China's First Information Process Plan
The Information Process Priority Projects Plan under the 10th Five-Year Plan (2001-2005) for the national economic and social development has recently been approved for publicizing. Relevant authorities of the State Development Planning Commission stressed on October 18, 2002 that the Information Process Plan is one of the ten major priority projects plans defined by the 10th Five-Year Plan for the national economic and social development, as well as China's first national information process plan and a guidance document for the regulated construction of information process in the country.
The Plan has proposed the policy, development targets, major tasks and measures for promoting the national economic and information process in the 10th Five-Year Plan period.
The Plan points out that during the 10th Five-Year Plan period, the information process of national economic and social development shall ascend to a new height with the following targets: 1) the added values from telecommunication business and electronic information products manufacturing shall take a proportion of 7% or more in China's GDP; 2) network and volume shall rank the world first place, basically meeting the needs of information process development, increasingly improving universal service capability, and creating fine conditions for the participation in the information process by the middle and western regions and vast rural areas that are of poor network infrastructures and middle and low income classes; 3) information service industry shall maintain its fast growth trend; 4) electronic information product manufacturing industry shall further improve its level and expand its scale. The industry shall continuously restructure its system in the direction of the combination of manufacturing and operation and service, combination of hardware and software, combination of matter production and knowledge production and combination of equipment manufacturing and system integration. The added value produced by the electronic information products manufacturing shall take a percentage of 3.3 in China's GDP; 5) information process shall become an important means to improve the quality of Chinese people as well as the important means strengthening the socialist civilization construction, improving education quality and level and prospering the nation's culture; and 6) information process shall bring out a continuously strengthened expertise team.
400 Million into Diary R&D
On October 18, 2002, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of Agriculture jointly signed an agreement on launching the national priority project dedicated to diary industry in the 10th Five-Year Plan period, announcing that RMB 400 million will be invested to address six key technology research and development projects and establish 8 modern production demonstration bases.
The dedicated project will enjoy the investment of RMB 150 million from the National Key Technologies Program with the remaining RMB 255 million from the local government and industries.The Project will encourage the joint efforts of research institutions and manufacturers to work on the six major key issues related to the development of diary industry such as reproduction of fine high yield cow species and high quality feed with optimized recipe. Meanwhile, the Project will establish 8 modern diary production and demonstration bases with diversified technology integration, developing a number of proprietary and patented technologies in breeding high yield cows, new vaccine development, and working out several technical standards for cow breeding and diary farm epidemic prevention. In addition, the Project will train 1000 technicians of diary technologies and 100,000 person/time on milk collection. The implementation of the Project will accelerate the overall development of China's diary industry by 2% to 3% and raising the S&T contribution to the development of diary industry from the current 30% to the future 50% or so.
State Equity Allowed to Foreign Investors
Upon the approval of the Chinese State Council, the Chinese Stock Exchange Watchdog Committee, the Ministry of Finance and the State Economic and Trade Commission have recently jointly published the Circular on Issues Related to Transferring Listed State Shares and Legal Person’s Shares to Foreign Investors, which for the first time turned the green light for transferring listed state shares and legal person’s shares to foreign investors and imposed regulated management on such activities.
The Circular provides that any listed state shares and legal person’s shares, when transferred to foreign investors, shall be in line with the requirements defined by the Guidance Catalog for Foreign Invested Businesses. Any listed state shares and legal person’s shares, when falling under the category of prohibition, shall not be transferred to foreign investors; any listed state shares and legal person’s shares under the category calling for the majority equity holding or relative majority equity holding by the Chinese party shall be made under the precondition that such status shall not be changed when the transfer is made.
The Circular points out that transferred listed state shares and legal person’s shares to foreign investors, when related to industrial policies or enterprises restructuring, shall be subjected to the verification of the State Economic and Trade Commission. Such a transfer, when related to the state equity management, shall be subjected to the verification of the Ministry of Finance. Major transfer cases shall be submitted to the State Council for approval. Transferring listed state shares and legal person’s shares to foreign investors shall be in line with the regulations published by the Chinese Stock Exchange Watchdog Committee on listed company acquisition and information disclosure.
