Beijing, February 26, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — China’s top leadership has stressed its efforts to achieve technological independence and strength twice in the past month or so, amid an increasingly volatile global situation. It reflects the great importance of China’s scientific and technological development. competition.
The Political Bureau of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held a study session on Tuesday to effectively strengthen basic research and strengthen the foundation for self-reliance and self-improvement in science and technology, Xinhua News Agency reported. Wednesday.
Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, chaired the study group, urged the strengthening of basic research, and strengthened the independence and strength in science and technology. Strengthening basic research is an urgent requirement to achieve science and technology independence and strength, he said, and that is the only way to build a world leader in science and technology.
Less than a month has passed since the Political Bureau of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held a group study session on January 31st to accelerate the establishment of a new development pattern. During the session, Xi also stressed that it is imperative that some countries act more quickly towards science and technology independence to ease the oppression that has intensified the development of China’s core technologies. bottom.
At a study session on Tuesday, Xi also noted that global technology competition is shifting to basic research, according to Xinhua, adding that China will take steps to strengthen basic research and solve key technological problems at the root. various efforts were sought. Specifically, President Xi will strengthen the strategic and systematic layout for the future of basic research, deepen the reform of basic research systems and mechanisms, and establish a systematic and high-level platform for human resource development. asked to build.
Researchers and analysts said Wednesday that the supreme leader’s focus on technological independence will not only address issues of technological progress, including foreign technology blockades, but also make him a world leader in science and technology. He emphasized China’s determination to A focus on basic research is crucial in addressing bottleneck issues, they noted.
Sun Yuzhong, a researcher at the Institute of Computational Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Global Times on Wednesday:
The Sun also pointed out that foreign technology blockades have almost gone “crazy” and that external political pressure is posing major challenges to China’s basic research. “Therefore, we need to build more fully independent basic science research capabilities and facilities,” he said Sun.
China has made great strides in terms of technological applications in recent years thanks to its huge market, but much more needs to be done when it comes to basic technical capabilities, said the Beijing-based said Fang Xingdong, founder of technology think tank ChinaLabs.
steady rise
China still lags behind some countries in certain areas, such as research equipment used in hospitals and research institutes, but has steadily improved its basic research capacity and scale, researchers and analysts say. points out.
According to official data released on Monday, China’s gross domestic spending on research and development (R&D) will reach 3.9 trillion yuan ($449 billion) in 2022, surpassing 3 trillion yuan for the first time ever. Among them, spending on basic research will reach 195.1 billion yuan in 2022, 3.9 times higher than in 2012, accounting for 6.32% of his total annual R&D spending.
Analysts and official data show that China’s spending on basic research is steadily increasing, but China’s share of total R&D spending is lower than that of the United States, and US basic research spending is on a downward trend. account for about 15% of total R&D spending.
“It takes a long time to build basic research capacity, but greater policy support will bring greater effort and speed to strengthen basic research.”
Apart from national laboratories, research institutes and universities, the growing number of China’s major technology companies is also a major asset to the country’s efforts to strengthen basic research, analysts say. . According to the latest official data, by the end of 2021, China will have 330,000 high-tech companies, up from 49,000 in 2012. He has more than 680 companies listed in the top 2,500 global R&D spenders in 2021.
In recent years, many large technology companies have increased their spending on basic research. For example, his internet giant Tencent announced last year that it would launch the New Cornerstone Investigator Program. With this, he has pledged 10 billion yuan ($1.45 billion) over 10 years to help top scientists spearhead basic research. In a statement sent to the Global Times on Wednesday, Tencent said an initial group of 58 scientists in the fields of mathematics and physical sciences, biology and biomedicine had been selected for the program.
Such programs “unleash the unique advantages of social funding… helping scientists to blaze new directions, propose new concepts, new theories, and inspire new paradigms of scientific research.” ,” said Gong Qihuang, an academic at the Academy of China. President of Peking University, said in a Tencent statement:
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