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No.197

 

CHINA  SCIENCE  AND  TECHNOLOGY
NEWSLETTER
The Ministry of Science and Technology
People's Republic of China


N0.197 August 30,1999
 
IN THIS ISSUE
  • China's Top S&T Award
  • Enhanced Support to Private S&T Enterprises
  • China's Breakthrough in Protein Corn Breeding
  • China's New Cooling Medium
  • China Obtained First Absolute Gravity Value of Arctic Ocean
  • Qiu Zeyou Solved the World Architecture Mystery
  • Venture Investment Company and Technology Property Rights Exchanges

SPECIAL    ISSUES

 China's Top S&T Award

Starting from this year, any Chinese S&T personnel who has harvested outstanding achievements in scientific research or created huge benefits through S&T innovations will be granted with China's Top S&T Award with great honor and a large amount of money. President of China will sign and award the certificates with a bonus of RMB 5 million for each winner.

The establishment of this national top S&T award, which is regarded as "China's Nobel Prize", hallmarks a major development in the reform of S&T awarding system in China.

On August 9, 1999, Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology published "National Plan for Reform of S&T Awarding System" approved by the State Council for its implementation. Xu Guanhua, Vice Minister of Science and Technology, explained that major objectives of the reform are: enhance the strength of awards, increase the authority and sense of honor of awards, fully promote the orientation role played by S&T awards, decrease the number and levels to be honored and strengthen the management of awards created by social forces.

It is reported that before there were 68 governmental agencies and 31 provinces, autonomous regions or municipalities in the country who had their own awards with a total number as many as 12,000. The excessive number and unduly distributed levels have made the reputations of some awards decline and thus stamped negative impacts on the enthusiasm of S&T personnel for invention and innovations. According to the reformed awarding system, governmental agencies under the State Council shall not establish any awards at ministerial level generally and provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities are supposed to establish only one award. In the same context, special prize and third and fourth prizes for National Natural Science Award, National Technology and Invention Award and National S&T Advance Award are required to be abolished. As a result, the number of prizes will go down from 600- 800 each year in the past to no more than 400.

The winners of the new National Top S&T Award will not go beyond 2 in number. The qualified candidates should be citizens of P. R. China who have achieved major breakthroughs in modern S&T cutting-edges or contributed greatly to S&T development; created huge economic or social benefits through S&T innovations, S&T results spin-off and high tech industrialization. As stipulated by the provisions, RMB 500,000 of RMB 5 million bonus belongs to the winner and the rest RMB 4.5 million shall be used as his or her future research budget.

In the same context of reform, the bonus of first prize for existing National Natural Science Award, National Technology Invention Award and National S&T Advance Award will go up from RMB 60,000 and 45,000 to RMB 90,000 respectively.

From now on, there are only 5 national S&T awards in the country. They are National Top S&T Award, National Natural Science Award, National Technology Invention Award, National S&T Advance Award and International S&T Cooperation Award.

Enhanced Support to Private S&T Enterprises

It is reported from the sources of Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology that the so-called Notes on Promoting the Development of Private S&T Enterprises jointly composed by Ministry of Science and Technology and State Economic and Trade Commission has been issued and implemented recently.

The Notes is composed of four sections: section one advocates creating fair competition environment for private S&T enterprises; section two requires private S&T enterprises to continuously improve their technical innovation capability; section three deals with ownership and management issues of these enterprises; and section four elaborates the guidance and services to the development of private S&T enterprises.

The Notes stresses that the vigorous development of private S&T enterprises is an important measure to accelerate spinning-off and industrialization of S&T results. In this context, government at different levels are asked to create conditions necessary for the establishment of S&T enterprises and spinning off research results by scientific and technological fellows or by returned personnel who used to study or work overseas. Meanwhile, the Notes asks to provide equal policy treatment to private S&T enterprises in making relevant industrial policies, S&T policies, loan guarantees and products export policies. The Notes has put forward many new and feasible measures to encourage technical innovations of private S&T enterprises and support the identification of their ownership rights. In addition, the Notes has made detailed requirements to science and technology commissions and economic and technology commissions at different levels on how to accelerate the development of private S&T enterprises.

