China's top economic planner has adopted a fresh strategy for
high-tech industry, with the emphasis shifting from expansion to
beefing up the capacity to innovate.
The transformation has been written into the 11th Five-year Plan
for High-tech Industry (2006-2010) released on Friday by the
National Development and Reform Commission, with the approval of
the State Council, China's Cabinet.
Industrial expansion has been demoted to fourth rank with the
new top three priorities being innovation, optimizing industrial
structure and going international.
Under the plan, domestic high-tech firms should see the number
of patents they take out double between 2005 and 2010 and achieve
more than half of their industrial output and 15 percent of their
exports from locally-invented new high technologies.
Geographically, the Yangtze and Pearl River Deltas and the
Circum-Bohai Sea Region have been marked out as major innovation
bases, with big cities and high-tech industrial parks required to
play the leading roles.
Integrated circuits, software engineering, new generation
telecommunications, internet and digital audio and video
applications, advanced computing, bio-medicine, civil aviation,
satellites and new materials have been selected as key development
areas.
The government said it would channel more money from both the
capital markets and public finance into the new high-tech industry,
move more aggressively in education and training, establish
industrial standards and encourage high-tech companies to make use
of foreign investment.
Military defense companies have been encouraged to expand
collaboration with civil companies while monopolistic industries
will be broken down.
China's high-tech industry generated more than 944 billion yuan
in industrial output and 270 billion yuan in exports last year, up
20 percent and 25 percent respectively.
(Xinhua News Agency July 7, 2007)
