Six Priorities for S&T Development
China will readjust its S&T development strategies in line with scientific development concepts, taking full advantage of the decisive roles of technical innovations in supporting and guiding the socioeconomic development, emphasized XU Guanhua, Chinese Minister of Science and Technology, at the 7th China Beijing International S&T Industrial Fair opened on May 21, 2004.
Referring to China’s major S&T development focuses in the future 15 years, XU said the Chinese government works hard to come up with sound S&T development strategies, goals, tasks and policies for the future 15 years, in a national long and medium term S&T plan. The Ministry of Science and Technology has defined 6 major priorities to go along with major strategic needs of the nation’s socioeconomic development: 1) addressing bottleneck issues restricting resources and environment development, in an effort to develop an S&T capacity to support a resources efficient and environment friendly society; 2) enhancing agricultural innovation capacity building, and ensuring food security and yield increase; 3) accelerating the information process of the national economy, and improving the competitiveness of the manufacturing and modern service industries, allowing a sustained economic growth; 4) narrowing down the knowledge and information divides between regions, and striving for a change from uneven development patterns to a coordinated one; 5) strengthening S&T innovations in the fields of defense and public interests, and providing reliable technical support for safeguarding the national security and social stability; and 6) promoting the all-round development of Chinese population, striving for a change from a populous power to a human resources power.
To materialize the above said six priority tasks, XU believes that S&T innovations shall change from tracking down and imitation to more original innovations, allowing an increasingly enhanced S&T sustainability. And Chinese S&T community shall change from individual technology oriented development to integrated innovations, spurring strategic products’ and industries’ leaping development. Mentioning the system issue, XU reiterates that the institutional reforms shall be a starting point that will lead to the reform of the entire system, in a direction to construct the national innovation system, laying a system foundation for the steady and sustained S&T development.
S&T Fair Harvests
The 7th China Beijing International S&T Industrial Fair, heavily scheduled with 6-day events, dropped its curtain on May, 26, 2004. The Fair has resulted in 252 investment and trade projects, mostly involving new technologies, with a total sum of USD 3.96 billion.
Of the deals reached at the Fair, 231 are investment projects, for a sum of USD 3.94 billion. Beijing based investment projects count 67 in number, having a sum of USD 1.72 billion, or 43.9% of the total for investment projects. Other provinces or cities have concluded 164 projects with an investment sum of USD 2.22 billion, or 56.1% of the total. Comparing with the last Fair, high tech contracts witness a large increase of the sum concluded from 36% in 2003 to current 58.4%. Investors have shown their most interests in the fields of electronics, information technology, medicine, environmental protection and new materials.
During the Fair, more than a hundred events, including exhibitions, forums, and technology & trade talks, were sponsored by the organizers. Some 3,000 foreign guests, from 32 countries or regions and 82 foreign government or industrial delegations, and from the representative offices of foreign businesses in China, and overseas S&T Institutes, made their presence. Domestic delegations, made up of some 8,000 people, mainly in high tech businesses, from 31 provinces, autonomous regions, cosmopolitan cities, 4 large cities and 2 provincial capitals, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, constitute the mainstream of the Fair. Some 2,100 domestic and international high tech businesses and research institutes visited the high tech exhibition teemed with innovation results and findings. About 580 speakers ( 30% are invited from overseas), including heads of international organizations, Noble Prize winners, heads of world top 500, officials of renowned international banking institutes and high level government officials, made their presentations at 93 forums and meeting under 25 topics. The Fair has attracted the presence of over 10,000 visitors from a dozen of foreign countries and the mainland.
Standardization for China’s Digital Library
A meeting aiming at promoting the standardization of China’s digital library, jointly sponsored by the National S&T Literature Center, the National Library, the Institute of S&T Information of China, CALIS, and the Literature and Information Center under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was convened on May 27, 2004 in Beijing.