It is reported that at the end of 1998, the total number of private S&T enterprises in the country reached 70052 (including diverse sectors of the economy) with an employed population of 4 million and assets of RMB 1062.5 billion. The total revenues of the whole year reached RMB 767 billion, 38% up than 1997, and net profits RMB 46.7 billion and taxes paid RMB 36.7 billion, 38% higher than last year. In addition, they had earned hard currency from export of USD 11.4 billion, 28% more than that of last year. In 1998 R&D budget of private S&T enterprises amounted to RMB 34.2 billion. These statistics have demonstrated great potentials and broad development perspectives for private S&T enterprises.

For years, Party committees and governments at different levels have paid great attention to the development of private S&T enterprises. At present, nearly half of the provinces and municipalities in the country have formulated by-laws dedicated to the promotion of private S&T enterprises development and two thirds of provinces and municipalities have issued the circulars in the name of government supporting and encouraging the development of private S&T enterprises. These efforts have created fine policy and legal environment for the development of these enterprises.
 

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

China's Breakthrough in Protein Corn Breeding

Recently the high-quality hard-endosperm corn made its debut in Beijing. Named as "China 9409", the new species is the result of many-year painstaking efforts of Zhang Shihuang, Shi Dequan and others working for Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. The said species is featured with both high protein content and high yield, a consequent solution to the difficult match between high yield and high quality. The said development earmarked that the current dominant hybrid mode of high-quality protein corn has been established. It also made China in the international leading position in the field.

The new species "China 9409" is of a potential yield at 11 tons per hectare, 16%-27% higher than the yield of ordinary corns with its lysine content reaching 4.6 g per hundred grams of protein and 0.4% of a whole grain, about 80% higher than that of ordinary corns. Protein in corn is mostly stored in the endosperm. The endosperm of ordinary corns contains little protein and lysine. A number of high lysine content corns bred out in China in the past were either soft or semi-hard endosperm types with some disadvantages such as low yield, light grains, high moisture content and poor disease resistance. The hard type corns offer low yield though they have had no such deficiencies. The new species has overcome the shortcoming of low yield and realized the marriage between high quality and high yield.

China's New Cooling Medium

The prototype air conditioner with new cooling medium developed by Air Conditioning Research Institute of Sichuan Chonghong Electronics Group has demonstrated in the testing its better performance and design than that of its counterparts in the world. Dr. Li Jin, the leading scientist of the study, was recently conferred by International Refrigeration Association with its top prize--Young Scientist Award. The said development has marked that China's research on new refrigeration medium has reached world advanced level both in terms of theory and applications.

It is reported that air conditioner manufacturers of many countries and regions in the world are at present using a so-called R22 cooling medium which has caused serious ozone depletion and environment pollution. The new medium is a kind of mixed cooling material causing no pollution to the environment. Starting from the next year, Europe and some developed countries and regions will gradually replace R22 with the new cooling medium.

Dr. Li Jin, the leading scientist of the research project, is Director of Air Conditioning Research Institute of Chonghong Electronics Group. After finishing his study for doctorate in Tsinghua University in 1991, Dr. Li was sent to study in Japan in the following year. His attention had long been paid to the development of new cooling agent during his study. Two years later, he together with other doctorate scientists from Japan, Germany and US published their latest research result "HFC Cooling Medium and Thermal Dynamic and Physical Properties of their Compounds". The research result has been defined by Japanese Association for Refrigeration as professional standards.

From 1997, Dr. Li Jin founded his research result in the applications of Chonghong Group and produced the first prototype air conditioner with new cooling medium early this year. The testing has shown that performances of the prototype machine are better than that of similar products made in Japan or Europe.
 

NEWS BRIEFS

China Obtained First Absolute Gravity
Value of Arctic Ocean

Through accurate measuring, on August 6, 1999, Chinese scientists participating in China's first Arctic Expedition have obtained the absolute gravity value of the Arctic Ocean, the fist of its kind in the world. It is also the first absolute gravity data obtained by Chinese scientists in their polar expeditions.

