Accelerated Internationalization Process for Software Industry
To speed up the internationalization process of China's software industry, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) is planning to create an internationalization window for promoting massive software export, widening software export channels and introducing internationally acknowledged quality control system in the country.
MOST created a software industrial base under the National Torch Program in 1995. Up to date, China has approved the qualifications for 19 software bases under the National Torch Program with their software sale revenues marking an annual growth around 40%, which made them the backbone forces of China's software industry. In 2000, the sale revenues of these software bases recorded RMB 18.6 billion, of which the one for the products of independent copyright gained a portion of RMB 13.3 billion, with USD 180 million created for foreign exchange. By the end of 2000, there were 96 enterprises on these 19 bases that had passed the verification checks of ISO9001 and of them three leading enterprises such as Eastsoft, Legend and Yongyou also passed AA CMM verification checks. Eastsoft became China's first business who passed the triple A rating last June. In May 2001, the Management Committee of Guangzhou Software Park passed the verification check of ISO9001 and became the first of its kind in the country with rated qualification.
Software bases and associated leading businesses under the National Torch Program have seen fast development in the field of international cooperation. Last year Dongda Shareholdings and Motorola have jointly established wireless telecommunication application software lab for the joint development of China's wireless telecommunication market. In 2001, Eastsoft Group announced its strategic cooperation with CA for a stronger collaboration and reciprocal supplement. In addition, other software groups such as Chinasoft, Chuangzhi and Top have intensified their cooperation with overseas software giants.
China's Job Market Opens to Outside World
As provided in a by-law not long ago jointly issued by the Chinese Ministry of Labour and Social Security, the State General Bureau for Industry and Commerce and the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation, starting from December 1st 2001, China's job brokerage market will open to foreign businesses, allowing foreign investors to be part of Chinese job brokerage market in the form of joint venture or cooperation.
The by-law entitled as the Interim Regulations on the Management of the Establishment of Joint Ventures on Job Brokerage indicates that China will allow foreign investors to be part of Chinese job brokerage market in the form of joint venture or cooperation, though they are not allowed to run independent foreign services for such business, nor are the representative offices of foreign enterprises in China or foreign chamber of commerce stationed in China allowed to provide their independent services for the same. The Regulations in the meanwhile gives explicit business reference for joint ventures or cooperations for job brokerage services such as providing job brokerage service for job seekers and employers both at home and abroad, providing employment guidance and consultation, collecting and distributing information on labor resources market, and organizing job fairs upon the approval of the competent authorities in charge of labor and social security at provincial level or its entrusted same authorities at prefectural or municipal level.
When intending to establish joint ventures or cooperative services for job brokerage, the applicant shall be of the following qualifications: the foreign investor shall be the legal person of job brokerage and has the experience for such services in the country where he or she is registered; the Chinese partner shall be the legal person of qualified job brokerage; the job brokerage firm to be established shall be of a registration capital no less than USD 300,000 and at least 3 or more professionals qualified for such services.
Asilian Relics Found in China
Yunnan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics Archaeology has recently made the confirmation that a cave discovered five year ago in Xishuangbanna Dai ethnic autonomous region, Yunnan Province, is an Asilian relics dated back to 18,000 years ago. It is reported that massive objects have been unearthed in the cave.
Located in the Jingha village of Jinghong Township, Xishaungbanna Dai ethnic autonomous region, Tanmunami Cave sits in the east while facing the west at the middle of the northern slope of a mountain ridge. The second of the four large caves counting from north to south is standing at an altitude 810 meters above sea level and in a shape of regular triangle as the result of blockage caused by a collapsed huge triangle rock. The cave mouth looks very mysterious.
In 1996, a villager of Jingha found some stoneware in the cave, which attracted the attention of the cultural relics protection authorities. The expedition team of Yunnan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics Archaeology visited the Cave in 1997 and unearthed massive fossils of eaten bones, plant seeds, pottery, stoneware, boneware, horn and shell made objects. Recently, the experts confirmed that these objects were left by man's activities about 13,000 to 18,000 years ago, and the Tanmunami Cave is also confirmed as the first Azilian relics housing pottery in the province.
