![]() Second, quantum communications require specialized equipment that cannot be integrated into existing infrastructure and cannot be upgraded or patched. First, while quantum cryptography does prevent eavesdropping, there is no way of authenticating the sender of the secure information. For example, the NSA has noted five technical hurdles to applying quantum cryptography on the U.S. Still, concerns of a Chinese “quantum supremacy” should be softened by the realities and difficulties of this new space. In addition to the above gains, China has also led massive breakthroughs in supercooled and light-based quantum processors. In 2020, the company received funding from the state-owned China Telecom to establish quantum-encrypted communication lines in 15 Chinese provinces. Pan Jianwei, team-lead for the quantum communications breakthrough, founded the quantum technology company QuantumCtek in 2009. ![]() The Chinese government has also funded private businesses. Much goes to quantum laboratories, according to a 2022 report from the RAND Corporation: $1.06 billion in 2017 and an additional $2.95 billion through 2022. The University also has a cooperation agreement with AVIC, China’s state-owned mega-conglomerate that produces platforms for the PLA Air Force, as well agreements with Yale, Cambridge, and other international organizations.Īccording to estimates from Global Quantum Intelligence, the Chinese government has likely spent at least $25 billion in the field. The signing ceremony was attended by both the aforementioned Pan Jianwei, and Major General Yang Xuejun. The PLA's interest in such areas and the quantum work at the University of Science and Technology of China dates as far back as 2012, when the university signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the PLA’s National University of Defense Technology regarding quantum computing research. Quantum computers able to solve complex calculations in milliseconds that would take a conventional computers trillions of years to solve would effortlessly crack most current encryption, push forward machine learning and AI to new levels, enable complex simulations and predictions, and drastically scientific R&D in fields ranging from chemistry to synthetic biology. These breakthroughs come as a result of a broader push by Beijing for supremacy in quantum technologies and the many national security applications they promise even beyond the holy grail of communications that would reveal any attempted hack. Their approach corrects for the added error potential of the extra qubits, improves the stability of information storage, and requires fewer resources, allowing quantum systems to realize a net-positive for resource intensity. In March, the team announced a new system for real-time error correction in quantum systems. However, another Chinese team, led by Yu Dapeng of the Shenzhen Institute of Quantum Science and Engineering as well as researchers from Tsinghua and Fuzhou Universities, are also making progress on this problem. It can even introduce more errors the correcting qubits themselves are also delicate. Although these errors can be corrected by using extra qubits, this takes more computing power. This is a result of the delicate superposition of the qubits, which frequently introduces unacceptable error rates and computational bottlenecking. This breakthrough enables systems to handle vastly more data, larger files, and more users.Īnother challenge for quantum systems, though, is that any increase in distance or bandwidth begins to introduce a large quantity of errors and decoherence. Led by the decorated USTC researcher Pan Jianwei and MIT-trained Xu Feihu, the team managed to push 115.8 megabytes of encrypted data per second over a 10-kilometer fiber-optic channel, shattering by over ten times the previous record of around 10 Mb/s. Now a team of Chinese scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China has reported a breakthrough: a tenfold increase in the rate of stable quantum-key distribution. ![]() The inability to send enough of these keys has been a bottleneck in the pursuit of practical quantum communications. (Imagine dipping a cup into a stream of water any attempt leaves traces.) But the intended recipients can interpret the information because they are being sent something called quantum keys. If an enemy observes these qubits-that is, intercepts a message-they lose this quality of “superposition.” The information they carry is lost and, as a bonus, the interception is easily detected. Quantum communications systems pass information using quantum bits: particles that exist in two states until they are observed. A tenfold leap in a key aspect of quantum communications is just one of several recent breakthroughs by Chinese research teams that have major implications for the future of computing and communications.
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