As a major infrastructure initiative financed by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology both in 2002 and 2003, the digital library standardization project is set up to study the related issues, including digital resources’ life cycle, extensive applications, interactive operation, and a sustainable digital library system. The project is requested to 1) come up with standardization strategies and an application guidance for China’s digital library; 2) formulate a core standardization system for the digital library, including standards for digital resources processing, digital identifiers, basic digital elements, special data elements, digital resources search, consolidated resources data, etc.; 3) establish an open construction and application platform for the digital library’s standardization system, including organizing, source data registration, and an open standardization website.
Launched at the end of 2002, the project has, as of August 2003, completed and published 36 study reports. As of May 2004, the project has worked out nearly 20 standardization documents, including “the guidance for the digital library’s standardization applications”, “the basic source data’s standardization”, “the rules for source data expansion”, “nine standards for special source data”, “unique identifiers’ application and standardization”, “a guidance for the digital library’s search protocol applications”, etc. These standards documents will, upon the experts’ opinion based revisions, be put in place for trial applications.
Internet World Summit in Beijing
The 4th Internet and Multimedia World Summit will be convened October 18-20, 2004 at the Grand Passage of International Media, Xuanwu District, Beijing, disclosed ZHOU Maofei, head of Beijing Chamber of Commerce. To make the summit a successful event, an organizing committee, co-chaired by LU Hao, Beijing’s Vice Mayor and Hervé FISCHER, President of the International Federation of Multimedia Associations (IFMA), has been jointly established by the Beijing Municipal Government and the IFMA.
Under a theme of “multimedia and digital futures, linking China and world”, the summit will attract the presence of some 500 participants, mostly from IFMA and its member industries, interesting industrial sectors, governments, and international organizations. Renowned figures, including US E3 chairman, president of the Interactive Digital Software Association, Dell’s founder and CEO, and heads of multimedia associations in the US, Canada, India and Brazil, will be invited to the event.
Developers of sophisticated multimedia technology and multimedia standards makers, at the summit, will discuss most interesting topics, including an international classification system, intellectual property, online media industry, digital technology and its impacts on film and TV industries. Participants will also foresee the opportunities brought by the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008 to both domestic and international multimedia businesses.
According to a briefing, an exhibition themed with “multimedia and digital future” will be held during the session. The exhibition will attract the attention of interesting parties, including worldwide media groups, digital content and e-entertainment manufacturers and publishers, multimedia software makers, online entertainment and education providers and operators, and consumer digital products manufacturers and fund raisers and venture capital providers.
Key Technical Projects Launched
According to a recently issued circular, the State Development and Reform Commission will stage a number of key technical development projects, in an effort to address the key technologies involving resources prospecting, development and utilization. The new initiatives will play a role in further upgrading the nation’s industrial technical level and core competitiveness.
Starting from 2004, a total of ten key industrial technical projects will be launched to address key technical issues concerning major industries, fields and enterprises. These projects will cover numerous key technologies, including resources prospecting, development and efficient utilization; large scale petroleum, natural gas and coal chemistry, and associated catalyzing; energy efficiency and new energy; efficient industrial water use; environmental protection; comprehensive resources utilization; safe production; advanced manufacturing; agricultural products’ deep processing; and modern traffic system.
The State Development and Reform Commission spokesman told reporters that the key industrial technical development projects will, taking into account the needs of the national economic development and major infrastructure projects, work on the key and common technologies encountered in the industrial development, providing strong technical support for a sustained, fast, coordinated and healthy economic development. These key technical projects will be kicked off one after the other, in line with pre-phase progresses and immediate needs. A key technical project involving safe production techniques will become the first among those to be launched in the near future.
China’s Three Major Genome Studies
Chinese scientists will join their efforts to work on three major genome projects, said Prof. YU Jun, Deputy Director of the Beijing Genome Institute, a part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, at a ceremony for the official opening of the Institute on May 28, 2004. The three genome projects include “Yanhuang Project” for human genetics and health issues, “Shen’nong Project” aiming at the modernization of Chinese traditional medicines; and a “Xuanyuan Project” to study the genomes of animals, plants, and microorganism.
According to a briefing, the Beijing Genome Institute will, in collaboration with the Chinese Military Academy of Medical Science, stage a liver protein genome project, and build a paring database for army’s field organ transplanting. The Institute will also, joining the Institute of Microorganism and the Institute of Biophysics, both attaching to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, create interactive platforms for microorganism genome and scale life science studies.
