Information industry

The information industry has become China's economic mainstay. In 2004, the added value of China's information industry, the world's third largest, stood at 950 billion yuan. Output value, sales and profits of electronic and telecoms manufacturing all outstripped those of traditional industries, making the greatest contribution to national economic growth.

By the end of 2004, China had boasted 74,429 MB export broadband capacity, 670,000 websites, 430,000 China-coded domain names, 41.6 million computers with Internet access, and 94 million Internet users, ranking second in the world. By the end of 2008, China boasts 298 million internet users, claiming the title of the nation with most internet users in the world. A host of web-based services have thrived, among them network education, online banking, E-commerce, Internet advertising, news, video, and charged Mailpostal services, Internet Protocol (IP) telephone, SMS text-messaging, online recruitment, information services and games.

Posts and telecommunications are important elements of the information industry. After decades of construction and development, a national postal network has taken shape, with Beijing and other major cities as the centers, linking all cities and rural areas. As for the construction of the telecommunications network, a basic transmission network featuring large capacity and high speed is now in place. It covers the whole country, with the optical cable as the mainstay, supplemented by satellite and digital microwave systems.

By 2000 China had completed its "8 Across, 8 Down" optical cable grid, linking the capitals of all provinces and autonomous regions and over 90 percent of counties and cities. Every provincial or autonomous regional capital is connected by at least two optical cables. By the end of 2004, the nation's optical cables extended 3.377 million km. In coastal and economically advanced inland areas, optical cable has reached villages, towns, urban residential communities, and high-rise buildings, thus becoming the main technology for transmitting information. China has participated in the construction of a number of international land and sea-bed optical cables, such as the China-Japan, China-ROK, and Asia-Europe sea cables, and Asia-Europe and China-Russia land optical cables. China initiated the construction of the 27,000-km Asia-Europe land optical cable, the world's longest, passing through 20 countries in its journey from Shanghai to Frankfurt in Germany. So far, China has established telecommunication business relations with more than 200 countries and regions in the world.

At the end of 2004, China had 647.26 million telephone subscribers, 312.44 million fixed lines and 334.82 million mobile phone subscribers, constituting the world's second-largest telephone network. All cities above the county level had program-controlled switchboards, and program-controlled telephones made up 99.8 percent of the total. There were 8.7 million circuits, all of them automated, for long-distance business. China started mobile telecommunication business in 1987 and the mobile network now covers all large and medium-sized cities, and more than 2,800 small cities and county seats. International roaming service exists with over 150 countries and regions all over the world.

The public data telecommunications network has taken initial shape, with group data exchange network, digital data network, computer Internet, multimedia telecom network, and frame relay network as the mainstays, covering over 90 percent of counties and cities in China, making it one of the world's largest public data telecommunications networks. Radio and TV networks continue to develop rapidly, and the number of radio and TV users exceeded 200 million by 2005. Almost all villages in China have access to radio and TV broadcasting.

Agriculture and medicine

Agricultural research: NNSFC funds applied research for agriculture. Important progress has been made on proteinase inhibitors which kill insects by halting their digestive processes.

Work on medicine and drugs in China includes the development of hepatitis vaccines and studies on the activity of traditional Chinese materia medica. For the first few decades of the PRC, Chinese research focused on examining the traditional pharmacopoeia from the perspective of modern medicine to identify active ingredients in Chinese medicines. This approach was not very successful, said NNSFC officials recently, so now research examines the effect of traditional Chinese medicines on the whole body. These include efforts to understand the effectiveness of traditional pharmaceuticals in such areas as post-stroke rehabilitation.

Some Chinese traditional medicines are now used to reduce suffering and extend the lives of HIV victims in China. Chinese assistance workers in Africa also provide these remedies to their patients. Trachosantheum derived from a traditional Chinese pharmaceutical has been a valuable tool to combating multiple-drug resistant malarial strains in South Asia. Important work on this drug has been done at the Institute of Cell Biology in Shanghai.

Genetics and biodiversity

NNSFC began funding projects on biodiversity in 1993. There are six research groups working on biodiversity, one of which is in Beijing.

China鈥檚 Genome project is headquartered in Shanghai. Since 1993, the Chinese Genome Project has carried out genome structural analyses, collected samples of Chinese minorities for a national depository and developed techniques for human genome research informatics. The project started with the rice genome and expanded to human genome research with a focus on disease-causing genes. A liver cancer gene project begun in 1993 is now focusing on chromosome 17. Other groups focus on genes associated with esophageal cancer and psychological disorders. A research group at the Institute of Medical Biology at West China University in Chengdu is looking for disease causing genes in several cell lines. Twelve institutes and nineteen research groups are involved in the human genome project. Shanghai has become a major Chinese center for biotechnology and human genome research.

Global change

Global change research projects include the carbon cycle in ice zones of Antarctica; the relationship between elevation of carbon dioxide concentrations in atmosphere and aquatic organisms, and the effect of sulphocompounds in China on global change. The global change program is linked to four international programs on global change: the International Geosphere and Biosphere Program (IGBP), the World Climate Research Program (WCRP), the Human Dimensions Program for Global Change (HDP/GC) and DIVERSITAS.

Chinese science strategists see Mainland China's greatest opportunities in newly emerging fields such as biotechnology and computers where there is still a chance for the PRC to become a significant player. Most Chinese students who went abroad have not returned, but they have built a dense network of transpacific contacts that will greatly facilitate U.S.-China scientific cooperation in coming years. The United States is often held up as the standard of modernity in the PRC. Indeed, photos of the Space Shuttle often appear in Chinese advertisements as a symbol of advanced technology. The PRC's small but growing human spaceflight program, whose Shenzhou spacecraft carried the first PRC citizen safely into space October 15, 2003, is a source of national pride.

