The State Council issued guidelines in Beijing yesterday on national medium- and long-term programs for science and technology development (2006-20).

By 2020, investments in research and development are expected to be 2.5 percent of GDP, while progress in science and technology projects will contribute 60 percent to the country's development.

Meanwhile, the country's reliance on foreign technology will be reduced to 30 percent. The number of patents granted to Chinese nationals and international publication of academic works are expected to rank among the top five in the world.

China will give priority to technological development in 11 major sectors such as energy and water resources in the coming 15 years, in order to resolve some outstanding problems bottlenecking the country's economic and social development.

Key industries also include mining resources, environment, agriculture, manufacturing, communications and transport, information industry and modern service industries, population and health, urbanization and urban development, public security, and national defense.

By 2020, China will have developed a number of frontier technologies in sectors such as biology, information industry, materials technologies and advanced manufacturing technology. And it will also focus its energy research on the economical, efficient and clean use of energy and the exploration of new energy resources.

The guidelines also call for the development of technology for comprehensive exploration of seas and oceans, laser technology and space technology.

In the next 15 years, China will give top priority to the study of protein and the control of quantum, both fields believed to have potentially significant effects on social and economic development over the next 20 to 30 years.

In addition, China hopes to make breakthroughs in nano technology, a strategic option for many countries to improve competitiveness.

With a growing aging population and big yearly increases in population, China is severely short of human organs for transplants. Therefore, there is an urgent need for breakthroughs and technological innovations in reproduction and growth.

China will urge large enterprises to set up research and development (R&D) institutes and welcome enterprises to share the state's R&D tasks.

According to the guidelines, China will persist in innovation to raise the country's competitiveness comprehensively, in the fields of equipment manufacturing and information industry, the agricultural science, the energy exploration and saving, the recycling economy and the environment.

China will also expedite the implementation of a national strategy on intellectual property rights (IPR).

The government will adopt preferential banking policies for promoting innovation and business start-ups, so as to encourage high-tech companies to go public.

China will actively push forward the building of a secondary stock market and set up a multi-level capital market system, to accelerate the industrialization of science and technology.

The current scientific and technological management system will combine and coordinate the military and civilian research organizations.

China's military organizations are encouraged to shoulder the tasks of scientific research for civilian use. At the same time, civilian research institutes and enterprises are also allowed to take part in national defense research projects.

Compared with developed countries and the emerging industrialized nations, China's investment in science and technology is still insufficient, the investment structure is not reasonable and the basic conditions for science and technology are still weak.

The state financial investment will be used to mainly support basic research, frontier research and key technology research.

(Xinhua News Agency February 9, 2006)