In the last 6 years, the Institute has, working together with other domestic scientists, completed the “Chinese volume” of the human genome project, paddy rice’s fine genome charts, and a “frame map” of domestic silk worms’ genome. The Institute is now, with their counterparts from the Denmark and the US, working on swine’s and poultry’s genome.
China’s Advanced MRI Study
The Beijing Magnetic Resonance Imaging Center celebrated its opening on May 25, 2004. The development marks Chinese scientists’ determination to build an internationally advanced brain imaging and perception platform.
Under a joint financing of RMB 20 million by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Ministry of Health, the new center, equipped with the nation’s first high field MRI system dedicated for research purpose, makes itself a national scientific instrument center. The Center, under the motto of “fairness, justice, openness, and sharing”, opens to researchers both at home and abroad. Physically located at the compound of the Institute of Biophysics, a part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the center begun its construction in February 2002 with a technical assessment, and completed for a trial running in June 2003. The project passed its verification check in October 2003. The center, in collaboration with the CAS graduate school, creates a brain imaging experiment environment made up of MRI and high resolution electroencephalogram, supported by MRI based brain stimulating positioning functions. The center is currently working together with numerous domestic collaborators on some 20 research projects on perception, attention, memory, emotion and language.
Green Battery’s Life Quadrupled
A 3W pioneering group of the Nanjing Normal University demonstrated on May 18, 2004 a one-use green zinc-nickel battery. The patented green battery has found a solution to battery pollutions while prolonging a battery’s work life.
XU Juan, a lead developer of the battery and postgraduate student at the University, told reporters that she and her collaborators used a high molecule compound to be the diaphragm, which, when the battery gets worn out, would release an alkali rich electrolyte causing no pollution. Most batteries, in current use, produce an insoluble fattish organic matter, which may impose hazardous effects on both humans and environment. XU and others use ox-nickel hydroxide as anode, rather than manganese dioxide currently employed in zinc-nickel batters, though both cathodes remain made of zinc plates. According to statistics, China is the largest nickel producing country in the world. In this context, making nickel batteries’ anode will not only guarantee a abundant supply for raw materials, but will also make the recycling of the worn-out batteries’ anodes into an ox-nickel hydroxide for recurrent use, through a simple oxidation process, possible. In addition, experts’ verification check confirms that the new battery has, at least, quadrupled its work life, compared with normal batteries.
Key Technology for Next Generation Internet
IPv6 core router, a member of BE12000 series jointly developed by the Department of Computer under the Tsinghua University, and Qinghua Ziguang Biwei Corp, passed its technical verification check on May 29, 2004, organized by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.
As China’s first proprietary homegrown router that has passed the draft testing criteria for IPv6 core router’s accessibility published by the Ministry of Information Industry, the BE12000 series has successfully found its trial applications in “the comprehensive experimental environment for new generation of internet technologies” under the national 863 program, and the nation’s first CERNET2, an experiment network for next generation of internet. The trial operation shows an excellent technical performance that matches the technical level of its overseas counterparts. Its reliable performance in the next generation internet access testing, an event sponsored by the Ministry of Information Industry, excels as the nation’s first core network equipment that has passed all testing indicators.
Nankai Star Supercomputers
A supercomputer cluster, named “Nankai Star”, jointly developed by the Institute of Scientific Computation, a part of the Nankai University, and IBM, recently demonstrated an astonishing calculation speed as fast as 3.231 trillion times a second. Researchers told reporters that equipped with 800 CPUs and 400 knots, the supercomputer’s configuration presents a computation capacity exceeding the 18th of the top 500 supercomputers rated last year.
Starting in August 2002, the supercomputer project completed its design in June 2003, and wound up its phase I project December in the same year. The development of the new supercomputers, and associated algorithms and software, will provide a low cost but highly efficient technical platform for varieties of fields, including information industry, bioengineering, life science, material chemistry, energy, chemistry, mathematics, etc.
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