I. Basic natures and purposes

The Key Technologies Research and Development program is an important component of the Ninth five-year Plan for the Nation Scientific and Technological Development, formulated with the purposes of fully carrying out the functions of the central government to meet partial specific needs in the multiple aspects of capital construction, technical reform, upgrading of industries, development of agriculture, sustainable development of society, etc. in the country. It is a national level program of science and technology financed by the state and specifically embodies the principle of orienting science and technology towards the main fields of economic development. Since 1982, the program has been implemented for three Five-year Plans and has provided a batch of key technologies and equipments for the economic and social development of the country, thus playing a significant role in promoting the economic and social development and the development of science and technology. The purposes of the Key Technologies Research and Development Program of the Ninth Five-year Plan are to concentrate resources upon solving a batch of key and general technological problems urgent for the promotion of industrial technical level and social development, strengthening the study of integration of existing individual technologies into complete steps and the study of application of those technologies to engineering, with emphases put on the consistency of scientific and technological objectives with economic objectives, combination of market orientation and driving force of technologies, so as to promote the process of integration of science and technology with economy.

II. The main objectives and conditions

The program emphatically includes the three major components of agriculture, new/high technologies and social development.

1. The Main Objectives

(1) Concentrate the main forces and make joint efforts to solve key technologies closely around the hot, difficult problems posed by the current national economic and social development and the problems with vital impacts on the long term development of the country and with directional, basic and comprehensive significance.

(2) Accelerate the process of integration of science and technology with economy, strengthen the development of key technologies for application to engineering and industries so as to provide technical support for equipping traditional industries with high technologies and developing new/high tech industries. Make breakthroughs in key technologies to produce several kinds of high tech products with high market competitiveness and promote the process of equipping traditional industries with high technologies ; and develop vital key technologies in the field of social development and promote the establishment of industries related with social development.

(3) Stabilize a team of scientific and technological research force.

2. The Main Contents

(1) Research on agricultural science and technology continues to be the first priority Aimed at the difficult key scientific and technological problems in the current and a relatively long term agricultural and rural economic development, the research is to provide strong technical support for realizing a net increase of 50 billion kg or a total amount of 500 billion kg of annual grain output by the end of the century, guarantee effective supply of the main agricultural products of grain, cotton, edible oil, meat, egg, fish, milk, etc, in the next century, raise farmers¡¯ income, improve agricultural environment and promote the stable growth of rural economy.

_Breed key, new varieties of high quality, high yield , high stress-resistant capacity for crop cultivation , forestry, animal husbandry and fishery, develop the supporting technologies of cultivation, fertilizing, water saving, etc., so as to significantly improve the quality of new varieties and increase the yield by 10-20%

_Establish large demonstrative areas for the five main crops, rice, wheat, corn, soybean and cotton, respectively, in the five main growing areas of Hunan, Henan, Jilin, Heilongjiang and Xinjiang, involving integration of comprehensive supporting technologies of improved varieties, cultivation , crop protection, processing, etc..

_Continuously improve the technological experiments and demonstrations for the harnessing and comprehensive development of mid low yield farm lands in the plains in Northeast, the areas of red and yellow soils in the south, the Huang-Huai-Hai area, the areas of loess in the northwest, the areas of dry land in the north, etc. So as to tap the potential of middle yield farmlands to a large extent; establish comprehensive demonstrative zones in the areas of middle yield farmlands already with necessary preliminary conditions (areas of dry land in the north , for example ) in order to provide technical support and demonstration for the agricultural and rural economic development in the 2lst century.

_Carry out research on the key technologies and establish and improve the monitoring networks for the control of important plant diseases and insect pests; actively develop new varieties of agricultural chemical and establish research and production bases of new agricultural chemical backed by the Shanghai Institute of Agricultural Chemical Research , the Jiangsu Institute of Agricultural Chemical Research, the Hunan Institute of Chemical Research and the Zhejiang Institute of Chemical Research.

_Carry out research on technologies for protection and utilization of forest and grassland resources and harnessing of desertification , develop oriented forests of fast growth and high yield and strengthen the research and demonstration on the technologies of shelter forest system.

_Develop technologies for scale raising of domestic animals and poultry, promote the ratio of meat to forage and the ration of commodity ones, lower the rate of death as caused by diseases and parasites and , at the same time, develop new forage additives and related technologies.

_Carry out research and development of technologies for in depth processing of agricultural products and by products and technologies of key agricultural machinery and equipments.

(2) Develop key high technologies

During the Ninth Five-year Plan period, first, the study of application to engineering and development of new/high technological achievements from the "863" and Key Technologies Research and Development Programs, etc, in the Eighth Five-year Plan period should be completed to form new/high tech products with Chinese intellectual property right and relatively high market competition capacity and promote the technical reform of conventional industries and the development of high-tech industries, promote the adjustment and upgrading of industrial structure; and , second, breakthroughs should be made in the key technologies in some major high-tech fields and provide technical support for the further industrialization.

_The research on information technologies should make breakthroughs in the key technologies of the new generation of large-sized digital program controlled exchanger, computers of high performance, information technology based commercial and trade equipments, high distinction TV(HDTV) digital acoustics broadcasting (DAB), Chinese information software platform, etc.;

_The research on advanced manufacture technologies will be focused on the study, development and demonstration of cars, integrated CAD, industrial robots, laser processing, precision shaping, etc.;

_The research on new energy sources will be focused on the study and development of high-power wind power generator and the application of solar energy and bio-energy;

_The research on new materials will cast on the study of supporting materials for a new generation of advanced weapons for defense purpose and new materials for cars and, at the same time, promote the industrialization of new materials and related technologies;

_The research on biological technologies will be focused on the study of agricultural breeding, gene medicine, marine biological products and the industrialization of key technologies.

