With the Fourth National Conference on Science and Technology, which opened yesterday in Beijing, China started a new march towards transforming itself into a nation of innovation.

At the conference, Chinese President Hu Jintao outlined major strategic tasks prior to embarking on a new path of innovation.

He stressed not only key technological breakthroughs to facilitate sustained and co-ordinated economic and social progress, but also the need to develop frontier technologies and basic research with a long-term perspective.

The unprecedented importance the Chinese authorities attached to innovation represents a substantial upgrade from previous policies focusing on fast economic growth.

Clearly, this strategic shift can be interpreted as the Chinese Government's prompt response to the mounting difficulties the country has come across in the global market.

Since its entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, China has steadily risen as a global manufacturing base by tapping its huge, cheap and relatively skilled labour force.

However, deteriorating trade conditions such as dearer oil imports and cheaper textile exports have caused a lot of pain for the Chinese economy. The re-erection of trade barriers in recent years, no matter how unfair, has alerted Chinese exporters and policy-makers to the danger of relying excessively on low labour costs.

The latest effort to encourage innovation shows that the country has resolved to sharpen the technological competitive edge of its exports.

Going high-tech is a way to circumvent protectionism against Chinese goods.

But for China, the more underlying significance of boosting innovation lies in its effectual contribution to the change of its economic growth model.

To continue long-term growth that leads to improved welfare for the public, the nation has reached a consensus that extensive growth is no longer an option economically, environmentally and socially.

Emerging restraints in supply of energy, raw materials and even clean water have galvanized the nation into massive energy-saving campaigns. But that is only half of the story from the consumer side.

Energy-efficient and resource-saving production should factor equally in helping the country overcome growth bottlenecks.

Innovation in the form of both technological breakthroughs and management improvement is definitely the best way to make maximum use of the input and raise the overall efficiency of the national economy.

Numerous examples at home and abroad have proved the necessity of innovation in withstanding increasingly fierce competition in the era of economic globalization.

 Innovation will define China's competitiveness as it does in other countries.

Yet, it is one thing to advocate innovation, but another thing to carry it out.

As a developing country, China lags quite far behind developed countries in the overall scientific and technological level. Lack of investment has long kept many Chinese enterprises from developing self-owned key technologies. It is believed that the strategic support the Chinese Government now gives to innovation can help address that problem.

The more difficult thing is to effectively mobilize China into an innovation-oriented country. That will require unswerving efforts to fix various drawbacks in relevant systems and mechanisms.

A national conference on science and technology in the late 1970s successfully refocused the nation on economic development, ushering in more than two decades of robust growth.

Now, the country's first such conference in the 21st century charts an innovation-powered course of sustainable growth.

Issuing a high-profile call is just the very beginning.