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CHINA SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY
NEWSLETTER
The Ministry
of Science and Technology
People's Republic of
China
N0.275 October 30,2001
IN
THIS ISSUE
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Accelerated
Internationalization Process for Software Industry
China's Job Market Opens to Outside World
China’s Advanced Air Born Sensing Technology
Qiankunning Traditional Recipe for AIDS
China's DNA Schistonsome Vaccine
China-Japan's
E-Books
New Net
Servers
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SPECIAL
ISSUES
Accelerated
Internationalization Process for Software Industry
To speed up the internationalization process
of China's software industry, the Chinese Ministry of
Science and Technology (MOST) is planning to create an
internationalization window for promoting massive software
export, widening software export channels and introducing
internationally acknowledged quality control system in the
country.
MOST created a software industrial base
under the National Torch Program in 1995. Up to date, China
has approved the qualifications for 19 software bases under
the National Torch Program with their software sale revenues
marking an annual growth around 40%, which made them the
backbone forces of China's software industry. In 2000, the
sale revenues of these software bases recorded RMB 18.6
billion, of which the one for the products of independent
copyright gained a portion of RMB 13.3 billion, with USD 180
million created for foreign exchange. By the end
of 2000, there were 96 enterprises on these 19 bases that
had passed the verification checks of ISO9001 and of them
three leading enterprises such as Eastsoft, Legend and
Yongyou also passed AA CMM verification checks. Eastsoft
became China's first business who passed the triple A rating
last June. In May 2001, the Management Committee of
Guangzhou Software Park passed the verification check of
ISO9001 and became the first of its kind in the country with
rated qualification.
Software bases and associated
leading businesses under the National Torch Program have
seen fast development in the field of international
cooperation. Last year Dongda Shareholdings and Motorola
have jointly established wireless telecommunication
application software lab for the joint development of
China's wireless telecommunication market. In 2001, Eastsoft
Group announced its strategic cooperation with CA for a
stronger collaboration and reciprocal supplement. In
addition, other software groups such as Chinasoft, Chuangzhi
and Top have intensified their cooperation with overseas
software giants.
China's Job Market Opens to
Outside World
As provided in a by-law not long
ago jointly issued by the Chinese Ministry of Labour and
Social Security, the State General Bureau for Industry and
Commerce and the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic
Co-operation, starting from December 1st 2001, China's job
brokerage market will open to foreign businesses, allowing
foreign investors to be part of Chinese job brokerage market
in the form of joint venture or cooperation.
The
by-law entitled as the Interim Regulations on the Management
of the Establishment of Joint Ventures on Job Brokerage
indicates that China will allow foreign investors to be part
of Chinese job brokerage market in the form of joint venture
or cooperation, though they are not allowed to run
independent foreign services for such business, nor are the
representative offices of foreign enterprises in China or
foreign chamber of commerce stationed in China allowed to
provide their independent services for the same. The
Regulations in the meanwhile gives explicit business
reference for joint ventures or cooperations for job
brokerage services such as providing job brokerage service
for job seekers and employers both at home and abroad,
providing employment guidance and consultation, collecting
and distributing information on labor resources market, and
organizing job fairs upon the approval of the competent
authorities in charge of labor and social security at
provincial level or its entrusted same authorities at
prefectural or municipal level.
When intending to
establish joint ventures or cooperative services for job
brokerage, the applicant shall be of the following
qualifications: the foreign investor shall be the legal
person of job brokerage and has the experience for such
services in the country where he or she is registered; the
Chinese partner shall be the legal person of qualified job
brokerage; the job brokerage firm to be established shall be
of a registration capital no less than USD 300,000 and at
least 3 or more professionals qualified for such services.
Asilian Relics Found in China
Yunnan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics
Archaeology has recently made the confirmation that a cave
discovered five year ago in Xishuangbanna Dai ethnic
autonomous region, Yunnan Province, is an Asilian relics
dated back to 18,000 years ago. It is reported that massive
objects have been unearthed in the cave.
Located in
the Jingha village of Jinghong Township, Xishaungbanna Dai
ethnic autonomous region, Tanmunami Cave sits in the east
while facing the west at the middle of the northern slope of
a mountain ridge. The second of the four large caves
counting from north to south is standing at an altitude 810
meters above sea level and in a shape of regular triangle as
the result of blockage caused by a collapsed huge triangle
rock. The cave mouth looks very mysterious.
In 1996,
a villager of Jingha found some stoneware in the cave, which
attracted the attention of the cultural relics
protection authorities. The expedition team of Yunnan
Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics Archaeology visited
the Cave in 1997 and unearthed massive fossils of eaten
bones, plant seeds, pottery, stoneware, boneware, horn and
shell made objects. Recently, the experts confirmed that
these objects were left by man's activities about 13,000 to
18,000 years ago, and the Tanmunami Cave is also confirmed
as the first Azilian relics housing pottery in the province.