Gravity is an important means telling the earth shape and crust movement. Comparing to relative gravity measurement, absolute gravity measurement, especially in Polar Regions, has long been a thorny problem worrying about heavy measuring equipment, tough environment and high accuracy requirement. Chinese scientists have never tried this in their past scientific expeditions.

Being a major topic for China's first Arctic scientific expedition, Prof. Zhang Ruigang of Taiwan Mingxin Polytechnic Institute and Prof. E Dongchen of Wuhan Cartography Science University jointly made this absolute gravity measurement of the Arctic Ocean at N. 73'26" and W. 164' 59". It is reported that this is also the first scientific cooperation between scientists of two straits in polar expeditions.

The measurement was made by the world first portable absolute gravimeter. Compared with other absolute gravimeters, this is of lightweight, simple operation, field-friendliness and fast readout of observation results. The double measurement checks have proved the stability and high accuracy of the gravimeter.

On the floating ice spot, E Dongchen also made relative gravity measurement and accurate satellite positioning through GPS. To mark the efforts, he buried a brass plate inscribed with "China Survey & Mapping" in the snow there.

In the days followed, Chinese scientists will continue the absolute gravity measurement in several other ice spots. China's 16th Antarctic Expedition to be launched later this year will use the same gravimeter to measure the absolute gravity at the Great Wall Station and Zhongshan Station so as to establish China's own absolute gravity bench mark in the Antarctic region.

Qiu Zeyou Solved the World Architecture Mystery

A long standing world mystery troubling the advanced development of building industry-large-span horizontal structure system with no beam-has been solved by Qiu Zeyou, a 35-year-old young scientist who is General Manager of Changsha Juxing Light Building Materials Co. Ltd.. The new building structure invented and extended by him-cast-in-place concrete hollow GBF ceiling with no beam-has broken the traditional structure modes with more rational dynamic performance and greatly shortened construction period.

Experts thought highly of the result and deemed that it provided a technical support for the modernization of Chinese building industry in the 21st century and was of huge social and economic values.

In the last decade and more, China's cast-in-place floor area reached 4.2 billion m2. Calculated on a conservative basis, namely if 30% of the constructed areas were applied with Qiu's new structure mode, it may save an investment of RMB 151.8 billion from reducing consolidated construction costs of RMB120 per square meter. Further more, the indirect social and economic benefits brought about by shortened construction period, improved sound insulation, increased net height and reduced structure weight will go beyond the estimation. In 1999, Ministry of Construction has listed the technique as a major S&T result for extensive applications.

Qiu Zeyou graduated from Department of Building Materials, Shenyang Academy of Architecture Engineering in 1984. After graduation, he was assigned to work on applications and development of building materials and new building structures for Hunan Provincial Institute of Building Material Research and Design. Up to date, he has chaired more than 20 topic-oriented research teams and has been granted with 9 patent rights. In addition, he published more than 30 papers in S&T journals both at home and abroad. He has been conferred with 5 national and provincial S&T advance awards.

Venture Investment Company and Technology
Property Rights Exchanges

Shanghai Venture Investment Company and Shanghai Technology Property Rights Exchange were established in Shanghai on August 9, 1999. Approved by Shanghai Municipal Government and financed by local governmental financial sources at an amount of RMB 600 million, Shanghai Venture Investment Co. Ltd. is a special institution dedicated to venture investment. The company will run in line with international norms on venture investment and regulations so as to promote the innovation and industrialization of high technology. The investment will be targeted at small and medium S&T enterprises and research institutions at venture stage for high tech projects and some technology application projects and high tech upgrading of traditional industries.

Meanwhile, newly founded Shanghai Technology Property Rights Exchange has become a strong rivalry to current diversified competition mechanisms of S&T investment and technology trading.


       Comments or inquiries on editorial matters or Newsletter content should be directed to:Mr. Dong Jianlong, Department of International Cooperation, MOST 15B, Fuxing Road Beijing 100862, PR China  Tel: (8610)68512650 Fax: (8610) 68512594, or Mr. Wang Jianping, Editor,NEWSLETTER, 15 Fuxing Road Beijing 100038, PR China, Tel:(8610) 68515544 Ext. 2921