Today was another day dedicated to the Plus 3 class. We had a two-hour session with Claudia. Today’s lecture was the Chinese government. We went over how isolated China used to be. When they started getting western settlers travel to their country, it caused a lot of problems like the Opium addiction. When they lost the Opium War, they realized that they were weak and needed to reform. They began following things that Japan and Russia did. This is where China began to become Communist. They went into isolation again between 1966-1976 for a cultural revolution because they were losing sight of their own culture. During this Cultural Revolution, they fell behind the rest of the world when it came to advancing their country. When Mao died, Deng Xiaoping took over and created a reform and open policy. This led to many advancements and to the powerful and booming China we know today. This however caused a generation gap between adults and their kids because they grew up in such different times.
After class we got ready for our second company visit. The company was Tsinghua Solar. They specialize in creating solar water heaters. Our tour of the company was pretty much just a PowerPoint. You could tell that it was a smaller company considering they did not have their own building. I enjoyed this company visit a lot more than the first one. I feel like I could now explain how their technology works. The guy giving the presentation spoke English fairly well, which was also a plus. This solar water heating technology is mainly big in China, considering they are 96 percent of the market. Due to cheaper energy prices in the United States, we have little interest to go solar. Currently, Tsinghua Solar is working with a couple of small markets in the U.S. to test and demonstrate their product to try and gain some business in the huge market.