 |
Facing Main Battlefields, Meeting New Challenges
The tackling of key scientific and technological problems during China's Ninth Five-year Plan period, after five years of hard work by the broad section of scientific and technical workers, has now entered the harvesting season of counting fruits.
During the said period, the output of China's main industrial and agricultural products was placed in the world's front ranks, the situation featuring the shortages of commodities basically came to an end. The production capacity of grain and other principal agricultural products was noticeably enhanced, bringing about a historic change in the supply of agricultural products from a long-term shortage to a basic balance between total supply and total demand, with surplus in bumper harvest year. Achievements were gained in eliminating backwardness and reducing surplus industrial production capacity, technological renovation in key enterprises was being continually pushed forward. Information industry and other high and new technological sectors witnessed rapid growth. These achievements contain the tremendous contributions made by the broad section of scientific and technical workers and managerial personnel who participated in carrying out the program for tackling key scientific and technological problems during the Ninth Five-year Plan period.
We are filled with joy as we count these rich fruits; when I review the course of tackling difficult technical problems, a sense of respect wells up in my mind. During the five years, the nation's more than 70,000 scientific and technological personnel faced the main battlefields of the national economy, worked with united efforts and exhibited tenacious combatant spirit, to deal with the major scientific and technological problems that cried for urgent solutions in the construction of the national economy, they tackled and mastered a batch of key technologies that played a supporting role in the national economic and social development and affecting the whole situation in the national economic development, provided a batch of advanced and applicable technologies and equipment for industrial and agricultural production and promoted the renovation of traditional industries and the development of high and new technological industries, thereby providing vigorous technical support for the shift in the mode of economic growth, and offering rich technical reserves for the advancement of science and technology per se and the sustainable development of China's national economy in the new century.
The experiences gained in the tackling of difficult key technological problems during the Ninth Five-year Plan period indicate that to solve a batch of difficult key technological problems urgently needed in the country's major projects within a short period of time, to develop and apply a large amount of general technologies for raising the technical level of traditional industries, and to strengthen the research, manufacture and development of high and new technological products and cultivate new points of economic growth, we must give full play to the superiority of the socialist system, mobilize the positive factors of various quarters, make overall planning and bring about a combination of technical advantages. Without trans-disciplinary, trans-regional and trans-departmental combinations, without the integration of the superiority of various quarters and without the macro-control and guidance of the State's industrial policy, it would have been quite difficult and even inconceivable for us to have scored today's achievements.
Successes gained in the solutions of difficult scientific and technological problems during the Ninth Five-year Plan period are inseparable from the State's macro-control and regulation and from the foundation role played by the market mechanism in the allocation of resources. From the outset of the establishment of projects, the program for tackling the country's key scientific and technological problems during the Ninth Five-year Plan period stressed the need for the users to take the lead, to form a mechanism featuring the close combination of research, development, production and market, to encourage enterprises to participate and pitch into the tackling of key scientific and technological problems, and to guide enterprises to gradually become the mainstays in technological development, thereby shortening the period for the transformation and application of research results and speeding up the industrialization of research results.
In tackling key scientific and technological problems, it is important to absorb anything and everything useful and be keen on innovation. As China's planned entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) is drawing near, how to persist in combining independent development with introduction, digestion, absorption and innovation and to establish an independent intellectual property right is a practical problem placed before China's scientific and technological circles. In tackling key scientific and technological problems during the Ninth Five-year Plan period, the broad section of people in this field exhibited high initiative and strong creative power. Be it the development of 400 megawatt evaporative and cooling hydro-generator unit, the research, development and demonstration of comprehensive supporting technologies for the high-yield of five major crops over a large area; or the development of sample machine system of high definition of TV functions, or the integration and systematic optimization of high-efficient continuous casting technology-all contain large amounts of original technological achievements and the digestion, integration and innovation of imported technologies.
As we look forward to the 10th Five-year Plan, we find our task is heavy and the way ahead is long. We should continue to carry forward the spirit of "storming the gate" characterized by innovation, cooperation, combat and dedication; we should deepen the reform of the scientific system, set up a national innovative system, optimize the distribution of technical forces, rationally allocate scientific innovative resources and motivate enterprises to further become the mainstays of technical innovation; we should strengthen the training of personnel and the construction of scientific research bases, give full play to the foundation role of the market mechanism in resources allocation, and energetically encourage scientific and technological personnel to do pioneering and innovative work, so as to push China's scientific and technological work to a new stage.
This article, written by Our Commentator, is published on the front page of People's Daily on May 10.
In This Section
|