China will intensify its development of high technologies with strategic significance for the next 15 years, Lu Yongxiang, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in Beijing on Tuesday.

"In the next 15 years, China will break the international monopoly on strategic high technology to ensure national security, and China will also probe and innovate in key international edge-cutting technology areas," Lu said.

Lu made the remarks at the ongoing Fourth National Conference on Science and Technology, organized by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council.

Since 2003, China has organized experts to make the state's medium- and long-term development plan of science and technology. Lu acted as the panel head in charge of strategic high technology development and industrialization.

Lu explained that high technology is of key strategic significance, stressing that it reflects the state's innovative capabilities and is also the commanding point for competing in the international science and economy arena.

According to the medium- and long-term plan, China will use information technology to spur its industrialization, foster new growth points in the areas of sustainable development including energy and in high technology areas such as biology, and speed up the development of innovative capabilities in the areas involving national security like aerospace and laser technology.

"We'll choose some strategic high technology areas which have comparative advantages and make breakthroughs in these areas," he said.

In 1986, China launched a key national high technology research and development program called Program 863. Since China's reform and opening-up policies were implemented, a series of policies encouraging the industrialization of high technology have spurred the development of high-technology enterprises.

However, Lu pointed out China still relies on imported technology in this area for the lack of innovative capabilities in strategic high technology.

"State investment in this area is far from enough and a state-run innovation developed in line with a market economy has not been established," he stressed.

In the next 15 years, China will establish a monitoring system for international technology development, step up research and the industrialization of strategic high technology and raise more funds for it from either the state or private enterprises, he added.

(Xinhua News Agency January 11, 2006)