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
China’s Advanced Air Born Sensing
Technology
On October 14, 1999, the CCD camera
and infrared multispectral scanner developed by the Beijing
Space Machinery and Electronics Institute were sent into
space along with their satellite carrier Resources I. On the
following day the CCD camera sent its image data back to the
earth and visualized the success of its first launch. Now
the said two air born remote sensors are making observations
day and night in an orbit 778 kilometers above the earth.
With a resolution of 78m for its near infrared spectrum band
and short wave infrared spectrum, 156m for its thermal
infrared section, 120 km its imaging width and a global
coverage once every 26 days, the said instruments are the
ones of the highest spatial resolution ever enjoyed by the
China- made infrared sensors. Both have outlived their
designed two-year life span with all the components working
properly without any failure. Their unexpected
long extra life is rarely seen among international resources
satellites, which marks China’s advanced earth
resources satellite sensing technology in the world.
New Tervalence Inactivated Flu Vaccine
Approved by China's State Drug Administration,
a new tervalence inactivated flu vaccine was put into formal
production at Changchun Bioproducts Institute, the first flu
vaccine R and D base in the country. Applied with the
internationally advanced column purification technique, the
product has demonstrated a new quality level that Chinese
flu vaccine has so far reached.
The flu viruses used
in the vaccine are the three viruses recommended by the
World Health Organization and the Chinese Medical
Bioproducts Supervision Institute with their technical
indicators and quality reaching or exceeding the standards
defined by WHO for the same. The Chinese Medical Bioproducts
Supervision Institute and other relevant departments have
made full systematic clinic observations and immunity tests,
which have proved the safety and reliability of the new flu
vaccine with high serum antigen drop rate and positive
conversion rate. Priced for lower end users with reliable
result, the new vaccine is affordable to most people at only
RMB 49.80, suitable for vaccination of massive population of
6 years of age and above.
Qiankunning
Traditional Recipe for AIDS
As early as in
1988, Chengdu based Enwei Group Corporation applied
Qiankunning in treatment of infections, cancers and immune
system modulation. In 1995, California based Hope Town
Medical Research Center discovered that when making external
experiment with Qiankunning the drug is of apparent
suppressing activity on HIV viruses. The following clinic
observations on 12 AIDS patients have shown the dropped
counts of the viruses carried by the target patients.
In 1995, the selected hospitals made clinic testing
on 45 AIDS patients. Of them, 10 patients made up of a
reference group for unwilling to be treated with the said
drug. The rest 35 patients grouped as a treatment reference.
At the end of August 2001, 8 of the 10 patients desiring for
no treatment died with the remaining two on the brink of
death. On the contrary, only 5 people (4 of them stopped
taking the medicine or failed to take the medicine as
scheduled) died in the treatment group of 35 patients. The
examination on the remaining 30 patients has shown
remarkable increase of CD4 and CD8 immune cells and AIDS
viruses in patients’s blood have dropped from 50,000
to 300,000 per ml before the treatment to under 1,000 per ml
with 3 of them almost being found no AIDS viruses in their
blood and much lower count of the viruses in their semen.
Some of the patients who were treated with the said drug
have not only seen remarkably decreased AIDS viruses count
in their bodies but are also able to work. When the patients
ceased to use the drug, no bouncing back effects nor
toxicant side effects have been detected. The drug has
proved non- resistant.
China's DNA
Schistonsome Vaccine
By applying DNA vaccine
technique into schistose vaccine studies, Prof. Shi
You’en of Tongji Hospital subordinate to Huazhong
Science and Technology University has recently constructed
DNA vaccine that can be used to prevent schistosomiasis on
animals.
In 1996, Prof. Shi and others were assigned
with the study by the Ministry of Health on
“construction of Japanese schistosome DNA vaccine and
its protective immunity” and began to develop
schistosome vaccine applicable to animals. Researchers
applied DNA vaccination techniques in developing schistosome
vaccine with different doses, in different time, at
different locations, and at different interval time for
attacking after the last vaccination. The numerous
experiments on animals have developed fine immunity against
the attack or infection of schistosome, namely the DNA
schistosome vaccine thus produced is able to induce immune
protection within rat body. As shown by the statistics
results, the schistosome reduction rate of different
experimental groups reached 35.61%-44.44% and liver based
egg reduction rate reached 39.64%-69.06%. The results have
made remarkable difference against the one untreated with
the vaccine.
Experts’evaluation has shown that
the said result has laid a foundation for the further
development of DNA schistosome vaccine and constituted the
first step for developing the DNA schistosome vaccine for
man’s application. The said technique is of relative
maturity with different DNA schistosome vaccines in
inventory that can either be put into small scale production
or fiod quick applications to domestic animals.
