Reforming Funding System Vital to China's Innovation Capacity: Officials, Researchers

Feb 22, 2011     Email"> PrintText Size

China needs to reform funding methods for scientific and technological research in order to boost the nation's innovation capabilities, said officials and researchers attending a conference in Beijing Friday.

The management of the government-funded research projects should also be reformed, State Councilor Liu Yandong said at the national conference on science and technology work.

Liu stressed that reform, innovation and cooperation should be the keys for China's science and technology work over the next five years, when the government would increase funding for research in new strategic industries, such as new energy, biomedicine and high-end manufacturing.

Last year, central and local government spending on science and technology development totaled 380 billion yuan (57.8 billion U.S. dollars), Science and Technology Minister Wan Gang said at the conference.

Over the past five years, central government spending on science and technology development had grown by around 20 percent annually.

However, some researchers have complained problems in the funding system actually hinder innovation and progress.

Inflexibility in the management of government funds allowed researchers little freedom to adapt projects to developments in their fields, said Li Zhenzhen, a researcher at the Institute of Policy and Management under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Chen Jie, a research fellow of the CAS' Institute of Microelectronics, said some authorities which oversee the spending of research funds had been rather rigid.

"In some cases, they are more interested in spending most of the funds on new equipment than scientists," Chen said in an earlier interview with Xinhua. "Without decent pay, it is difficult to attract top scientists to work in China."

"Having to solicit and lobby for funding to support the team's research projects leaves me no more than five hours a day for real research," Chen said.

Top-level scientific brains are the key to the innovative capability of China, he added.

A researcher attending Friday's conference echoed Chen's opinion.

"China manufactures 65 percent of the world's computers. But to my knowledge, we are still spending about 150 billion U.S. dollars annually to buy computer chips from overseas," the researcher told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Wan Gang also said imported computer chips cost China more than crude oil purchases last year.

But Wan believed that with breakthroughs in frontier areas such as cloning, manned space flight, moon exploration and supercomputers, China could expect a leap in science and technology development in the near future.

In October last year, China successfully launched its second lunar probe, Chang'e-2.

A month later, Chinese supercomputer Tianhe-1A, which can perform 2.57 quadrillion computing operations a second, was ranked the world's fastest in the TOP500 list compiled by U.S. and European researchers.

(Source: Xinhua)