Hi-tech fair to promote innovation

"The just concluded 5th Plenary Session of the 16th CPC Central Committee highlighted the importance of the ability of making innovation. China is striving to become a powerful, not only a big, trading nation. It is in this sense that the China Hi-Tech Fair plays a significant role," said Wei Jianguo, Vice Commerce Minister of China at the press conference for the 7th China Hi-Tech Fair in Shenzhen on Oct. 11.

Wei described the annual event as an opportunity for the world to understand China's progress on hi-tech and for China to follow the hi-tech development in the rest of the world. He hopes it promote technological transfers and commercialization of hi-tech research results.

Last year, China's foreign trade reached 1.15 trillion USD. 28.5 percent came from hi-tech. The hi-tech trade in 2004, revealed Wei, valued 290 billion USD and is very likely to rise to 400 billion USD in 2005. China has the world's third largest hi-tech industry with 2.72 trillion yuan production value, following the US and Japan. It is also the world's most important manufacturing base for computer and communication products, noted Wei.

But that is still a long way from China's ambition: to be a powerful, rather than a big, trading nation in the world. To materialize that, China needs its own brands built on its competence of innovation to improve its export mix.

According to Xu Zongheng, mayor of Shenzhen, as the largest national event of its kind which is internationally known and attracts worldwide participants, China Hi-Tech Fair serves a platform facilitating the technological transfer and industrialization of sci-tech researches. Innovation, in particular, is its focus this year. Ministries, provinces, cities, and domestic hi-tech enterprises will showcase their hi-tech projects and achievements.

Shenzhen has built a market-oriented innovation system in which businesses play a leading role, said Liu Yingli, the city's vice mayor. It has hi-tech international companies like Huawei and ZTE. Its hi-tech industries is growing fast, for example, the industry of new materials and bio-tech. And its IPR strategy is comprehensive and involves the whole community.

By People's Daily Online