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No.214

 
 
 


CHINA  SCIENCE  AND  TECHNOLOGY
NEWSLETTER
The Ministry of Science and Technology
People's Republic of China


 
N0.214 February 20,2000
 
 
   
IN THIS ISSUE
  •  China's Great Attention to Environment and Development
  •  Scientists fro Home, Abroad Given Awards
  •  Million Patent Aplications in China
  •  Shanghai Technical Innovation Blueprint for New Year
  •  New Breakthroughs for China's DVD Core Technology
  •  Booming Domestic Robot Industry
  •  Amoisonic Optical Disk Recorder: An Excitement in US

    SPECIAL    ISSUES

 China's Great Attention to
Environment and Development

      Co-chaired by Madame Zhu Lilan, Chinese Minister of Science and Technology, and Dr Nill Leign S&T Advisor to President, USA, the third Sino-US Workshop on Environment and Development opened recently in Honolulu, Hawaii, US. A number of important issues such as sustainable development science, energy policy, environment policy and commercial cooperation were discussed.

      Madame Zhu Lilan, head of Chinese Delegation and Chinese Minister of Science and Technology, said at the opening ceremony that environment and development issues are related to the future and destiny of each nation and its people in the world. China has always attached great importance to environment and development issues. Firmly sticking to its state policy of environmental protection and long-term development strategy of sustainable development, China has made effective pollution control and ecological protection efforts and promoted coordinated development of economy and ecology.

      Madame Zhu said China and US have bright perspectives for their cooperation in the field of environment and development. Initiated by the leaders of both countries, the workshop has laid a foundation for the cooperation in the field. On the basis of seeking common ground, keeping the differences, mutual benefit and being practical, both countries shall strive for the interests and cooperative fields in common. She added that the two countries have achieved some progress in the above mentioned four fields since last April.

      Scientists from Home, Abroad Given Awards

      More than 3,000 Chinese scientists will be given awards for their
      contributions to some 600 advances made last year, according to the
      Ministry of Science and Technology.

      The inventions and research breakthroughs cover industry, agriculture,
      forestry and animals, including fish.The 3,659 scientists also made headway in health care, transportation,telecommunications, national defence and public security, ministry spokesman Ge Songxue announced at a press conference in January 20, 2000, in Beijing.

      Tentative statistics indicate that these discoveries have yielded more
      than 252 billion yuan (US$30 billion).

      The awards ceremony will take place later this year.
      The awards for natural science, technological inventions and overall
      scientific progress were established in the mid1980s by the State
      Council. They are designed to honour major contributions to the
      country's scientific development.

      Four foreign scientists will receive China's International Scientific
      and Technological Cooperation Award, which the State Council
      established in 1993, said Ge.

      They are: Jose Alberto de Camargo, a specialist from the Brazilian Company of Metallurgy and Minerals. Camargo has helped China and Brazil with
      their iron and steel industries.

      Rita R. Colwell, director of the National Science Foundation of the
      United States. Colwell is the head of the UNbased “Ocean
      Bioengineering” aquatic plant centre in China, which has promoted
      technological exchanges between China and other countries.

      Umberto Colomobo, chairman of the Italian Scientific Committee of the
      ENI Enrico Mattel Foundation. He assisted SinoItalian cooperation on
      the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Shouyichi Yishimoto, Japanese agronomist, who helped introduce ground sheeting and other cropgrowing technology to China.
       

    China’s Environmental Quality Are
    Expected to be Improved


      As shown by the latest report issued by China General Station of Environmental Monitoring, last year had witnessed the effective curb of deteriorating trend of ground water and urban air quality. This year will see better or stable result of Chinas environmental quality.

      90-99 Analysis of National Environmental Quality Variations prepared by China General Station of Environmental Monitoring points out that the urban air quality, urban noise pollution, major river and lake pollution, acid rain contamination and ecological deterioration in the country are expected to turn better at a small margin or remain stable.

      The Report believes that this year will see slight emission decrease of industrial pollutants such as industrial waste water, though the emission of waste water from daily life sources and the amount of oxygen consuming chemicals will continuously go up; the emission of industrial smoke and dust will basically remain unchanged with slight drop of industrial sulfur dioxide and unchanged emission of same matter from living sources.

      In recent years, China has shut down 60,000 and more small and medium enterprises of high consumption and heavy pollution and enhanced its efforts in industrial pollution control, which basically curbed up the increasing trend of industrial pollutant emission.

      Wan Bentai, Head of China General Station of Environmental Monitoring, said the continuous increase of urban population and ineffective treatment of urban sewage water are the major reasons pushing the increase of living waste water emission in China. The heavy dependence on coal as industrial and living energy sources has led to serious air pollution in most cities, especially those in North China.

