Stimulated by market-oriented management systems, research
institutes are developing high value-added techniques ranging from
health and food safety to agriculture and industry.
In
the Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Science, researchers are
talking about the popularization of "green agriculture" -- using
ecologically friendly organic manure to minimize and phase out
chemical fertilizers.
"Our academy has 10 laboratories that are engaged in the research
of high-yield vegetables, fruit, flowers, medicinal plants and
genetically modified fish. I want to set up a research centre for
'green agriculture' based on the 10 laboratories to commercialize
new agro-techniques," said Vice-President Xu Bingqing.
The academy has conducted cooperation projects with British
counterparts to develop pollution-free agriculture, said Xu.
Xu's academy is not alone in industrializing technological
discoveries.
Since research institutes were encouraged to run businesses in the
late 1980s, many of them have bid farewell to closed-door academic
research, the result of the previous planned economy.
Today, they have become technological firms, intermediate service
agencies or have set up shareholding companies, according to the
Ministry of Science and Technology.
Even in the landlocked northwestern Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region,
the Ningxia Institute of Forestry and other research institutes
have set up shareholding companies, according to the region's
science and technology administration.
The Zhejiang Academy of Medical Science set up the Pukang
Biotechnology Co. in 1992. The company has greatly stimulated
research enthusiasm for developing new technologies, since it
became a shareholding company early last year and began to include
technological discoveries as a part of researchers' income and
bonus distribution.
The company's chief-researcher Mao Jiangsen and his colleagues
developed a new hepatitis A vaccine in 1978.
The vaccine has helped reduce the rate of hepatitis A by 22 percent
per year, according to the academy's statistics.
Mao has been awarded with more than 20 million yuan (US$2.4
million), or a 29 percent share of the company's capital stock.
Such big award has broken records in Zhejiang Province and is rare
in domestic scientific circles, said Mao Guanglie, director of the
Zhejiang scientific and technological administration.
(People's Daily 10/09/2000)