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

N0.178	February 20,1999
	IN THIS ISSUE
Three Top S&T Awards Revealed Recipients 120 New Additional Academicians of Chinese Academy of Engineering China-Italy Joint Cosmic Ray Experiment Launched Major Breakthroughs in International Environment Cooperation 170 Thousand Foreign Experts Visited China in Last Two Years

SPECIAL    ISSUES

Three Top S&T Awards Revealed Recipients

  The results of National S&T Awards for 1998 were revealed on January 7, 1999 in Beijing. 543 awarded projects National Technology Invention Award and National S&T Progress Award have been selected.

    98' National Technology Invention Awards were conferred to 72 selected projects including “Multiple Wavelength Laser Device of Optical Parameter” and “Fraction Resistant Material for Hydrogen Storage”; 98' National S&T Progress Awards were rewarded to 471 projects including “Research and Development of Comprehensive Coal Production Technologies for Yanzhou Mining Areas”. In addition, J.L.Lions, President of French Academy of Sciences, and Sabourinjean, Senior Project Manager of Canadian International Development Agency were conferred with International S&T Cooperation Awards. There are totally 3445 recipients.

    The awarded projects were screened out from 1500 projects recommended from the whole nation by 800 and more experts and scholars following the strict assessment process. The selected projects are characteristic of high technological level and representative R&D results of the country. Of the awarded, 857% of the high level civil projects are sponsored by national programs such as National Program on Addressing Major S&T Issues, 863 Program and Torch Program; All the awarded national defense related high level projects are sponsored by national programs. The awarded projects have demonstrated remarkable social and economic benefits. As shown by incomplete statistics, these projects produced in 1997 alone an output value of Rmb 5618 billion and profits and taxes of 1097 billion yuan.

    The officials concerned of Ministry of Science and Technology briefed that 98' national S&T awards had mainly focused on high and new technologies and associated projects characteristic of innovation and possession of independent intellectual property rights and the outstanding S&T results addressing major technological issues relating to national economic development, agreeable with sustained development and achieving huge economic, social and ecological benefits in applying them to practice. In this accessing precess S&T results populization awards has for the first time become an independent awarding area of National S&T Progress Awards. Among the awarded, many are related to strategic high technology, new technology and invention and sustainable development. In addition, the awarded projects have reflected healthy trend of combined efforts of manufacturers, universities and research institutions in S&T development.

China's Biomedical Engineering
Industry Action Being Ready to Take Off

  It is revealed at a meeting convened by National Coordination Leading Group on New Drug Research and Development on Jan11 that the socalled biomedical engineering S&T industry action will render its huge contribution to nurturing new economic growth points of the national economy. It is estimated that by 2015 the total industrial output value in the sector will reach 110 or 130 billion yuan.

    It is reported that the published “Outlines on Biomedical Engineering S&T Industry Action” elaborates the current status and development trend of biomedical engineering and its industry both at home and abroad and associated challenges, opportunities and foundation that the national BME industry is facing. In addition to strategic development objectives put forward for the period of 2000-2015, the Outlines also defined priorities for enhancing the studies in 7 major areas including biological material techniques, human body information testing techniques and application of information technology in medical sciences and proposed the establishment of engineering technology research center,nurturing S&T enterprises and formulation of associated industrial basis. The Outlines also worked out some suggestions on organization, policy making and financing so as to ensure the smooth implementation.

120 New Additional Academicians
of Chinese Academy of Engineering

  Prof. Song Jian, President of Chinese Academy of Engineering, announced on January 6, 1999 that his academy will absorb 120 new academicians this year. Any senior engineers, researchers or professors of Chinese nationality including those living in Hong Kong Special Administrative Zone, Taiwan, Macao and overseas can be nominated.

    At a working meeting on selecting additional new academicians, Mr. Zhu Gaofeng, Vice President of Chinese Academy of Engineering, said S&T workers who have mademajor inventions and research results in the field of engineering science and technology or creatively solved key S&T issues in major project designing, development, construction, management and engineering applications could become candidates.

