Science and technology will play a major role in economic and
social development in China, Minister of Science and Technology Xu
Guanhua has said.
Cooperation with other countries will also be an important part of
the work in fields like global climate change and oceanography
studies, astronomy and earthquake research.
China will continue to expand multilateral technological
cooperation by supporting domestic research institutions to join
their overseas peers for technical collaboration, Xu said during a
recent interview with China Daily, reviewing the
achievements of the National Key Technologies Research and
Development Programme gained during the ninth Five-Year Plan
(1996-2000) period.
The programme was initiated in 1982 to provide technological
support for significant projects related to the national economy,
such as infrastructure construction and communications.
Overseas scientists and academic organizations are being encouraged
to cooperate with their Chinese counterparts through jointly
developing research projects or establishing technological
companies or institutes in China, said Xu.
China has achieved remarkable progress in seeking new technological
discoveries, which have been important to the national economy over
the past few years, said Xu.
Technological progress has been beneficial in the industry,
agriculture, energy, transport, natural resources exploration and
utilization, environmental protection, health, medical care and
disasters prevention and mitigation sectors.
During the ninth Five-Year Plan period, the popularization of
high-yield crop seeds and other new technology have helped swell
the country's harvest of grain by 150 billion kilograms, statistics
from the ministry indicate.
Technological progress has also provided powerful support for
industrial development over the past five years. A new oil
extraction technology has enabled the Daqing Oilfield in northeast
China's Heilongjiang Province and the Shengli Oilfield in eastern
Shandong Province to raise oil production threefold over the past
five years, according to the ministry's statistics.
Technological progress has laid good foundations for China to
conduct international scientific cooperation, sources from the
ministry's department for international cooperation have said.
Scientific cooperation between China and developed countries has
shifted from former academic exchanges to the present joint
collaboration programmes, such as earthquake studies, according to
the department.
(China Daily 06/18/2001)