      Wan believes that it is impossible to change the existing energy consumption structures dominated by coal burning in a short period of time. As a result, it is difficult to achieve remarkable improvement of air quality in Chinas major large and medium cities.

      At the National Conference of Environment, Xie Zhenhua, Administrator of State Environmental Protection Bureau, asked local authorities to accelerate the construction of sewage water treatment facilities, further diffuse clean energy, control industrial pollution and achieve the defined environmental control targets this year. 

    Million Patent Applications in China


      Jiang Ying, Administrator of State Intellectual Property Rights, announced before news media on January 17, 2000, that from the birth of the first patent application on April 1, 1985 to January 11, 2000, patent right applications filed in China have reached a million in number. Thus far, China has become a patent rich country in the world.

      As briefed by Jiang Ying, since the enforcement of Patent Law in 1985, Chinas patent business has witnessed a rapid growth from nothing in the past to todays abundance. Last two years have seen enhanced confidence of patent applicants both at home and abroad in Chinas patent application system. During the period of 1998 and 1999, China had handled 211989 and 134240 patent applications respectively, which landed a respective increase of 6.8% and 10% against the previous year. Among domestic applications, the ones from research and higher learning institutions have started to go up after declines for several consecutive years. On the basis of the ascending trend appeared in 1998, research and higher learning institutions have realized a increase of 7% and 22% respectively in 1999. In the course of Chinas socialist market economic reform, enterprises have gradually become the main body of market competition. As a result, their patent right awareness has been enhanced with their constant leading position in application volume. In 1998 and 1999, domestic enterprises have recorded the increase of patent applications at 6.7% and 20% respectively.
       

    Shanghai Technical Innovation Blueprint for New Year


      Technologies and products with independent intellectual property rights, role model enterprises with strong technological innovation capability, pilot experimental base of flexible mechanism and efficient performance and favorable working environment will jointly constitute a technical innovation blueprint for Shanghai in 2000.

      The hottest issue in the blueprint is occupying the highland of science and technology with information technology, biomedicine and new materials being the major players. Priority projects such as relating to human genome, plant genome, genetic technology platform, innovative drugs, plant studies, special metal materials, special synthetic material, special ceramic material and general technique in material preparations have already seen the dawning light. Critical breakthroughs are expected to be achieved in the studies on major functional human genes and disease causing genes and sequencing of No. 4 chromosome of rice gene and others. Designing of integrated circuits and modernization of Chinese traditional medicine will also become the new economic growing points in Shanghais economic development. A special fund of Rmb 25 million will be established to support initiatives of innovative S&T frontiers.

      The blueprint has shown that Shanghai would see an industrial output of Rmb 110 billion materialized by 1000 high tech enterprises in the city with 100 of them rated at Rmb 100-million output level. A number of high tech enterprises will be recommended to go on the market. Supporting funds such as research-production dedicated funds of Rmb 150 million, S&T innovation funds for small and medium enterprises of Rmb 100 million and S&T investment fund of Rmb 300 million and supporting bases such as incubation bases and three national S&T incubation bases will be created. Shanghai is also the host for World Conference of S&T Incubation Enterprises and Innovation to be held this April. The socalled one institute and six centers (Zhangjiang Center, South Human Genome Research Center, New Medicine Safety Assessment Center, Chinese Traditional Medicine Engineering Center and New Medicine Research and Development Center) will constitute Shanghais medicine valley. In 2000, Shanghai High Tech Zone will see the site development and construction with coverage of 22.13 km2 and the output will reach Rmb 100 billion.
       

    RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

       

    New Breakthroughs for China’s DVD Core Technology


      Not long ago Guangdong Jinzheng Group Ltd. announced in Beijing that it has successfully developed Golden Apple System Software for Integrated Control and applied for its own patent right. Experts in authority believed that the successful development of the said software hallmarked a critical step achieved in Chinas competition for manufacturing core DVD parts. This has made China have the ability of competing with its overseas rivals and laid a solid foundation for marching into the international DVD market.

      It is reported that the socalled core DVD technologies include three main parts of the mainboard, decoding chip and system control software. System software is designed to realize the coordination between the said three major parts and thousands of other electronic components of a DVD player. Golden Apple system control software is able to realize the optimum coordination between the mainboard, decoding chip and serving system and so on. Meanwhile, it is of user friendly interface and is easy to operate. The new software is able to improve the quality stability, performance ,compatibility and error reading capability of a DVD player on an overall basis.

