroker, tax preparer, or accountant. Standards vary for each role, with state or federal law dictating whether practitioners must even be registered or licensed. Even then, “registration” is more about putting your name on file than it is about having achieved a minimum standard of education and academic excellence.
In other words, you can be a “financial planner” without having the “Certified Financial Planner,” “Personal Financial Specialist,” or any credential. That doesn’t demean the designations; there’s no denying that an adviser who goes through training and education to get them is set up to be a better, more skilled, more competent adviser.
Moreover, there are a number of cases where the governing bodies that designate the criteria for a particular standard are warring with competing organizations touting a different standard. For example, an adviser looking to become more knowledgeable on the use of mutual funds could pursue the Chartered Mutual Fund Counselor (CMFC) designation, or the Certified Fund Specialist (CFS) standard. Or she could decide that the continuing education she gets on mutual funds just from being a Certified Financial Planner is sufficient. Truth be told, if you took three advisers, and each took one of the paths described here, you’d have a hard time telling the difference.
That’s precisely why your decision will come down to more personal factors and be less about credentials.
It’s important to make sure that an adviser’s designations are meaningful to you and your needs, because you will almost certainly be paying up for the expertise and credibility these marks bestow on an adviser.
It’s impressive when you find a financial planner who has done the work to earn the “Chartered Financial Analyst” designation; the CFA is one of the most demanding and respected marks in the business, and it is held primarily by stock analysts and institutional money managers. A financial planner who gets one will tell you that it makes him better at selecting stocks and mutual funds.
That may all be true, but if you just want a basic mutual fund portfolio, the CFA means that the planner is way overqualified for the job. There’s nothing wrong for that, unless you are paying the freight for all of this expertise that you aren’t using and don’t expect to need. In that case, someone with less invested in getting credentials can provide qualified assistance at a lower cost.
Professional marks are nice, but there is no substitute for the experience of someone who has a client base just like you, where instead of trying to be all things to all clients, she specializes in the needs of a small group of like-minded, financially homogenous people.
Four questions to ask
When an adviser makes his or her credentials part of the presentation — a presumed reason why you would want to hire him or her — ask these four questions:What did you have to do to earn this mark, and why did you consider it important to achieve this distinction?
Some credentials require experience, knowledge, continuing education, and the ability to pass a test, while others are online open-book study. Some advisers use their membership in a trade group, like the Financial Planning Association, as if it was a meaningful credential. Maintaining certain designations requires adhering to an ethics policy; other times, all that’s necessary to remain in good standing is to pay dues. And some marks seem to be little more than a show.
Find out why the adviser went to the effort of getting the credential. You may learn a lot about the adviser’s experience and clientele that way; if he pursued an annuity designation or estate-planning credential because clients were aging and asking about those specialties, you’ll get a better idea of whether you fit in with the adviser’s “typical client.”
Are there continuing education requirements? If so, what must you do to meet them?
Ask about the courses your prospective adviser must take to stay current, and ask how that education might help him work with you. Continuing education courses run the gamut from nuts-and-bolts practice-management classes to specific ideas for helping clients get more from their money.
You want an adviser who is building expertise as it relates to you (rather than learning how to get more profits from each client, which some organizations consider suitable continuing education).
Can you give me the contacts for the sanctioning body?
No adviser should be afraid of your contacting the group that issues the credentials to make sure everything is on the up-and-up. While you can get the contact details on your own, play dumb here because you want to see if the adviser will make it easy for you.
Most consumers don’t do their homework and make appropriate background checks, which has allowed crooks who pretend to have credentials to stay in business. In addition, most sanctioning groups will kick out members who run afoul of bylaws or codes of ethics, so someone who has a credential up on his office wall may not necessarily be entitled to continue using it.
An adviser who really works with the sanctioning group will have the phone number or Web address handy and should have no fear of your checking out the credential.
Does the designation mean anything unique in the service?
With tax preparers, for example, an enrolled agent can represent you in an audit; the return-preparer at the corner fast-food tax joint can’t.
An accountant who also has a law degree, meanwhile, may be adept at trust and estate planning work. The same could be said for a financial planner with a law degree. Plenty of advisers use credentials to cross over from one specialty to the next, which is good if your financial needs spill from one area to the next.
Assume that the letters after an adviser’s name mean something in terms of the price you will pay, as in “the more credentials, the bigger the bill.” That’s not always true, but that kind of thinking will help you find someone who is “properly qualified” to work with you, rather than being over- or underqualified.
