It will take about 20 years for China to become an industrialized
country, and after that, the country needs another 30 or 40 more
years to develop into a modernized one.
This was predicted by Xu Kuangdi, president of the Chinese Academy of
Engineering (CAE), at a recent local symposium in Hangzhou,
capital of east China's Zhejiang Province.
China is now on the way to industrialization and modernization, Xu
said, noting that China has set up a basically independent
industrial system, but in the majority of engineering science and
technology fields, the country still lags far behind the advanced
level in the world.
He
said that China should put most of its scientific and technological
resources into engineering science and technology fields, in order
to realize its industrialization in the coming 20-30 years.
Xu, the former mayor of Shanghai, the largest metropolis in China,
called for greater efforts to strengthen studies of basic
sciences.
After decades of efforts in industrialization, China has become a
leading industrial producer in the world, according to the
academician. In as early as 1999, China had ranked among the
leaders of the world in the outputs of steel, cement, coal,
chemical fertilizer, and television set.
(Xinhua News
Agency October 28, 2002)