Breakthroughs in Tube Buffalo
Recently the researchers of Guangxi Buffalo
Institute under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences
have had two female buffaloes give birth to 3 tube hybrid
calves, of which two are twins with two different genders.
In addition, there are seven other female buffaloes
conceived by the same technique will soon give birth to
their babies. Following the first tube buffalo born in India
in 1990, the said event is the first of its kind using full
in vitro fertilization technique to have a number of female
buffaloes conceived and give birth to several tube hybrid
calves.
The Guangxi Buffalo Institute started its
production of hybrid buffalo embryos in 2000. 20 female
buffaloes were transplanted with the embryos and 12 of them
got pregnant. After 310-day pregnancy, two of them gave
birth to three calves and the rest of the mother-to-be
buffaloes will release their babies in the near future.
The Institute has landed two breakthroughs in the
said techniques: its blastaea rate reached 28.1%, much
higher than the internationally recognized advanced
indicator of 23%-24%, with a success rate of transplantation
reaching 60% and the twinning rate is expected to reach 20%.
However, under natural condition, buffaloes gave birth to no
twins at all.
It is briefed that the researchers will
in the future manage to obtain the eggs from live buffaloes
rather than from the dead buffaloes as they did before, so
as to collect massive eggs for fast production of pure
buffalo species.
INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION
China-US Joint Bioinformation Center
US based SUN Corporation and the Genome and
Biological Information Center (or Beijing Huada Genetic
Research Center) recently jointly announced the foundation
of the bioinformation center. The development has not only
indicated the full support of SUN, an international tycoon
in the field of information industry, to China's genome and
bioinformation studies, but also marked China's world
first-class level in such studies. It is reported that this
is the first cooperation between China and an international
information tycoon in the field of bioinformation.
Along with the joined service of three SUN servers,
the mainframe servers used by the Center reached seven in
number, which made it one of the domestic institutes
enjoying most powerful computation capability. After the
inauguration, SUN will not only provide some fund support
for the Center, but also technical support for high
performance computation, network computation and
bioinformation.
In addition, the Center will strive
to forge more international cooperation ties. Since its
completion of 1% genome sequencing for the international
human genome project in May 2000, the Center has organized
joint studies on domestic pig genome together with the
Ministry of Agriculture of Denmark. Last August, it forged a
sister tie with the largest, US based genome research
center.
China-Japan's E-Books
On October 12, 2001, Jinke Electronics Co.
Ltd. under Nankai University inked an agreement with Japan's
Panasonic Co. Ltd. on the joint development of e-book
reading without power consumption. According to the
agreement, both parties will promote in China the e-books of
safe digital protection technology that is able to address
the intellectual property right of the contents in e-books.
In the meanwhile, both parties will make the same efforts to
diffuse the e-books in Japanese in Japan in a period of
three years. The said development shows that the e-book
reading without power consumption independently developed by
China on its own has made its headway into international
market.
Created by Tianjin based Jinke Electronics
Co. Ltd. with numerous merits such as ordinary book like
reading, large volume, capable of being updated any time and
reading without power consumption, the e-book reading
without power consumption is a book like mobile electronic
reading equipment. At the third High Tech Results Trade
Fair, Jinke made the debut of its first generation product
named Hanlin I, read-only e-book. It is reported that other
e-books capable of both reading and contents adding and
multi-media functions will soon be
followed.
NEWS BRIEFS
New
Net Servers
Thanks to his more than one-year
efforts and on the basis of his technical results achieved
abroad, Prof. Jin Hai working for the Computer School of
Huazhong S and T University has developed the so-called
super group net server by connecting the key components of
PC that can be found available in ordinary market to the
express network. It is briefed that made up of
about ten PCs, the server is designed with multiple
functions such as www linkage, e-mail and document service.
With strong expansion capacity, high reliability and lower
cost, the server may be added with more individual PCs when
necessary. As a result, the failure of any individual PC
will not affect the smooth operation of the whole system.
China's World Advanced Optic Elements
Manufacturing
2-D Optic Components Laser
Writer independently developed by the Changchun Institute of
Sophisticated Optical Instruments and Physics under the
Chinese Academy of Sciences has recently passed the
technical checks. The optic components manufactured with the
said equipment may simplify the optical structures of
telescopes and cameras, reduce their weight and enhance
their resolution. In addition the special optic components
worked out by such advanced optical equipment are of
extensive applications in both civic and defense areas.
Experts involved in the technical checks believed
that compared with their counterparts manufactured abroad,
the said equipment is of its unique overall composition and
individual techniques with its photoetching area and
associated accuracy better than their overseas counterparts,
especially in curve etching.
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