Xie Huanzhong, a ranking official with the ministry, said China would set up an information sharing network among university science parks, and find ways to help the science parks to cooperate with international counterparts.

Some Chinese universities began to construct science parks in the late 1980s and in 1999 China decided to launch national-level science parks. In recent years, university science parks in China have become an important driving force for high technology innovation.

The university-based science parks, by joining with local governments and companies, were playing a positive role in speeding up the industrialization of academic research results, and pushing forward reform of the school teaching and management systems, said Xie.

Statistics show there are 44 national-level and 124 local university science parks in China, which by the end of October last year, had attracted a total investment of 29.7 billion yuan (US$3.59 billion), and covered a total of 2.27 million square meters. To date, China's university science parks have industrialized 1,860 scientific research results, and have been granted 1,923 patent rights.

(People's Daily October 17, 2003)