Research laboratories should put more focus on research, and as for how to transform research findings into practical uses, this should be promoted and done by downstream enterprises, said Rao Zihe, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, at the National Symposium on Innovation-Driven Development of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), news portal The Paper reported.
Rao said the manufacturing industry is the backbone of the real economy, and basic research is the source of scientific and technological innovation. If the two fields can interact positively, the manufacturing industry will have more innovation potential.
Frontier basic scientific research refers to the research activities of recognizing natural phenomena and revealing natural laws, so as to acquire new knowledge, principles and methods.
In the past two decades, China’s basic research has been developing fast, but it has made few contributions to manufacturing innovations. The first reason, Rao said, is that the input from the manufacturing industry to basic research is not sufficient; in other words, the connection between manufacturing industry and basic research is not close enough, resulting in a lack of clarity about which field needs what kind of basic research.
Secondly, the manufacturing industry does not pay attention to basic research. At present, the evaluation mechanism of basic research still regards research papers as the main criteria, and it lacks an effective evaluation mechanism for solving practical problems.
Many fields of contemporary basic research rely heavily on the support of new, large-scale and high-end instruments and equipment, which has a huge demand from the high-end manufacturing industry. However, China's manufacturing industry still provides very limited support for basic research on this regard.
One of the main reasons is that the equipment needed for original basic research is high-end products. Under this circumstance, the costs of research, development and manufacturing are high, and not many users can bear the cost of developing expensive items, and the risk of failure is high as well.
The State should give more support to high-tech enterprises, aiming at the development and manufacturing of cutting-edge equipment in international basic research, according to the main needs of basic scientific research.
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