Chinese Vice-Premier Huang Ju urged the country's defense science and technology industry, Friday, to make new contributions to modernize the national defense and national economic construction.

He said efforts should be made to promote innovation of related mechanisms, shift economic growth manners and improve the quality of economic operation and benefits so as to ensure more sound development for the industry in the future.

"We should spare no effort to push forward reforms in enterprises and state-sponsored bodies in the industry," he said. "Enterprises should strengthen their vitality and core competitiveness through various ways."

"China should form a favorable environment that would help cultivate a big batch of leading scientists, engineers and technicians as well as a huge army of workers with advanced skills," said Huang at an ongoing national conference on defense science and technology.

He also called on the industry to expand international cooperation, adding that China's defense science and technology industry has made various remarkable progress and achieved great achievements in 2004.

He said the defense science industry is of strategic importance for China, which serves as the material and technology basis of the modernization of the country's defense and a major fuel for its economic development and scientific advancement.

"Everyone from the industry should fully understand the historical responsibility they bear and raise their sense of mission so as to ensure all the production tasks achieved," he said.