Don’t pay for expertise you don’t need. You may decide you don’t need a certified public accountant to do an ordinary tax return, for example. At the same time, you might prefer hiring a lawyer who has taken specialized classes in elder law.
By making the adviser spell out the benefits you get from his expertise, you go a long way toward defining what to expect from the relationship.
Excerpted with permission of the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc. from “Getting Started in Finding a Financial Advisor” by Chuck Jaffe. Copyright (c) 2010 by Chuck Jaffe.
Chuck Jaffe is a senior MarketWatch columnist. His work appears in many U.S. newspapers.
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Chinese take out U.S. in supercomputer ranking, named world's fastest
Chinese supercomputer named world's fastest
November 14, 2010 China overtook the United States at the head of the world of supercomputing on Sunday when a survey ranked one of its machines the fastest on the planet.
Tianhe-1, meaning Milky Way, achieved a computing speed of 2,570 trillion calculations per second, earning it the number one spot in the Top 500 (www.top500.org) survey of supercomputers.
The Jaguar computer at a US government facility in Tennessee, which had held the top spot, was ranked second with a speed of 1,750 trillion calculations per second.
Tianhe-1 does its warp-speed "thinking" at the National Centre for Supercomputing in the northern port city of Tianjin -- using mostly chips designed by US companies.
Another Chinese system, the Nebulae machine at the National Supercomputing Centre in the southern city of Shenzhen, came in third.
The United States still dominates, with more than half of the entries in the Top 500 list, but China now boasts 42 systems in the rankings, putting it ahead of Japan, France, Germany and Britain.
It is not the first time that the United States has had its digital crown stolen by an Asian upstart. In 2002, Japan made a machine with more power than the top 20 American computers put together.
The supercomputers on the Top 500 list, which is produced twice a year, are rated based on speed of performance in a benchmark test by experts from Germany and the United States.
More information: http://www.physorg … omputer.htmlThe Jaguar computer at a US government facility in Tennessee, which had held the top spot, was ranked second with a speed of 1,750 trillion calculations per second.
Tianhe-1 does its warp-speed "thinking" at the National Centre for Supercomputing in the northern port city of Tianjin -- using mostly chips designed by US companies.
Another Chinese system, the Nebulae machine at the National Supercomputing Centre in the southern city of Shenzhen, came in third.
The United States still dominates, with more than half of the entries in the Top 500 list, but China now boasts 42 systems in the rankings, putting it ahead of Japan, France, Germany and Britain.
It is not the first time that the United States has had its digital crown stolen by an Asian upstart. In 2002, Japan made a machine with more power than the top 20 American computers put together.
The supercomputers on the Top 500 list, which is produced twice a year, are rated based on speed of performance in a benchmark test by experts from Germany and the United States.
(c) 2010 AFP
Watch Video
Play VideoA Chinese supercomputer has been ranked the world's fastest machine in a list issued by US and European researchers. The move highlights China's rapid progress in the field.
The Tianhe-1A system at the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin, is capable of sustaining computation at 2.57 quadrillions of calculations per second. As a result, the former number one system -- the US Department of Energy's, Jaguar, in Oak Ridge, is now ranked second.
The third place is also held by a Chinese system called Nebulae, and it's located, at the National Supercomputing Center in south China's city of Shenzhen.
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| File photo of China's world-leading supercomputer, Tianhe-1A. (Xinhua File Photo) |
Chinese supercomputer ranked world's fastest
WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese supercomputer was ranked the world's fastest machine in a list issued Sunday by U.S. and European researchers, highlighting China 's rapid progress in the field. Detial >>
Highlights of TOP500 supercomputers
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese supercomputer was ranked the world's fastest machine in the TOP500 list issued Sunday by U.S. and European researchers. The following are highlights of the list: Detail >>
Highlights of Top10 supercomputers
GTON, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese supercomputer was ranked the world's fastest machine in a list issued Sunday by U.S. and European researchers. The following are highlights from the top 10 supercomputer in the list. Detail >>
Chinese take out U.S. in supercomputer ranking
Top 500 supers: China rides GPUs to world domination
The People's Republic of Petaflops
SC10 If the June edition of the bi-annual ranking of the Top 500 supercomputers in the world represented the dawning of the GPU co-processor as a key component in high performance computing, then the November list is breakfast time. The super centers of the world are smacking their lips for some flop-jacks with OpenCL syrup and some x64 bacon on the side.