The Circular also adds that transferring listed state shares and legal person’s shares to foreign investors shall in principle be made on public bidding basis. Any localities or governmental agencies shall not presume the approval of transferring listed state shares and legal person’s shares to foreign investors on their own. After transferring its listed state shares or legal person’s shares to foreign investors, the listed company shall keep implementing relevant policies that it did in the past and will not be allowed to enjoy the preferential treatment that only foreign invested businesses are entitled to. The revenues accrued from such transfer shall be managed and used in accordance with relevant state regulations.
Chinese Digitized Visible Man
Chinese No. 3 Military Medical School announced on October 23, 2002 that it has completed the development of China's first digitized visible human and opened up its database to the world. The result has provided China or the countries in the East with the most systematic and complete and detailed data and image information on oriental human body structure. The said development has made China the third country in the world possessing the database of digitized visible human.
On the computer screen, one can have a clear and vivid sight of the digitized visible human's mussels, skeletons, blood vessels, nerves and internal organs with distinctly red and blue for artery and veins, which is a full digitized visible human of Chinese origin in its true sense.
The visible human is constructed on the basis of a standard Chinese male corps aged at 35 with a height of 1.7 m and a weight of 65 kg without any organic diseases. After the pre-treatment with blood vessel injection and isinglass casing, the body is frozen in a deep low temperature trough. The frozen body was then cut into thin slices at digital mill in a freezing environment as cold as -25℃. Each slice was pictured with high-resolution digital camera before becoming the complete human body database in the computer. In the last step, after analyzing the database the computer system was used to make the 3-D reconstruction and display of the human body structures. It is briefed that the visible man has 2,518 consecutive sections with the thickness of the major parts such as skull bottom being only 0.1mm.
The project has turned out many achievements such as consecutive section cutting, missing data and defects free, 6.3 million pixels for section image resolution, 0.1 mm section thickness, which has made China in the world leading position in terms of the equipment sophistication, data integrity, representation and accuracy.
Portable Food Analyzer
Huazhong S&T University has recently worked out a new portable analyzer able to detect toxicant matters in food, fruits and vegetables.
With four 1.5v-battery or 220v-AC as the power source and equipped with the most advanced mini illuminating source of specific wave length and highly integrated optic-electronic sounding components, the analyzer has been greatly simplified as it removed the component of spectrometer. Together with the mini agent package, the whole system has a size desirable for on-the- spot analyzing. The system is made up of the core hardware of monolithic processor, software system and special chemical agents corresponding to the measuring targets. Without calling for the preparation of standard solution, verification, measuring and computing by experts, people may easily conduct fast measuring of toxicant matters such as nitrite, formaldehyde and others in food and wine. Possessing both features of intelligentization and fool-can-operate, the system is very desirable for the fast on-the-spot measuring when there are no experts of chemical analysis available.
Satellite Radiation Correction Field Established
On October 15, 2002, China's first remote sensing satellite radiation correction field located in the western part of China passed its national verification check. The establishment of the correction field will promote the development of China's space remote sensing technologies and improve China's satellites quantitative technology and data application level in the field.
Physically located in the western region of China, the correction field has employed the Gobi desert in the suburb of Dunhuang City, Gansu Province and Qinghai Lake water surface as the site to define the radiation targets for the instruments working in visible and infrared channels of satellite. Upon its completion of construction, the correction field will perform radiation correction service for the instruments in the remote sensing satellites in the orbit. During its experimental phase, in 2000 the correction field worked for Fengyun I-C, Fengyun II-B, China-Brazil resources satellite and the large 3-dimentional synchronous observations from satellite, aircraft and land, providing guarantee for the radiation measuring accuracy. This year has seen the correction field providing correction service for Fengyun I-D and Marine I satellites, great improving the data accuracy of topographic features and seawater elements.
Carbon Nanometer Tube Threads
Jiang Kaili, a doctorate student of Tsinghua University and his colleagues have recently landed a major progress on developing carbon nanometer tube components by successfully pulling out carbon nanometer tube threads from carbon nanometer tubes. The finding was published in Nature on October, 24.