      Yang Minggui, General Manager of Jinzheng Group Ltd., believes that Chinas advantages in competing for international DVD market find expressions in the following areas: 1) China has core technology of software designing; 2) China is of resources optimizing the configuration of electronic components; and 3) China is of scale production capability. The integration of these advantages constitutes Chinas strong competitiveness in the international DVD market.
       

    Booming Domestic Robot Industry


      Applied with the strategy of promoting industrial development with engineering applications, Shenyang Research Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, had achieved 70 and more robot application projects in the past few years with more than 170 sets of robot systems and a contractual amount approaching Rmb 200 million. Its products have taken one third of Chinese robot market.

      It is reported that as early as the beginning of 1970s, the Institute started its enlightening exploration in developing robot. In 1985, they successfully produced Chinas first submarine robot, in 1990 Chinas first industrial robot controller and in 1998 Chinas first laser processing robot. What attracted peoples greatest attention is the cableless robot produced by the Institute which has completed its multiple metal nodules investigation at a sea floor as deep as 5300 meters and acquired clear video taps, photos and sonic sections on the sea floor in the abyssal area of Pacific Ocean. The experiment has made Chinas unmanned cableless submarine robot in the internationally advanced position.

      Being the National Engineering Research Center for Robot Technology, the Institute has played a big role in creating industrial robot market in the country. By mastering a number of key technologies such as high performance robot controlling system and robot operational techniques, their robot products have been widely applied in many sectors such as automobile, motor bike, engineering machinery, electronics, household electronic appliances and so on. They have also developed arc-welding robots, removing robots and associated peripheral products.
       

      First Chinese Made Seismological
      Remote Monitoring Station

      Chinas first 24-digit regional digital seismological remote monitoring network has passed the approval check of authorized experts panel and begun its operation in Guangzhou, which marks Chinas internationally advanced seismological observation techniques.

      Jointly invested and constructed by Guangdong Provincial Government and China State Seismological Bureau, the Guangdong Digital Seismological Remote Monitoring Network is a priority project listed in the 9th Five-Year Plan for earthquake prevention and alleviation. The said network is composed of data processing center stationed in the main office building of Guangdong Provincial Seismological Bureau and 16 other digital seismological remote monitoring stations distributed over the province. The signals are mainly transmitted through DDN dedicated data transmission line. Monitoring stations are equipped with seismic detectors of short cycle and wide band and also applied with modern high technologies of advanced 24-digit data collector, real-time data transmission, real-time monitoring, computer processing and computer networking. The new system is of the merits of wide band signal reception, large dynamic observation scale, high resolution recording and accurate and fast seismological data processing, from which highly accurate earthquake wave patterns and data are obtained.
       

    Amoisonic Optical Disk Recorder: An Excitement in US


      At CES International Consumption Electronic Products exhibition held from January 6-9, 2000, in Las Vegas, a completely new concept audio and video product optical disk recorder manufactured by Amoisonic Corp. caused a stir and became the most exciting new product at the exhibition.

      Optical disk recorders are the digital video and audio products which can use optical disks and record. Optical disk recorders basically have the same functions as traditional VCR, but, of course, they have fundamentally differences. The most obvious differences are: 1) VCR records with audio tapes but an optical disk recorder uses optical disks; 2) VCR is analog but an optical disk recorder is digital. In addition, an optical disk recorder is a super VCD with all functions of super VCD. However, compared with super VCD, the optical disk recorder does not have additional recording function but also can obtain better repetition effects.

      US famous professional magazine--PC-World, CBS and CCTV have all reported the debut of the new product. Moreover, CES weekly bulletin carried a feature report of the new product on its front page. Local experts expressed that internationally advanced Amoisonic optical disk recorder has demonstrated Chinas competitiveness in the international market and also its remarkable progress that Chinas household electronic appliance industry has achieved in recent years. Chinese optical disk industry has not only grasped the developing trend of world digital audio and video technology but also taken a lead in developing new products in the area. Optical disk recorder has filled up a blank of recordable disk player and offered more selections for consumers, which will be of far reaching significance to the development of optical disk industry throughout the world.

      Foreign manufacturers and retailers who visited the Exhibition have expressed their great interest in the new product. At the news briefing jointly sponsored with US Vision Information Co., Lu Huanwen, President of Amoisonic, told reporters that completed with the commercialization, the new product will be put into mass production starting from this February and make its appearance in US market soon.



       Comments or inquiries on editorial matters or Newsletter content should be directed to:Mr. Dong Jianlong, Department of International Cooperation, MOST 15B, Fuxing Road Beijing 100862, PR China  Tel: (8610)68512650 Fax: (8610) 68512594, or Mr. Wang Jianping, Editor,NEWSLETTER, 15 Fuxing Road Beijing 100038, PR China, Tel:(8610) 68515544 Ext. 2921

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