    He added that the selection to be made this year will pay more attention to those experts and scholars who have long worked in the forefront of engineering, especially that of cross and edge cutting science and the disciplines having no academicians yet. In the newly elect, the number of those who are younger than 60 years old shall not be less than one third. Prof. Song Jian said major focus of the Academy's work in next two years will be closely associated with national social and economic development and major engineering construction, organizing consultation and research activities, providing scientific and feasible response strategies and being a wise advisor to national and local decision making process. The Academy will also strengthen its international academic exchanges and cooperation and strengthen S&T popularization with the assistance of its academician contingent.

    Chinese engineering community consisting of 10 million professionals including in the fields of agriculture and medical science now has 437 academicians including one Hong Kong scientist and 12 foreign academicians from US, Russia, Japan, France and UK respectively.

    Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering is the highest life-long academic title in the field of engineering science and technology. Additional selection of academicians is held once every two years.

INTERNATIONAL   COOPERATION

China-Italy Joint Cosmic
Ray Experiment Launched

  Chinese Academy of Sciences and Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics signedan agreement on implementing China-Italy YBJ-ARGO Program on December 4, 1998. In this context, an atmospheric cosmic ray shower array experiment with a full coverage of 5000 square meters in Yangbajing and a total investment of US＄ 9 million will soon be off the launching pad. The experiment will constitute a unique highest “blanket” in the world at an altitude of 4300 m above sea level.

    The Program is aimed to reduce the observation threshold value of Yangbajing by 100 times and make it a hot virgin energy zone of～100GeV in next 5 to 10 years. Working on the same objectives of next generation satellites and large photoelectron imaging telescopes, it is positioned to look for the origins of γ ray and cosmic rays. It not only has the sensitivity which is able to match with that of the Qilunkov telescope, the best observation instrument used for the same purpose in the world, but also a unique blanket advantage of large field of vision and full-time long-term observation ideal for observation of random appearances of cosmic γ explosion. It does not require defining celestial bodies by satellites and wavelength testing as a telescope does, which is a plus for independent discovery of new origins and long standing observation of existing origins in human knowledge.

    The socalled Yangbajing “blanket” will not only use lunar shadow of cosmic rays as the means to verify array performance but will also use moon and earth magnetic field as a natural space magnetic spectrograph to measure the proportion of proton and antiproton in～1TeV energy zone of cosmic rays and provide evidence for studies of baryon symmetry in micro environment and existence of antimatter galaxy in the space.

    The “blanket” will help to improve cosmic ray solar shadow technique and its associated applications which are only used in Yangbajing, monitor short-term variations of solar activities and work on new means of studying its impacts on earth environment. On the basis of Yangbajing, the best observation altitude, it will also provide warm right of each shower and temporal and spatial information on fine sub-particles so as to make it a key facility for future attacking of the difficult topic “knee zone physics” that has been existing for 40 years.

    It is reported that the installation of 700 m2 blanket is scheduled to be completed by year of 2000 and entire 5000m2 Yangbajing blanket will be completed and put into observation operation in 2003-2004.

Major Breakthroughs
in International Environment Cooperation

  Ms. Wang Zhijia, Director of Dept. of International Cooperation, State Bureau of Environmental Protection(SBEP), told that as shown by the statistics China has so far absorbed over US＄ 3 billion foreign capital for its environmental protection endeavor, of which the amount pledged in the contracts signed in 1998 reached several hundred million US dollars.

    Environmental experts believed that China, a country with a population of 1.2 billion people, is also a large country in terms of environmental protection. In this context, the improvement of China's environmental protection will constitute an important contribution not only to the country itself but also to its neighboring countries and regions and even to the whole world.