China has the most voracious appetite for GPU co-processors, and as expected two weeks ago when the Tianhe-1A super was booted up for the first time, this hybrid CPU-GPU machine installed at the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin has taken the top spot on the Top 500 list with a comfortable margin. Tianhe-1A's final rating on the Linpack Fortran matrix math benchmark test is 4.7 petaflops of peak theoretical performance spread across its CPUs and GPUs (with about about 70 per cent of that coming from the GPUs) and 2.56 petaflops of sustained performance on the Linpack test.
The Tianhe-1A machine is comprised of 7,168 servers, each equipped with two sockets using Intel's X5670 processors running at 2.93 GHz and one Nvidia Tesla M2050 fanless GPU co-processor. The resulting machine spans 112 racks, and it would make a hell of a box on which to play Crysis.
While 47 per cent of the floating-point oomph in Tianhe-1A disappears into the void where all missed clock cycles go (it's also where missing socks from the dryer cavort), the GPU's flops are relatively inexpensive and the overall machine should offer excellent bang for the buck - provided workloads can scale across the ceepie-geepie of course. The Tianhe-1A super uses a proprietary interconnect called Arch, which was developed by the Chinese government. The Arch switch links the server nodes together using optical-electric cables in a hybrid fat tree configuration and has a bi-directional bandwidth of 160 Gb/sec, a latency for a node hop of 1.57 microseconds, and an aggregate bandwidth of more than 61 Tb/sec.
The Tianhe-1A GPU-GPU hybrid superJaguar dethroned
The "Jaguar" XT5 system at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory was knocked out of the top spot by Tianhe-1A, which is what happens when a cat stands still in the GPU era of HPC. The Jaguar machine has 224,162 Opteron cores spinning at 2.6 GHz and delivers 1.76 petaflops of performance on the Linpack test. This Cray machine links Opteron blade servers using its SeaStar2+ interconnect, which has been superseded by the new "Gemini" XE interconnect in the XE6 supers that started rolling out this summer.Number four on the list is also a ceepie-geepie, it is the upgraded Tsubame 2 machine at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. (That's shortened to TiTech rather than TIT, which would be where you'd expect a machine called Milky Way to be located. But we digress). The Tsubame 2 machine is built from Hewlett-Packard's SL390s G7 cookie sheet servers, which made their debut in early October. TiTech announced the Tsubame 2 deal back in May, and this machine includes over 1,400 of these HP servers, each with three M2050 GPUs from Nvidia.
The Tsubame 2 machine has 73,278 cores and is rated at 2.29 peak petaflops and delivered 1.19 petaflops of sustained performance on the Linpack test. That's a 52 percent efficiency, about what the other ceepie-geepies are getting. By the way, the prior Tsubame 1 machine was based on x64 servers from Sun Microsystems, with floating point accelerators from Clearspeed in only some of the nodes. And one more thing: Tsubame 2 runs both Linux and Windows, and according to the Top 500 rankers, both operating systems offer nearly equivalent performance.
In the Hopper
The fifth most-powerful super in the world based on the Linpack tests (at least the ones we know about) is a brand new box called Hopper. Installed at the US DOE's National Energy Research Scientific Computing center, Hopper is a Cray XE6 super using that new Gemini interconnect and twelve-core Opteron 6100 processors - no fancy schmancy GPU co-processors. (Well, at least not yet, anyway.) Hopper has 153,408 cores spinning at 2.1 GHz and delivers 1.05 petaflops of sustained performance with an efficiency of 82 per cent.Number seven on the list, the Roadrunner Opteron blade system at Los Alamos National Laboratory (another DOE site) does use accelerators, but they are IBM's now defunct Cell co-processors, which are based on IBM's Power cores and which have eight vector math units per chip. While the Roadrunner machine demonstrated the viability of co-processors to push up to the petaflops. But Roadrunner is stalled at 1.04 petaflops, is probably not going to be upgraded, and is therefore uninteresting even if it will do lots of good work for the DOE. (If you consider designing nuclear weapons good work, of course.)
Number nine on the list is the BlueGene/P super, named Jugene, built by IBM for the Forschungszentrum Juelich in Germany, which debuted at number three at 825.5 teraflops on the June 2009 list and hasn't changed since then. Rounding out the top ten on the Top 500 list is the Cielo Cray XE6 at Los Alamos, a new box that is rated at 816.6 teraflops of sustained Linpack performance.
