China emphasizing innovation-driven development strategy
February 26, 2019 Category China News Round-up, Weekly
China’s innovation-driven development strategy has put down strong roots and has a promising future with the guidance and support of the central government, Gan Yong, former Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) said, adding that he had seen many scientific breakthroughs over the last six years and had high expectations for the future of technological development. Gan said China’s strengths in core technology research were too widely dispersed, and he urged the establishment of a generic research and development platform to pool the advantages and boost China’s international competitiveness. He said he believed opto-electronic devices and microprocessors would be among the most competitive areas internationally, with artificial intelligence (AI) being the key technological trend.
Chinese President Xi Jinping three years ago already described the innovation-driven development strategy as a fundamental measure to accelerate and invigorate the country’s economic transformation. The President also said that China must be bold in exploring some key areas of science and technology. Meanwhile the Chinese government released an outline for China’s innovation-driven development, underlining the crucial role of advancing mass innovation and entrepreneurship and pledging that China will become an “innovation country” by 2020 and a global “innovation leader” by 2030.
The country’s commitment to innovation has already led to a number of scientific achievements, such as the world’s first quantum communications satellite, Micius, which was launched in 2016, and the completion of one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, Sunway TaihuLight. The Global Innovation Index 2018 – published by Cornell University together with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WPO) and business school INSEAD – listed China among the world’s 20 most-innovative economies. It ranked 17th, up from 22nd in 2017.
Wan Jianmin, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, pointed out breakthroughs
in basic agricultural research: genetically modified insect-resistant cotton helped reduce the use of pesticides by more than 900,000 metric tons, and new varieties of disease-resistant corn, wheat and rice have greatly reduced the annual use of pesticides. “Now it is mainly the government that invests in agricultural science and technology innovation, because agriculture is not considered a profitable industry and progress comes slowly,” Wan said, as reported by the China Daily.
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