(3) Promote the coordinated economic and social development with science and technology

The research on social development will be focused on the following five aspects in order to promote the implementation of the China Agenda 21:

• Medical and heath work , The study of epidemiology, pathogeny, disease mechanism and control will be continued, ten new medicines will be created and , at the same time, five safety evaluation centers (GLP), five clinical medicine centers (GCP) and five new medicine research and screening centers will established according to international standards and study of standardization (models) of the Chinese medicine compounds will be carried out.
• Exploration of resources in the western china. The research will be focused on the exploration and assessment technologies for non ferrous metal resources (Cu, Au, Ag, Pb, Zn) in Xinjiang, Tibet, etc..
• Environmental protection technologies, The research will be focused on the technologies of urban waste water purification, smoke desulphurization and reuse and high value appreciation of solid wastes and the full sets of technologies for control of urban drinking water source pollution and treatment of pollutants in drinking water.
• Utilization of sea water and marine biological resources. The research will be focused on the study and development of marine medicine, study of technologies of sea water desalinization and direct use(heat pumps, etc. )and the key technologies for production of potassium sulphate from sea water.
• Establishment of national comprehensive pilot zones. Establish about 40 national comprehensive pilot zones of social development in counties, medium, and small cities or districts in large cities.

(4) Support a few of important projects of science and technology industries with vital impacts on the national economy and with directional, basic and comprehensive significance

Take science and technology as the guide and market for orientation, the development of high technologies as objective, select a batch of key technical projects that have vital impacts on the long term development of the national economy, make overall arrangement covering research, design, development and industrialization and organize the implementation of key science and technology industrial engineering projects.

The key science and technology industrial engineering projects have the following features :

• The selection of projects embodies the properties of foresight and strategy by focusing on the research and development of key technologies with vital impacts on the current of key technologies with vital impacts on the current and future development of economy and science and technology and great marketing potential;
• The arrangement of projects emphasizes integration of research, design, development, demonstration, extension and marketing and embodies the properties of integration of science and technology engineering;
• The implementation of projects is to make breakthroughs in individual technologies or integration of multiple technologies and use the experience of individual points to promote the work in all the fields so as to promote the formation of new/high tech industries and promote the development of related industries, and hence has a good demonstration function;
• The organization of projects strengthens the combination of science and technology with the source of economy, strengthens the coordination between sectors and localities and integration of production, education and research units, makes efforts to work out a managerial mode and an operational mechanism of science and technology projects that are suitable for the socialist market economy and can promote the combination of science and technology with economy, and hence has important creativity.

In the Ninth Five year Plan period, the key science and technology industrial engineering projects arranged include:

• projects that can be industrialized in the near term, such as moderately well off type urban and rural residences for the 21st century, (Tianjin) project for the application and demonstration of Dawn (Shugunag) computers, factory agriculture, etc. And;
• projects with strategic significance of long term development such as power driven vehicles, HDTV, DAB, etc.. The implementation of those projects will promote the process of integration of research, development and industrialization and will foster new points of economic growth and promote the development of new/high technologies and their industrialization in China.

III. The main supporting conditions and measures

The key Technologies Research and Development Program of the Ninth Five-year Plan needs about 9 billion yuan of fund and the fund will be raised through multiple channels, including governmental appropriation, sector or locality self-raised fund, loan from banks, implementing agency self-raised fund, etc.. It is planned that 2.2 billion yuan will be provided by the government, in which agriculture occupies 630 million yuan, or 28.7% of the total, high technologies 870 million yuan, or 39.5%, and Social development 700 million yuan, or 31.8%. It is also planned to provide about 6 billion yuan of loan as support to the development of science and technology.

The administrative measures for the program include:

• combining department administration with expert administration , that is , while the department responsible for the organization of project conducts administration of project implementation, a project expert committee is established to take part in the administration of project over the whole process from project institution to acceptance;
• setting up a rolling project institution and adjustment mechanism for the program, starting project by year according to the principle "Start a project only when the necessary conditions have become available".
• tentatively making "foundation type" management or "post subsidy" for the fields that need long term stable support, because they have impacts on the long term benefits of the country, but their objectives by phase are difficult to determine and there are multiple technical approaches to choose, such as control of major diseases and crop breeding, so as to more effectively use the funds;
• applying the competitive mechanism so as to meet the need of market economy, and encouraging the selection of agencies in charge of project through the bidding approach;
• improving evaluation agencies and strengthening the evaluation of implementation of project through a third party in order to monitor and guarantee the realization of project objectives;
• further standardizing the utilization and management of the funds of science and technology so as to ensure adequate, effective and timely use of the governmental appropriation.

IV. Administrative organization and regulations

1. Administrative Organization

The local department for the organization of project is determined by the related specialized department in cooperation with the Department of Planning in the Ministry of Science and Technology. The agency for the implementation of project is determined by the department for the organization of project and, in principle, the agencies for the implementation of special subjects are determined through bidding.

2. Administrative Regulations

(1) The Detailed Rules for the Administration of the Key Technologies Research and Development Program of the Ninth Five-year Plan has been formulated for the administration of the program.

(2) The regulation for project bidding has been formulated in order to promote the development of the socialist market economy and incorporate the competitive mechanism.

(3) The foundation type administration has been implemented for partial projects and specific management methods have been formulated accordingly in order to suit for the characteristics of certain research fields.

(4) It has been clarified that loan should be an important component of fund for the program in order to establish multiple channels for fund raising and related regulations have been formulated.

(5) Realize rolling management and strengthen annual budgeting and tracing management.