Breaking the bottleneck priority for scientific research and innovation

The Chinese Academy of Sciences has dedicated itself to breaking the nation's technology bottleneck, its president, Bai Chunli, said at a news conference on Wednesday.

As the leading academy of its kind for science in the country, the CAS is duty bound to take the lead in making breakthroughs in the technologies with which the United States has been trying to hold China by the throat. For instance, as a latecomer to semiconductor research, China still lags behind some developed countries in their design and manufacture.

Although the CAS has set up an innovation institute, an innovation center and a big science center, that is far from enough, as innovation and science and technology are always a step-by-step accumulation of knowledge and practice, and a process involving the cooperation of different parties.

The country must dramatically increase its input into science and technology if it is to catch up with the advanced countries, and optimize its research mechanism to ensure that researchers are not distracted by other affairs.

Also since the current talent evaluation system attaches more importance to the direct output or commercialization of technology rather than fundamental breakthroughs, China should markedly increase its inputs into basic theoretical research so as to make advancements in mathematics, chemistry, optics, electronics and material physics, and other areas.

China has to reform its innovation system so as to create a more rational pro-innovation ecology in which the State still plays a leading role, but individuals, social organizations, enterprises and universities are allowed to play their parts, and accordingly the funding should not only come from the State but also from private investors.

That is to say, while the CAS is vowing to do something, other parties should also be encouraged to pursue innovation, so that there can be synergy in society to help the country break free of the hands that hold its throat at an early date.