It is briefed that Jiang and others pulled out a pure carbon nanometer tube thread from the carbon nanometer tube array of several hundred microns. The process is just like pulling out silk threads from pods in which pods serve as carbon nanometer tube array. So far they have worked out a carbon nanometer tube thread as long as 30cm. It is estimated that one square centimeter of carbon nanometer tube array may produce a ten-meter long thread.
It is briefed that such nanometer threads could
serve as high quality conductor. Chinese scientists wound the thread between two metal electrodes to be a nanometer lamp filament. When direct current is given, the nanometer filament will produce light. And when aligning the threads in parallel manner, they could serve as a polarization sheet producing polar light. Such a polarization sheet can work in the area having ultraviolet light or even in the vacuum ultraviolet area with a wavelength of only several dozens of nanometers.
It is reported that after heat treatment, the pure nanometer thread has seen greatly enhanced strength. The treated threads can be woven into fabrics for the applications of bullet proof and electric magnetism resistance. The result has applied for patent.
China's Resources II Satellite Launched
At 11:17, on October 27, 2002, China's Resources II satellite was successfully sent into its solar synchronous orbit by China's home-made Long March IV B rocket from Taiyuan Satellite Launching Center.
Resources II is a transmission-type remote sensing satellite designed mainly for the national land resources survey, urban planning, crop yield estimation, disaster monitoring and space scientific experiments. Its elder sister Recourses I that was launched in September 2000 is still working properly in the orbit. The satellite has so far collected a huge amount of remote sensing data and made valuable contributions to the national economic development.
China Working on New-Generation Meteorological Satellites
It is reported that Shanghai Space Agency is now accelerating the development of the new-generation meteorological satellites with long life-span and high reliability. These new satellites are Fengyun III, the successor of Fengyun I and Fengyun IV the successor of Fengyun II.
It is briefed that on the basis of 2 decades and more development, China has successfully developed polar and geostationary meteorological satellite series. Fengyun III is China's second-generation polar orbit meteorological satellite equipped with 10 effective payloads. Thanks to the addition of microwave remote sensors aboard, the satellite is able to make global 3 dimensional, all weather, multiple-spectrum and quantitative soundings. At the same time Fengyun III has enjoyed a resolution remarkably higher than that of Fengyun I, capable of identifying ground highway from a height of 870 km. The other new satellite Fengyun IV will become China's second-generation geostationary satellite.
China's World Advanced Biomedicine
Zheng Xiaoyu, Chinese Administrator of Drugs Supervision and Control expressed recently that China has ranked the world advanced with its international competitiveness on biomedicinal technologies.
He added that so far China has achieved the following major results: a number of genetic engineering medicines and vaccines have been spun off from labs to industrial process and genetic engineering pharmaceutical industry has seen preliminary scale; artificial blood substitute will soon enter the clinic study; stem cell cloning and genetic diagnosis of genetic diseases have reached the internationally advanced level; six genetic treatment schemes for B-type hemophilia, malignant tumors, external blood vessel infarction and others have entered treatment effect study; nanometer technology has find its applications in medical field; and a series of breakthroughs and major progresses have been made on cancer immune treatment, anti-thrombus treatment, tissue engineering, biochips and stem cells.
Mr. Zheng also expressed that so far China has successfully developed 21 genetic engineering medicines and vaccines and is able to produce 8 of the top ten genetic engineering medicines and vaccines that have found the best sales in the world.
Debut of High-End Intelligent Mobile
CECT-treo 180 mobile phone is a high-end intelligent mobile telecommunication system jointly developed by China Electronic Telecommunication S&T Corp. Ltd. and Shangqi S&T Corp. Ltd. Being the first of its kind in China, this intelligent mobile with PalmOS in it has integrated different functions such as mobile telecommunication, palm computer, wireless online picture and text reading. It can be connected with Internet, receive and send e-mail and SMS at anytime and in any places. With updated software, the system can support GPRS and multilateral conversation. Meanwhile, it is the smallest and lightest intelligent mobile system with a built-in keyboard in the world. Consumers may use it like a computer to quickly enter SMS, addresses and other information. With a weight of just 147 grams, the system is believed a most desirable mobile tool for business community.
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