Members of China's two leading academies, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), Sunday selected the world's top 10 science achievements for 2002 and China's top 10 science achievements.
None of the world's top 10 scientific achievements was independently developed by Chinese scientists. That indicated there was still a gap between Chinese scientists and their foreign counterparts, and "we've to work harder," said Lu Yongxiang, president of the CAS.
China could share the glory in only one of the world's top 10 breakthroughs, the discovery of the occasional disappearance of neutrino in a nuclear reactor. On Dec. 6, China, the United States and Japan announced the finding simultaneously.
China's top 10 science breakthroughs selected by the scientists are as follows:
1. the sequencing of the genome for paddy rice;
2.the launch of the Shenzhou-III and IV spacecraft;
3. the discovery of the country's first world-class gas field;
4. the damming of a diversion canal for the Three Gorges project;
5. the development of the third-generation mobile telecommunications system;
6. the development of a key CPU technology;
7. the breeding of a new plant species of cole;
8. the development of the Shenguang II super-large laser producer;
9. an initial finding in unraveling the secrets of aging;
10. a super computer.
(Xinhua News Agency January 27, 2003)
