UNDP Praises China's High-tech Utility

China was praised for advances in new technology in a major United Nations report issued Wednesday.

The report, entitled "Making New Technologies Work for Human Development,'' rated how new inventions can improve the quality of life, dubbing China a "dynamic adopters.''

The report by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) divided 72 countries with available statistics into four groups, technology leaders, potential technology leaders, dynamic adopters and the marginalized.

Report authors noted China's efforts to change and inform the world of those changes.

"China's strategy of `promoting development by developing sciences and technology' has drawn the attention of the UNDP, which has a very high opinion of it,'' said Science and Technology Vice-Minister Li Xueyong.

"In China, genetically-modified rice offers 15 per cent higher yields without the need for increases in other farm inputs, and modified cotton allows pesticide spraying to be reduced from 30 to three times,'' the report said.

The UNDP also noticed the rapid growth of the Internet in China. Internet hosts rose to about 159,600 in 2000 from about 106,000 in 1995.

The report also speaks highly of China's State Torch Programme and Spark Programme, two plans that promote the country's high-tech sector.

"In the 1990s, China emphasized the development of its high-tech industry through a variety of government programmes to support Report and Development (R&D). Now China is also using R&D to improve the productivity of traditional activities in agriculture. The Spark Programme propagates technologies to the countryside and assists farmers in using them for agricultural development,'' the report says.

For the first time, the 2001 report employs a "Technology Achievement Index'' to rank 72 countries in overall achievements involving technology use.

China scored 0.299, placing it 45th among the 72 countries.

Analysts claimed that the genuine ranking of China might be better.

"The technology power of some large-scale countries is underestimated,'' said Hu Angang, director of the Centre for China Study of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

(China Daily 07/12/2001)