Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji chaired the fifth meeting of the country's leading group for scientific and technological education on December 29. Science and Technology Minister Zhu Lilan and Chen Jia'er, chairman of the council of the National Natural Science Foundation, briefed the group on the work of their departments.

The group discussed and approved a framework for reforms on research institutions of science and technology which are affiliated with the central government and other departments.

It also talked over the work of the National Natural Science Foundation in the promotion of basic scientific research and pushing forward scientific and technological breakthroughs.

The meeting stressed that more should be done to deepen reforms of management of the science and technology research institutes.

Those institutes engaged in applied science and technology research should be partly or wholly transformed into enterprises or agencies; doing so would make the most of these resources and speed up the commercialization of scientific achievements, the meeting noted.

It is also necessary to build up systems that are conducive to the industrialization of scientific and technological achievements, it added.