BEIJING - Senior Chinese officials are saying that the central government will make a greater effort at developing high-tech industries to support the domestic economy.
Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Vice-minister Zhang Xiang said at a ministers' forum on industrial policies, part of the China Beijing International High-Tech Industrial Week '99, that high-tech industries play an important part in China's foreign trade.
High-tech products and machinery exports maintained rapid growth in the first quarter of this year even though exports were down 7.8 percent from the corresponding period last year because of the Asian financial crisis.
Zhang said that the central government will first focus on developing the information, biological, pharmaceutical, new materials, electronics and electrical appliance industries. The president of the State Development Bank, Chen Yuan, said that the bank will increase cooperation with high-tech industries in a risk investment system, especially for information technology like the Internet and electronic business.
The vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Yan Yixun, said that they will increase attention to market needs and technological applications for industrial use.
Zhang says that China now has Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and a dozen other cities as experimental high-tech development centers.
Beijing will make added value high-tech products worth $19 billion by 2000, accounting for 27 percent of the city's industrial output, according to Meng Xuenong, the vice-mayor of Beijing.
(Asia Pulse/XIC)
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