China’s Advanced Air Born Sensing Technology
On October 14, 1999, the CCD camera and infrared multispectral scanner developed by the Beijing Space Machinery and Electronics Institute were sent into space along with their satellite carrier Resources I. On the following day the CCD camera sent its image data back to the earth and visualized the success of its first launch. Now the said two air born remote sensors are making observations day and night in an orbit 778 kilometers above the earth. With a resolution of 78m for its near infrared spectrum band and short wave infrared spectrum, 156m for its thermal infrared section, 120 km its imaging width and a global coverage once every 26 days, the said instruments are the ones of the highest spatial resolution ever enjoyed by the China- made infrared sensors. Both have outlived their designed two-year life span with all the components working properly without any failure. Their unexpected long extra life is rarely seen among international resources satellites, which marks China’s advanced earth resources satellite sensing technology in the world.
New Tervalence Inactivated Flu Vaccine
Approved by China's State Drug Administration, a new tervalence inactivated flu vaccine was put into formal production at Changchun Bioproducts Institute, the first flu vaccine R&D base in the country. Applied with the internationally advanced column purification technique, the product has demonstrated a new quality level that Chinese flu vaccine has so far reached.
The flu viruses used in the vaccine are the three viruses recommended by the World Health Organization and the Chinese Medical Bioproducts Supervision Institute with their technical indicators and quality reaching or exceeding the standards defined by WHO for the same. The Chinese Medical Bioproducts Supervision Institute and other relevant departments have made full systematic clinic observations and immunity tests, which have proved the safety and reliability of the new flu vaccine with high serum antigen drop rate and positive conversion rate. Priced for lower end users with reliable result, the new vaccine is affordable to most people at only RMB 49.80, suitable for vaccination of massive population of 6 years of age and above.
Qiankunning Traditional Recipe for AIDS
As early as in 1988, Chengdu based Enwei Group Corporation applied Qiankunning in treatment of infections, cancers and immune system modulation. In 1995, California based Hope Town Medical Research Center discovered that when making external experiment with Qiankunning the drug is of apparent suppressing activity on HIV viruses. The following clinic observations on 12 AIDS patients have shown the dropped counts of the viruses carried by the target patients.
In 1995, the selected hospitals made clinic testing on 45 AIDS patients. Of them, 10 patients made up of a reference group for unwilling to be treated with the said drug. The rest 35 patients grouped as a treatment reference. At the end of August 2001, 8 of the 10 patients desiring for no treatment died with the remaining two on the brink of death. On the contrary, only 5 people (4 of them stopped taking the medicine or failed to take the medicine as scheduled) died in the treatment group of 35 patients. The examination on the remaining 30 patients has shown remarkable increase of CD4 and CD8 immune cells and AIDS viruses in patients’s blood have dropped from 50,000 to 300,000 per ml before the treatment to under 1,000 per ml with 3 of them almost being found no AIDS viruses in their blood and much lower count of the viruses in their semen. Some of the patients who were treated with the said drug have not only seen remarkably decreased AIDS viruses count in their bodies but are also able to work. When the patients ceased to use the drug, no bouncing back effects nor toxicant side effects have been detected. The drug has proved non- resistant.
China's DNA Schistonsome Vaccine
By applying DNA vaccine technique into schistose vaccine studies, Prof. Shi You’en of Tongji Hospital subordinate to Huazhong Science and Technology University has recently constructed DNA vaccine that can be used to prevent schistosomiasis on animals.
In 1996, Prof. Shi and others were assigned with the study by the Ministry of Health on “construction of Japanese schistosome DNA vaccine and its protective immunity” and began to develop schistosome vaccine applicable to animals. Researchers applied DNA vaccination techniques in developing schistosome vaccine with different doses, in different time, at different locations, and at different interval time for attacking after the last vaccination. The numerous experiments on animals have developed fine immunity against the attack or infection of schistosome, namely the DNA schistosome vaccine thus produced is able to induce immune protection within rat body. As shown by the statistics results, the schistosome reduction rate of different experimental groups reached 35.61%-44.44% and liver based egg reduction rate reached 39.64%-69.06%. The results have made remarkable difference against the one untreated with the vaccine.
Experts’evaluation has shown that the said result has laid a foundation for the further development of DNA schistosome vaccine and constituted the first step for developing the DNA schistosome vaccine for man’s application. The said technique is of relative maturity with different DNA schistosome vaccines in inventory that can either be put into small scale production or fiod quick applications to domestic animals.
