When my friends were chasing the “American Dream,” my luck brought me to China.  It was the year of 2012, I landed in the beautiful city of Hangzhou in Zhejiang province. There is a saying in China “Above lies heaven, below there is Hangzhou and Suzhou”. Confucius Institute at Kathmandu University of Nepal sent me for a semester of Chinese language and culture courses to Zhejiang University of Science and Technology (ZUST). This was the first time I came across Chinese people, culture and traditions. The warmth of their love, the patriotism in their blood, the essence of the ancient culture and traditions, the taste of the delicious cuisines, the beauty of the Chinese architectures around the elegant West Lake completely took my heart away. I fell in love with China.

This is the year 2019, 7 years in China and I am living my “Chinese Dream” in Beijing, the capital of China. I am Bhusan Kayastha from Nepal. I am a PhD student of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) majoring in Astrophysics at National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC). I am a part of The Silk Road Project at NAOC led by my supervisor Prof. Dr. Rainer Spurzem from Germany. I consider myself lucky to have two supervisors for my PhD program. One is Prof. Dr. Rainer Spurzem and the other is Prof. Dr. Lijun Gou from NAOC. Both of them are the awardees of the prestigious “Thousand Talents Program” of China. I really admire this program of the Chinese government initiated in 2008 as it is bringing great Chinese minds back to their homeland as well as providing outstanding foreign experts a good opportunity to build up their professional career in China. The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is the world’s largest and top research organization. CAS has stood in the first position consecutively for the last six years on Nature Index Annual Tables, which measures the largest contributors to papers published in the leading journals. According to QS 2019 world ranking of universities, Tsinghua University and Peking University from China stand on 17th and 30th places respectively. In 2018 Tsinghua University was ranked as the top university for mathematics and computing in the world.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. This is a great and proud moment for China and Chinese people. As an astrophysicist, I am proud to be a part of the institute (NAOC) with the world’s largest radio telescope - Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST). A Chinese spacecraft Chang’e-4 became the first to land on the far side of the moon creating a historic moment for human space exploration. Micius, the world's first quantum communication satellite developed by China, was launched into space in 2016. Recently, China also opened up its planned Chinese Space Station (CSS) to international cooperation, with the first module set to launch in 2020. Sunway TaihuLight, a supercomputer installed at China National Supercomputing Center of Wuxi with processors (40960 Sunway 26160 processors each with 60 cores) and technology independently developed in China can perform staggering 93 petaflops per second. It is notable for not using any accelerator chips and ranked as the third fastest supercomputer in the world. More recently, a Chinese surgeon successfully performed the world’s first remote brain surgery using 5G technology, with the patient 3,000km away from the operating doctor. The surgeon manipulated the instruments in the Beijing-based PLAGH hospital from a clinic subsidiary in Sanya city of the Hainan island. China is already in the top spot for the 5G technology race around the globe.

China's equipment manufacturing industry has developed rapidly and made remarkable progress especially after the reform and opening up of China in 1978. All three means of transportation, air, land and the water ways have witnessed achievements in recent years. China's first homegrown large passenger plane C919's No. 102 completed its first long-distance test flight. China has the longest high-speed railway network (31000km) and second longest railway network (150000km) in the world. China’s Shanghai Maglev is the fastest train in the world with a maximum operating speed of 267.8 mph. China’s expressways network (142500 km) and road network (4846500 km) come first and third in the world respectively. The Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge, a 55-kilometre bridge–tunnel system is both the longest sea crossing and the longest open-sea fixed link on earth. Recently China launched the country's first ship "Zhang Jian" specifically designed for carrying submersibles. Now China is moving forward with its another ambitious plan, “Made in China 2025”. Released in 2015, Made in China 2025 is the government’s ten-year plan to update China’s manufacturing base by rapidly developing ten high-tech industries. Chief among these are electric cars and other new energy vehicles, next-generation information technology (IT) and telecommunications, advanced robotics and artificial intelligence.

President Xi Jinping of China announced the “Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)” project in 2013, the same year when I came to Beijing as a Master’s degree student at University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB). BRI is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever conceived involving infrastructure development and investments in 152 countries and international organizations in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas. I believe BRI is the greatest project of this century and it will connect the countries and civilizations around the globe.

China, the world’s second largest economy, has lifted more than 850 million people out of poverty in the last decades and plans to eliminate all poverty by 2020. A United Nations report asserts that China has reduced about 76 percent of the poverty across the world, making China the nation with the most people lifted out of poverty globally. I want to congratulate China and its people on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and extend my warm wishes for this glorious 70 years of development and success. I believe when we will be celebrating the 80th anniversary of the founding of PRC, I will be talking about the world’s largest economy and the most advanced and innovative country. I am so happy that I am here witnessing all these extraordinary leaps of this great nation. In the end, I would like to say “this is not the rise of China, this is the return of China”.

Figure: Prof. Dr. Rainer Spurzem and Bhusan Kayastha with Laohu Supercomputer at  NAOC