Deng Xiaoping has talked about this for several times. While talking on education on July 29, 1977, he said that ``Key universities are the centre of education and scientific research.'' On September 14 of the same year when examining the Circular on Convening the National Conference on Science, he added the following words to it, ``Primary schools and secondary schools and institutions of higher learning are important bases for training scientific and technological personnel, and the latter are important front-line forces in scientific research.''