Breakthroughs in Tube Buffalo
Recently the researchers of Guangxi Buffalo Institute under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences have had two female buffaloes give birth to 3 tube hybrid calves, of which two are twins with two different genders. In addition, there are seven other female buffaloes conceived by the same technique will soon give birth to their babies. Following the first tube buffalo born in India in 1990, the said event is the first of its kind using full in vitro fertilization technique to have a number of female buffaloes conceived and give birth to several tube hybrid calves.
The Guangxi Buffalo Institute started its production of hybrid buffalo embryos in 2000. 20 female buffaloes were transplanted with the embryos and 12 of them got pregnant. After 310-day pregnancy, two of them gave birth to three calves and the rest of the mother-to-be buffaloes will release their babies in the near future.
The Institute has landed two breakthroughs in the said techniques: its blastaea rate reached 28.1%, much higher than the internationally recognized advanced indicator of 23%-24%, with a success rate of transplantation reaching 60% and the twinning rate is expected to reach 20%. However, under natural condition, buffaloes gave birth to no twins at all.
It is briefed that the researchers will in the future manage to obtain the eggs from live buffaloes rather than from the dead buffaloes as they did before, so as to collect massive eggs for fast production of pure buffalo species.
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INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION |
China-US Joint Bioinformation Center
US based SUN Corporation and the Genome and Biological Information Center (or Beijing Huada Genetic Research Center) recently jointly announced the foundation of the bioinformation center. The development has not only indicated the full support of SUN, an international tycoon in the field of information industry, to China's genome and bioinformation studies, but also marked China's world first-class level in such studies. It is reported that this is the first cooperation between China and an international information tycoon in the field of bioinformation.
Along with the joined service of three SUN servers, the mainframe servers used by the Center reached seven in number, which made it one of the domestic institutes enjoying most powerful computation capability. After the inauguration, SUN will not only provide some fund support for the Center, but also technical support for high performance computation, network computation and bioinformation.
In addition, the Center will strive to forge more international cooperation ties. Since its completion of 1% genome sequencing for the international human genome project in May 2000, the Center has organized joint studies on domestic pig genome together with the Ministry of Agriculture of Denmark. Last August, it forged a sister tie with the largest, US based genome research center.
China-Japan's E-Books
On October 12, 2001, Jinke Electronics Co. Ltd. under Nankai University inked an agreement with Japan's Panasonic Co. Ltd. on the joint development of e-book reading without power consumption. According to the agreement, both parties will promote in China the e-books of safe digital protection technology that is able to address the intellectual property right of the contents in e-books. In the meanwhile, both parties will make the same efforts to diffuse the e-books in Japanese in Japan in a period of three years. The said development shows that the e-book reading without power consumption independently developed by China on its own has made its headway into international market.
Created by Tianjin based Jinke Electronics Co. Ltd. with numerous merits such as ordinary book like reading, large volume, capable of being updated any time and reading without power consumption, the e-book reading without power consumption is a book like mobile electronic reading equipment. At the third High Tech Results Trade Fair, Jinke made the debut of its first generation product named Hanlin I, read-only e-book. It is reported that other e-books capable of both reading and contents adding and multi-media functions will soon be followed.
New Net Servers
Thanks to his more than one-year efforts and on the basis of his technical results achieved abroad, Prof. Jin Hai working for the Computer School of Huazhong S&T University has developed the so-called super group net server by connecting the key components of PC that can be found available in ordinary market to the express network. It is briefed that made up of about ten PCs, the server is designed with multiple functions such as www linkage, e-mail and document service. With strong expansion capacity, high reliability and lower cost, the server may be added with more individual PCs when necessary. As a result, the failure of any individual PC will not affect the smooth operation of the whole system.
China's World Advanced Optic Elements Manufacturing
2-D Optic Components Laser Writer independently developed by the Changchun Institute of Sophisticated Optical Instruments and Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences has recently passed the technical checks. The optic components manufactured with the said equipment may simplify the optical structures of telescopes and cameras, reduce their weight and enhance their resolution. In addition the special optic components worked out by such advanced optical equipment are of extensive applications in both civic and defense areas.
Experts involved in the technical checks believed that compared with their counterparts manufactured abroad, the said equipment is of its unique overall composition and individual techniques with its photoetching area and associated accuracy better than their overseas counterparts, especially in curve etching.
Comments or inquiries on editorial matters or Newsletter content should be directed to:Mr. Cheng Jiayi, Department of International Cooperation, MOST 15B, Fuxing Road Beijing 100862, PR China Tel: (8610)68512650 Fax: (8610) 68512594 http://www.most.gov.cn
