CHINA  SCIENCE  AND  TECHNOLOGY
NEWSLETTER
The Ministry of Science and Technology
People's Republic of China
 
N0.301 July 20,2002
　
IN THIS ISSUE
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* Future Technical Development of the Major Industrial Sectors
* Chinese S&T Journals Welcomed
* State Enterprises Merging Regulated
* Nanometer Sulfur
* Massive Cow Embryo Transplanting
* China's First Superconductor R&D Base
* SINOSAT II in 2005
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SPECIAL ISSUES

Future Technical Development of the Major Industrial Sectors

China has defined the technical development orientations for its major industrial sectors in the 10th Five-Year Plan period (2001-2005) and the following 5 years. As is shown by the National Industrial Technical Policies jointly formulated by the State Economic and Trade Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the State Taxation Bureau, China will place its priorities on the development of high technologies and associated industrialization with more attention paid to information, bioengineering, advanced manufacturing, new materials, aviation and space, new energy and marine technology. China will employ those proven technologies to transform and upgrade its traditional sectors such as agriculture, energy and environmental protection, transportation, raw material, processing and manufacturing industries and building construction. More importance will be attached to developing strategic technologies dominating the economic development, keeping abreast with international competition and related to national strength and

economic and social security. In the meantime, China will enhance its efforts to develop key technologies of strong relevance and for upgrading China's overall industrial level as well as common technologies of strong sharing potentials, extensive applications and playing fundamental roles in the economic development. The corresponding measures include:

1) Take full advantage of WTO's rules and regulations to protect special industries and create necessary market environment for technical innovations of domestic enterprises. Encourage foreign invested businesses to establish research and development centers, promoting technology diffusions. Change the financial support mode for technical upgrading of traditional industries and associated technical innovation, establishing evaluation system for market accessibility and allowing enterprises to determine their own fund raising terms and approaches. Gradually establish the venture investment system and funds mainstreamed with capitals from public sources. Encourage venture capital both from home and abroad to flow in high tech industries, supporting high tech businesses to raise their funds through stock market. Stimulate the development of small and medium S and T enterprises.

2) Construct the national technical innovation system dominated by industrial enterprises. Establish and improve industrial R and D centers, enhancing the innovation capacity of the research institutes running under the enterprise system. Create sectional R and D bases mainly financed by large industrial groups and major research institutes operated under the enterprise system. Seek for worldwide cooperation and development opportunities, attracting the investment from multinationals and raising the level of international division of work.

3) China will select a number of high tech projects of strategic importance for their pre-phase investment and organize innovation-oriented strategic projects of national importance at appropriate time. Work out more policies to support technical innovations in terms of finance, taxation and banking. Guide and encourage enterprises to develop high tech products through governmental procurement, and further strengthen the construction of monitoring system for quality control, standardization, metrology and security.

Chinese S and T Journals Welcomed

As is shown by the latest statistics publicized by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China(ISTIC), as of July 2002, the number of S and T journals collected by the renowned SCI has increased from 63 to 67.  In its Journal Citation Reports published in 2001, the impact factor of two China's S and T journals in the English language Cell Research and World Journal of Gastroenterology have for the first time exceeded the threshold of 1 at 2.102 and 1.445 respectively. There are four Chinese S and T journals that have enjoyed a citation frequency more than 1,000 times.  They are Chemistry Journal of Chinese University (1,959 times), Chinese Science Bulletin(1,628 times), Acta Physica Sinica (1,227 times) and Chinese Physics Letters (1,215 times).

Based on the statistic analysis of Chinese S and T journals published at home, the ISTIC publishes Chinese S and T Journal Citation Reports every year. As is shown by the statistics of 2000, the average impact factor of the Chinese S and T journals went up from 0.208 in the previous year to 0.240. Of these journals, the ones whose impact factor exceeded 1 have reached 20 in number. The Chinese S and T journals have recorded an average citation frequency of 192.2 times and the Chinese journals whose total citations exceeded 1,000 times have reached 25 in number, of which Chinese Science Bulletin enjoyed the highest citation of 2,979 times.