The U.S.-PRC Science and Technology Agreement remains the framework for bilateral cooperation in this field. A five-year agreement to extend the S&T Agreement was signed in April 2001. There are currently over 30 active protocols under the Agreement, covering cooperation in areas such as marine conservation, renewable energy, and health. Japan and the European Union also have high profile science and technology cooperative relationships with the People's Republic of China. Biennial Joint Commission Meetings on Science and Technology bring together policymakers from both sides to coordinate joint S&T cooperation. Executive Secretaries meetings are held each year to implement specific cooperation programs.

Space science

Chang'e I, China's moon probing project is proceeding in full swing in a well-organized way. China's first moon probing is planned to be launched in three years. Four scientific goals have been set for the first stage of the program, Chang'e I moon orbiting project. This was disclosed recently by Ou'yang Ziyuan, academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences and China's chief scientist on moon probing. He also detailed the project as follows. Verifications have been conducted on China's moon probing program for years. There were additional verifications on the technical scheme in recent two years. Now everything is going on as scheduled.

The first stage of the program, Chang'e I as it is called, will mostly adopt existing mature technologies and there is nothing insurmountable or fundamental problems technically. However, it takes time to develop all equipment to be installed inside the satellite and to establish systems for orbiting, carrying, monitoring, and ground receiving, as the project aims at the lift-off of a moon probing satellite and making it orbit the moon. It is scheduled that three years is needed before the maiden visit to the moon can be made.

According to the short-term planning, there are three stages for China's moon probing, that is, orbiting, docking, and returning. In the first stage, orbiting, China's first moon exploration satellite will be developed and launched which will conduct a comprehensive, overall, and panoramic observation to capture three-dimensioned graphs of the moon. Researches for the second stage, docking, include the launch of a docking vehicle for lunar soft landing, soft landing test, inspection around the lunar surface by a lunar rover, on-spot explorations, and moon-based astronomical observations. For the third stage, returning, in addition to a docking vehicle, a small-sized sampling capsule will be launched which will collect key samples from the moon and return to the earth. "Orbiting" is presently central to China's moon probing program.

There are four scientific goals for this stage of "orbiting".

For the first goal, there will be three-dimensioned graphs of the lunar surface. Basic structures and physiognomy units of the lunar surface will be defined precisely. Researches on the shape, size, distribution, and density will be made on the crates on the moon. These researches on the crates will produce data for identifying the age of the surface and early history of terrestrial planets and provide information needed to select the sites selecting for soft landing on the moon surface and for the lunar base.

The second goal is concentrating on the distribution and types of elements. It will be focused on the content and distribution of 14 elements such as titanium and iron which can be exploited. A map of elements distribution around the moon will be sketched. Graphs for lunar rocks, mineral materials and geology will also be drawn respectively. The area rich in specific elements will be identified. And prospects of the development and exploitation of the mineral resources will be evaluated.

The third goal is to detect the depth of the lunar soil through microwave radiation. In this way we can calculate the age of the lunar surface and distribution of the lunar soil on the lunar surface. This lays a foundation for the further estimates of the content, distribution, and quantity of helium-3 which is power generating fuel caused by nuclear fusion.

The fourth goal is focused on the space environment between the earth and the moon. The average distance between the earth and the moon is approximately 384,000 km, which is in the Earth's far magnetotail. Here the satellite probes solar energetic particles, plasma in solar wind, and the interaction between the solar wind and the moon and between the tail of the magnetic field of the earth and the moon.

Astronautics

As the fifth country to develop and launch an independent man-made satellite, the third to master satellite recovery technology, China is in the world's front ranks in many important technological fields, including satellite recovery, the carrying of multiple satellites on one rocket, rocket technology, and the launch, test and control of static-orbit satellites. Achievements have been made in remote-sensing satellites, communications satellites, and in manned space experiments.

• Manned spacecraft: October 15, 2003 saw the successful launch of the first manned spacecraft "Shenzhou V", developed independently by China, at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, and following four unmanned launches between November 1999 and December 2002. "Shenzhou V" sent China's first astronaut into space and returned successfully, making China the world's third country to independently develop and deploy manned space flight technology. " Shengzhou VI", carrying two astronauts, successfully accomplished its space flight on October 12-17, 2005.

• Man-made earth satellites: From the launch of its first man-made earth satellite "Dongfanghong No. 1" in April 1970 to the end of 2000, China successfully launched 75 satellites, including 48 developed by China itself and 27 commercial satellites for foreign customers. Fifteen types of satellite were launched in the 10th Five-Year Plan period (2001-2005), including communications, navigation, meteorological, resource remote-sensing, and space survey satellites, representing half of all satellites launched in the past 30 years.

• Carrier rockets: China has developed 12 models of the "Long March" carrier rocket series, and is able to launch low earth orbit, geostationary orbit, and sun-synchronous orbit satellites and spaceships. The successful launch rate is over 90 percent; between October 1996 and December 2004, "Long March" rockets made 83 launches. China's next step is to develop a new carrier rocket series. The Jiuquan, Xichang and Taiyuan satellite-launch centers are internationally recognized.

Social sciences

There are five major systems for social sciences research, which involve about 100,000 researchers; they are: the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, local academies of social sciences, schools of higher learning, research units affiliated to government agencies and army-affiliated research units.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, established in 1977, is responsible for creative theoretical exploration and policy research for the improvement of humanities and social sciences standards throughout China. The academy is the top academic organization in the field, by virtue of its comprehensive scope and concentration of human talent, data and research materials. The Academy has 31 research institutes and 45 research centers with over 3,200 researchers, some 1,700 of them senior experts.