The Chinese government invested more than 57.6 billion yuan (US$6.9 billion) in science and technology in 2000, an increase of 4.8 percent over the previous year, the Ministry of Science and Technology said Wednesday at a Beijing press conference.

The ministry's latest statistics were compiled to investigate China's scientific investment in the 1999-2000 period.

The figures also show that regional governments' science funding in 2000 grew by an average of 20 percent over 1999.

In northwest China's remote Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the average household can now earn more than 10,000 yuan (US$1,205) per year by growing fruit and vegetables in greenhouses.

The greenhouse technology was popularized during the period of the Ninth Five-Year Plan (1996-2000).

Duan Shenrong, an official with Xinjiang's science and technology administration, said in a telephone interview: "Before this period, farmers earned much less as they felt unable to grow anything during the cold winters."

Sources from the ministry said that nationwide surveys on last year's scientific investment are still going on. The results are expected to be released in August or later this year.

Investigations into regional science funding will be conducted regularly in the future and the corresponding results will be published as early as possible, said the ministry's secretary-general Shi Dinghuan.

"The move is aimed at supervising provincial, city or even county-level governments' performances in implementing the country's seven-year-old strategy of 'revitalizing the nation through science and education'," said Shi.

He said the increased scientific input across the country had also borne fruit in such fields as environmental protection and improving people's living standards.

Major cities saw the efficiency level in the treatment of industrial waste water rise by 10 percentage points year on year in 2000.

However, the statistics also reflect a great gap in government investment in the better-developed eastern areas and the relatively poor central and western regions.

On average, scientific investment and technological progress in eastern areas were 50 percent higher than in the central and western regions.

Shi pledged that his ministry would help support these weaker regions by recommending high-tech projects to boost regional resource-based industries.

(China Daily March 21, 2002)