In addition to SCI's collection, the Chinese journals collected by other major international search systems also ascended up in number. For example, EI having a century old history of engineering paper collection has seen an ascending number of the Chinese journals' collection from 40 to 104 in 2000, which also constituted a demonstration of international recognition of the Chinese S&T journals.

State Enterprises Merging Regulated

It is disclosed that to promote the smooth restructuring of China's state-owned enterprises, the State Economic and Trade Commission of China is now working on an act called the Interim Regulations on Management of Merging of Large and Medium State-Owned Enterprises by Foreign Capital. The Regulations will stipulate that foreign capital or private capital may merge or purchase large and medium state-owned enterprises and the state-owned equity could be sold at overseas stock markets. It is believed that China wants to reduce its equity assets currently in the possession of the government through merging or purchasing listed Chinese companies by foreign or private capital, which is also a demonstration of Chinese government's mature sense of market. It can be predicted that Chinese stock market will soon witness foreign investors acquiring equity assets of listed Chinese companies through changing hands or making themselves listed companies through the same process. In the meantime, it is expected that the policies will substantively stimulate the process of letting state-owned enterprises give away their positions in non-strategic and non-critical sectors.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
 
Nanometer Sulfur

In July 2002, the Chinese Geology University announced that it had successfully worked out the fist nanometer sulfur in the world.  Designed with original innovations, the nanometer sulfur thread manufacturing equipment developed by the University has reached the internationally advanced level. In the meantime, it is believed that a kind of nanometer sulfur powder patented in Germany was actually micron level product as its grains are of a range of 30-1500 nanometer(1.5UM).

The researchers of the University carefully processed sulfur with high technologies and made single sulfur into the powder with an average size of 30 nanometers. With the help of other physical and chemical means, they have successfully turned out nanometer sulfur thread, realizing the artificial manipulation of nanometer materials'shape. Meanwhile, researchers have found better approaches to improving the purity of nanometer sulfur to a percentage as high as 99.9999. It is reported that such highly purified nanometer sulfur can be used to make sulfur compound based semiconductors. In the process of manufacturing nanometer sulfur materials, researchers introduced the technique of simultaneous working on nanometer and purifying processes of sulfur. So far nanometer sulfur applications have been introduced in producing different detergent and cosmetic products such as nanometer sulfur face cream, shampoo and face film, and solutions found to address a number of problems such as the large size of nanometer sulfur(50UM in general), acerbity and poor bacteria resistance.

Massive Cow Embryo Transplanting

Employing a process similar to test-tube baby, the researchers of Chinese University of Agriculture successfully conceived local cow breeds in Mudanjiang City, Heilongjiang Province with cow embryos imported from Canada. So far they have made 500 local cows pregnant with the imported breed. It is reported that the project will make another 500 cows pregnant with the same approach in August and the total number of so conceived cows will reach 1,000 heads by that time. The conceived cows are expected to give birth to their foreign babies around April or May next year, which will gradually improve the cow breeds in Heilongjiang Province.

The so-called cow embryo transplanting is a process through which cow embryos developed from test-tube process are frozen in a container full of liquid nitrogen. After thawing, they are separated under microscope before being further transplanted into local cows. As a result, the local cows become the mothers of the new-borns, though they don't share the same blood line. The purpose of doing so is to improve the entire local cow breeds with foreign fine species.

With the help of the advanced technologies, researchers directly placed the embryos into local cows without slicing their bodies open. This is the first time for cow embryos being transplanted at such a large scale in the country, though some limited experiments were made in the past.

