Chinese top leaders call for innovation in science, technology

China's top leaders have called for the country to become more innovative in science and technology, and for these systems to be reformed in a bid to build scientific power. While attending the national conference on science and technology innovation held Friday and Saturday, President Hu Jintao stressed a strategy of invigorating the country with science and technology, as well as human resources. Hu also urged China to enhance its capacity for innovation in these fields, and to integrate science and technology with social and economic development. "We must focus on promoting innovation in science and technology if we want to push forward reform and opening up policy, the modernization of socialism, and achieve the overall target for building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way, improve the people's living standard, as well as achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," said Hu at the conference. Hu added that although China has established a relatively complete academic system with abundant talented people, it is still not strong in self-innovation capacity, and the science and technology system can not meet the demands of the economic and social development, as well as the international competition. Hu urged the country to grasp the opportunity of scientific and technologic revolution, and deepen the systemic reform so as to greatly improve the country's capacity in innovation in a short time. According to Hu, the targets for the development of science and technology in 2020 include building a national innovation system that conforms with the socialist market economy, significantly enhanced capacity in original innovation, improved environment for innovation. The president proposed six suggestions for accelerating the construction of a country of innovation, including promoting innovation-driven development, improving self-innovation capacity and system for the cultivation of talented people, deepening reform of scientific and technologic system, optimizing environment for innovation, and expand international cooperation. Hu also urged authorities at all levels to expand investment in science and technology so that spending in research and development of the whole society will account for more than 2.5 percent of GDP in 2020. Premier Wen Jiabao said at the conference that the most important work of the reform of science and technology system is to address the integration of science and technology with economy, as well as strengthen enterprises' capacity in innovation, which are of strategic importance to the long-term development of the country. For this purpose, Wen urged the government to support enterprises to build high-level research and development centers, integrate manufacturing with studies and research, build a sharing system for scientific and technologic resources, and create a fair and open market environment for enterprises. Wen also called for coordination of related policies and regulations to promote innovation. Other leaders including Wu Bangguo, Wen Jiabao, Jia Qinglin, Li Changchun, Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, He Guoqiang and Zhou Yongkang also attended the conference.