Chinese Minister of Science and Technology Xu Guanhua said Friday that lack of coordination between research institutions have led to repetitive purchases of expensive laboratory equipments and caused great waste in a country shy of research fund.

As a result, large research equipments are running only 2 hours in a work day in China, while the same equipments are operating to the capacity of 13.6 hours on average in developed countries, Xu said in a report to the national legislature.

He highlighted the shocking waste of resources to lawmakers in an example of the procurement of MODIS, or moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer receiver, used for receiving data from remote sensing satellites, which is an expensive gadget coveted by scientists across the globe.

Even at today's price, each receiver costs 150,000 to 300,000 U.S. dollars, depending on whether it was produced in China or imported. The United States boasts of 16 MODIS receivers under its possession, which have satisfied all the needs of its scientists, while most European countries have only one for each.

But in China, 30 have already been installed and additional 50 would have been ordered according to initial plans by research institutions, the minister said.

Such practices are "hindering the country's drive to innovation and development," Xu said, noting that China's annual investment in research was just 25 billion U.S. dollars in 2004, just 8 percent of the United States expenditures.

"The current research mechanism, complicated by various government departments at different levels, is encouraging squander of valuable resources in the form of repetitive purchases of expensive laboratory equipments," Xu said.

According to Dr. Liu Chuang, director of the Global Change Information and Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing alone, 10 MODIS receivers have been installed, and every province in China once had plans to buy at least one.

Thanks to a watchdog overseeing the purchases of expensive lab equipments set up by the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2003, the original orders for 50 MODIS receivers were slashed, and the total number of the equipments in China will be brought under 40, Dr. Liu said.

To Minister Xu, more worrisome is the lack of coordination between government departments and research institutions, which will "make the mission impossible to build China into one of the worlds science powers," Xu said.

China has set an ambitious plan earlier this year to invigorate its scientific research, aiming to increase its total research and development expenditures to 2.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020 from 1.23 percent in 2004, up to the level of developed economies and top scientific powers.

To ensure cost-effectiveness of such investments, China will break down research barriers, including those that separate military research and civil development, Xu said.

"China will also make businesses the locomotive of innovation and technological progress through policy incentives," Xu said.

(Xinhua News Agency April 28, 2006)