New Materials for Auto Brake

The semi-metal Vespel sedan car brake shoes independently developed by Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry under the Chinese Academy of Sciences have recently passed the verification check of National Auto Quality Examination Center. The Institute started its research and development of the new brake shoes from 2000 and worked out optimized recipes taking full advantage of the properties of Vespel. On the basis of repeated experiments, the Institute worked out the prototype manufacturing equipment, technical parameters, improved working process and eventually found the solution to the key techniques manufacturing the new brake shoes. By taking advantage of the high temperature resistance property of Vespel, they obtained the new special adhesive reagent, which led to the birth of the new semi-metal sedan car brake shoes. The road tests on a dozen of taxi cars have confirmed the stable, noiseless and chapping free performance of the new brake shoes with its technical indicators better than that of the conventional brakes. It is reported that its merits could become more apparent under harsh conditions such as accelerated speed and heavy payloads.

NEWS BRIEFS

China International S&T Cooperation Award

On July 16, 2002, six foreign scientists who have rendered their outstanding contributions to the development of Chinese S and T activities were announced the winners of China's International S and T Award for the year 2001. At the conferring ceremony, Mr. Xu Guanhua, Chinese Minister of Science and Technology presented the award certificates to two of the six winners: Charles Y.Yang, a US agricultural expert and Huanyu Mao, a Canadian electrochemistry expert. The other four awarded scientists are Micheal Petzet from Germany, Bjorn Erik Wilhelm Nordenstrom from Sweden, Kuroda Yoshimasu from Japan and Jose Israel Vargas from Brazil.

As they were unable to be present at the conferring ceremony, officials of Chinese Embassy or representatives from the Ministry of Science and Technology conferred the prize to the awarded in the cities where they are physically located.

Founded in 1994, China S and T Cooperation Award is a national prize approved by the Chinese State Council to acknowledge the contributions made by foreign scientists.  So far the Award has been granted to 26 foreign scientists.

China's First Superconductor R and D Base

In mid-July 2002, Tianjin Haitai Superconductor Telecommunication S and T Co. Ltd. broke ground for the construction of China's first international superconductor R and D base in Tianjin New Technology Industrial Park. It is reported that the high temperature superconductor filter, a core product to be manufactured at the base will be rolled off the assembly line at the end of November 2002 with a designed initial annual capacity for 20,000 sets though expecting to rise to 100,000 sets by 2005.

The high temperature superconductor filter is a core component of mobile telecommunication base station, integrated with both superconductor and wireless telecommunication technologies. Usually sitting at the lower part of base station antenna, the superconductor filter is the front part of a receiving system. Compared with traditional filters, the superconductor filter is able to reduce transmitting signal losses and effectively fight against interference among bands with high frequency utilization rate. Plus other merits such as greatly increased data transmission speed (by 4 times) and expanded unit base volume (by 2.5 times), the base station employed with such superconductor filter enjoys remarkably reduced costs.

SINOSAT II in 2005

It was revealed by the Chinese Institute of Space Technology on July 9, 2002 that SINOSAT II, a geostationary earth satellite representing the latest space technology in the country with a large volume and a long life-span will be sent into space in early 2005.

It is reported that built on the common platform developed by the Institute for new generation large geostationary telecommunication satellites, SINOSAT II is China's third generation telecommunication and broadcasting satellite designed with 24 routes of KU band large power telecommunication transponders and a working life of 15 years. With the help of the said platform, SINOSAT has so far completed its preliminary design and approval phase and moved into engineering implementation phase. The satellite is expected to see the wrap-up of its prototype development at the end of this year.  Experts expressed that it would take two years to get the satellite ready for its launch in 2005.

The Only Pure Thallium Mine in the World

In the late 1980s, Prof. Chen Daiyan of Guizhou Polytechnic University discovered an independent thallium rich mine mainly composed of red thallium ore over Xingren County, Guizhou Province. On the basis of his decade long study, Prof. Chen discovered the only pure thallium mine in the world. The discovery of thallium alum makes the first discovery of independent thallium ore by the Chinese scholars as well as the first discovery of new thallium ore containing hydrated sulfate in the world. Not long ago, the Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names under the International Mineralogical Association acknowledged the discovery and associated name. On July 4, 2002, renowned Chinese experts such as Ye Danian, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences rendered evaluations on the said study result and confirmed its major economic and theoretical values.