Yuzhen, Chairman of China Machinery Industry Federation, is concerned about the fact that China's machinery industry is not innovative enough which contributes merely 5.9 percent of new products, one tenth of that in developed countries does.

He finds that in highly industrialized economies innovative products only have a life cycle of 3 to 5 years, comparing with 10 years in China. In addition, world known brands are absent and there is rare Chinese intellectual property rights or strong competitiveness in the industry in China.

Core technologies and products necessary to important equipment still largely depend on imports. And CNC machine tools also rely on imports. However, developed nations have kept ban on exports of advanced CNC machine tools to China which are urgently needed by China's aeronautic and defense industries.

Yu pointed out the only solution would be technical innovations which in turn would upgrade the industry. In his view, the strategy to improve the competitiveness should reasonably be focused on more investment on R&D activities and self-reliance corporate development vision oriented by intellectual property rights.

On the other hand, he urged makers to exploit opportunities in national key projects such as the Three Gorges Project and South-North Water Diversion which seek home-developed core technologies and home made major equipment.

Cooperation with overseas partners, he noted, also offers possibilities of innovations carrying IPR based on the introduced technologies.

By People's Daily Online