    In the area of international cooperation, China has been deeply involved in signing and implementation of international conventions agreeable to the interests of all signing parties. In 1998, China participated in negotiations on a number of international conventions such as Convention on Biodiversity, Convention on Control of Trans-boundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, Convention on Ozone Protection and Convention on Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade. In addition, China participated in the negotiation of Convention on Control of Long Lasting Organic Pollutants.

    1998 is a year witnessing important progress made in bilateral cooperation on environment issues. As shown by SBEP's statistics, as of the end of 1998, China has signed agreements, protocols or memorandums with 25 countries in the world.

    Referring to the future development in 1999, Ms Wang said SBEP would continue to promote its bilateral and multilateral cooperations including collaboration negotiations with Thailand, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and Columbia and signing agreements on bilateral environmental protection so as to strengthen ecological protection efforts including that on river origins.

   

NEWS BRIEFS

　

China's Red Book on Endangered Animals

  China's first monograph on endangered freshwater fish species “China's Red Book on Endangered Animals - Fish Volume” was recently published by Science Press.Composed in both Chinese and English languages, the book listed 92 fish species in 78 genus, 24 families and 9 orders. They have been classified in 6 categories including extinguished, disappeared in wildness, domestically extinguished, endangered, vulnerable and rare. The book has not only played a positive role in understanding the condition of China's endangered freshwater fish species and attracting people's attention to keeping ecological equilibrium, protecting natural environment, maintaining the diversity of creatures and utilizing and rejuvenating resources, but also provided valuable scientific reference for systematic and in-depth study of endangered species.

    There are about 1000 freshwater fish species in imminent danger in China, of which 15 have been listed under national priority wildlife protection list. 5 major endangered species in the country such as Chinese sturgeon have been included in IUCN's red book on endangered species and appendix of CITES. China's Red Book on Endangered Species - Fish Volume was jointly compiled by Institute of Hydrobiology and Institute of Zoology of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Kunming Institute of Zoology.

    As briefed by the experts of National Scientific Commission on Endangered Species, the first red book on mammals was published by IUCN in 1966. After that many other countries published their own red books, which has greatly promoted activities protecting endangered animals. After the publication of its red book on plants in the 1980s, China started the compilation of its red books on endangered animals with 4 volumes covering wild animals, birds, amphibians and reptiles, fishes. The volume on wild animals published at the end of 1998.

    Major objectives of compiling red books are to: understand community distribution of endangered animals, their current quantity, endangered class, reasons of being threatened, existing and proposed protective measures; provide reliable evidence for legislature and information on endangered species to the public and attract social attention to the protection of endangered species.

170 Thousand Foreign Experts
Visited China in Last Two Years

  During the last two decades of opening and reform, China had invited foreign experts of 662,000 person/time on a cumulative basis and dispatched professionals and management people of 300,000 person/time to be trained abroad. In the last two years, the intelligence import ranked the largest in the history of the country by inviting foreign experts of 170,000 person/time and sending out trainees of 80,000 person/times.

    It is briefed that along with the gradual enforcement of various rules and regulations on foreign experts management and streamlined supervising and management of domestic institutions that are authorized to organize study tours and further assessment of international training channels, the intelligence import brought about by opening and reform has produced more and more benefits for the improvement of the quality of China's economic growth and personnel training. Last two years have witnessed 120 and more new technologies and products imported into the country's industrial sector, 270 advanced species into agriculture, forestry and fishery sectors and the importation of more than 30 technologies relating to advanced cultivation techniques, pest and disease prevention and soil improvement. At the same time, universities and research institutions trained personnels in cooperation with foreign experts and they have witnessed remarkable growth of new technologies and products developed jointly with foreign experts. For example, Ningxia Non-ferrous Metal Smeltery has accomplished 15 major scientific studies with the help of imported intelligence as well as the innovation of domestic scientific research personnel and made their technology capability reach the world advanced level, recorded an annual revenue of US＄ 28 million, which made it one of the three major non-ferrous metal smelteries in the world.

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       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