Xi calls for key tech breakthroughs

Tech: Firms urged to be innovation boosters

President Xi Jinping underlined on Tuesday the need to mobilize all of the nation's available resources to make breakthroughs in core technologies in order to overcome obstacles hindering the country's development and to gain a competitive edge in key fields.

Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks while presiding over a meeting of the Central Commission for Comprehensively Deepening Reform. He is also head of the commission.

During the meeting, Xi emphasized leveraging the prominent advantages of the socialist system in mobilizing all resources available to address major problems, and he called for strengthening the Party's and the country's leadership in major scientific and technological innovation while fully leveraging the role of the market.

He stressed the need to focus on the nation's strategic demand in the scientific sector, optimize the allocation of resources for technological innovation, enhance the nation's strategic forces in science and technology and significantly raise the country's capacity for overcoming difficulties in technological progress.

Xi called for giving full play to the role of academicians in the fields of science and technology as well as engineering in order to allow them to increase their importance in promoting the nation's high-level technological independence and self-reliance.

The meeting adopted a series of documents, including a guideline on improving the new type of national system for making breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields, a guideline on deepening reforms of the academician system and a guideline on comprehensively strengthening the conservation of resources.

Participants in the meeting called for pooling the resources of the government, market and society in order to make breakthroughs in core technologies.

While stressing the need to make collective and coordinated efforts, they said that efforts should also be made to solve the problems in key fields and major projects that matter to the country's industrial and economic development and national security.

Emphasis should be placed on core technologies with early-development advantages and cutting-edge technologies that will set the pace for future development, they said.

The meeting's participants underscored the importance of the centralized and unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee in the field of science and technology, and called for establishing an authoritative decision-making and command mechanism as well as an efficient and coordinated operational mechanism.

While stressing the importance of interdisciplinary and cross-sector coordination, they also called for stepping up the transformation of the government's role in the management of the scientific and technological sector, energizing the market and allowing enterprises to be the key players in technological innovation.

During the meeting, Xi also called for implementing the new development philosophy, adhering to resource conservation and improving efficiency in the consumption of energy, water, food, land, mineral resources and raw materials.

He urged efforts to improve the quality and efficiency of the rural healthcare system to ensure that it suits the needs of the countryside and that people in rural areas can enjoy improved access to healthcare services.

Participants in the meeting said that resource conservation is a fundamental national policy and a major task for safeguarding the nation's resource security, advancing ecological progress and promoting the country's high-quality development.

They called for efforts to save resources in the fields of energy, industry and transportation, leverage the role of technological innovation to reduce energy consumption, and lower carbon emissions in the field of production.

They also called for preparing for worst-case scenarios and preventing and defusing major resource risks, while taking into consideration the demands of socioeconomic development.