GPU is my co-pilot
On the November 2010 list, there are 28 HPC systems that use GPU accelerators, and the researchers who put together the Top 500 for the 36th time - Erich Strohmaier and Horst Simon, computer scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, and Hans Meuer of the University of Manheim - consider IBM's Cell chip a GPU co-processor. On this list, there are sixteen machines that use Cell chips to goose their floating point oomph, with ten using Nvidia GPUs and two using AMD Radeon graphics cards.To get onto the Top 500 list this time around, a machine had to come in at 31.1 teraflops, up from 24.7 teraflops only six months ago. This used to sound like a lot of math power. But these days, it really doesn't. A cluster with 120 of the current Nvidia Tesla GPUs with only half of the flops coming through where the CUDA meets the Fortran compiler will get you on the list. The growth is linear, then on the June list next year, you will need something like 40 teraflops or about 150 of the current generation of GPUs. And with GPU performance on the upswing, maybe the number of GPUs in a ceepie-geepie to get onto the Top 500 list might not require so many GPUs.
Core counting
As has been the case for many years, processors from Intel absolutely dominate the current Top 500 list, with 398 machines (79.6 per cent of the boxes on the list). Of these, 56 machines are using the Xeon 5600 processors, one is still based on 32-bit Xeons, one is based on Core desktop chips, five are based on Itanium processors, and three are based on the new high-end Xeon 7500s.In the November 2010 rankings, there are 57 machines using AMD's Opteron processors, while there are 40 machines using one or another variant of IBM's Power processors. While the machine counts are low for these two families of chips, the core counts sure are not because of the monster systems that are based on Power and Opteron chips.
There are 1.41 million Power cores on the Top 500 list this time around, which was 21.5 per cent of the total 6.53 million cores inside of the 500 boxes and which represented 7.35 aggregate petaflops or 11.2 per cent of the total 65.8 petaflops on the list. There are 1.54 million Opteron cores (23.5 per cent of cores) on the aggregate list for 14.2 peak petaflops (21.6 per cent of total flops)
None of these core counts include the GPU core counts, which is something that the Top 500 people should reconsider, even though in all cases the flops are counted.
Across all processor architectures, there are 365 machines using quad-core processors and 19 already are using CPUs with six or more processors per socket. It is safe to say that the HPC market will eat whatever number of cores the chip makers can bake.
There are two Sparc-based supers on the current Top 500 list and the Earth Simulator super built by NEC for the Japanese government is still barely on the list (and will probably be knocked off on the next list in June 2011).
Xeon rides the wave
Having said all of that, the 391 machines using Intel's Xeon processors represent the belly of the Top 500 list. With a total of 3.5 million cores (53.5 per cent of the total core count on the list) and 43.2 petaflops of number-crunching oomph (65.8 per cent of total flops), the Xeon is the champion of the top-end HPC world. Of course, the Xeon CPUs is getting credit for flops that are being done by GPUs in many cases.By operating system, Linux in its various incarnations dominates the list, with 450 out of 500 machines running it. Unix accounted for 20 machines, Windows five machines, and the remainder were running mixed operating systems. If Microsoft wanted to catch a new wave, it would work to get the best possible GPU runtime and programming tools to market. Just tweaking the MPI stack in Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 to get rough parity with Linux is not going to make a dent at the big supercomputer centers of the world. Then again, Microsoft is trying to move into the HPC arena from the technical workstation up, and it has other advantages that Linux platforms do not in this regard.
IBM has the most systems on the November 2010 Top 500 list, with 199 boxes (39.8 per cent of the total) and 17.1 petaflops (26 per cent of the total flops on the list) of aggregate peak performance on the Linpack test. Big Blue is followed up by Hewlett-Packard, with 158 machines and 11.7 petaflops, which works out to 31.6 per cent of machines and 17.8 per cent of total flops. Cray has only 29 machines on the current super ranking, which is 5.8 per cent of machines but 16.3 per cent of peak floating point power. Silicon Graphics has 22 machines on the list, which is 4.4 per cent of boxes and 4.5 per cent of aggregate flops. Dell has 20 boxes on the list and its hand in a few mixed boxes as well, and Oracle, Fujitsu, NEC, and Hitachi all have a handful of machines, too.
Supercomputing is inherently political (especially so given where the funding for the upper echelon of the Top 500 list comes from), and countries most certainly measure each other up in their HPC centers. The United States leads with machine count, at 275 machines with a combined 31.5 petaflops, and China has jumped well ahead of Japan to become the solid number two, with 42 machines and 12.8 petaflops in total across those machines. Japan has 26 machines that add up to 4.6 petaflops, and Germany's 26 machines have an aggregate of 3.5 petaflops. The United Kingdom is close behind with 24 machines, for a total of 2.2 petaflops, followed by Russia with 11 machines and 1.1 petaflops. ®
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