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China's Research Institutes to Operate for Profits
China has required its 4,000 regional government-subsidized research institutes to support themselves from now on according to the principles of the market economy, Friday's Chinadaily reported.
The move aims to accelerate the process of turning these institutes' new technological findings into marketable products and to recall the previous close-door academic research system that existed under the planned economy, said Vice-Minister of Science and Technology (MST) Xu Guanhua, the paper said.
Xu made the speech at a conference on the reform of the science and technology system, which opened Thursday in Hangzhou of east China's Zhejiang Province.
More than half of the 4,000 research institutes are engaged in applied technology development and the rest are involved in theoretical research.
A total of 2,000 technology-application-oriented institutes are to become technology firms, merge with big enterprises or function as intermediate technology agencies by the end of this year.
The remaining 2,000 theoretical research institutes are expected to follow suit next year, Xu said.
Calling on regional governments and scientific administrations to increase financial support within the next two years to help these institutes achieve a smooth transition, Xu said that institutes will be able to try share-holding or other ownership systems, as long as they can maintain efficiency.
Sources from MST said that pushing regional government-subsidized research institutes into businesses is the second step of reform in the field following the reform on the 242 ministry-affiliated research institutes, which began last year.
Attached to ten bureaux under the State Economic and Trade Commission, these 242 research institutes began to operate in line with the market economy in June 1999.
So far, these institutes have either become technological firms, intermediate technology agencies or merged with big enterprises, according to the ministry's Department for Policy, Regulation and System Reform.
Two of these institutes have been listed on domestic stock exchanges and another ten are applying to be listed, sources from the department said.
In China, academic research institutes were isolated from technology development and application under the planned economy, the paper said.
Consequently, research findings were simply put aside after being evaluated by the State and enterprises could not obtain new technology.
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