Talent cultivation key to self-reliance in sci-tech

Editor's note: Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China for Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development outline a series of measures for achieving self-reliance in science and technology over the next five years. President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Hou Jianguo spoke to Xinhua News Agency about the academy's plan to implement the recommendations. Below are excerpts from the interview. The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.

The recommendations include improvements in the system for mobilizing resources nationwide and adopting unconventional measures to drive decisive breakthroughs in science and technology.

The academy will closely align our work with the demand for self-reliance in science and technology and take the initiative to lead and participate in more national tasks. It will strive to improve coordination between various sectors, leverage its institutional strengths and work hard to remove systemic bottlenecks so as to achieve decisive breakthroughs in core technologies.

It will also intensify efforts to promote basic research to accelerate efforts to produce original innovation in science and technology, and formulate better plans to make basic research more strategic, visionary and systematic.

At the same time, the academy will continue to deepen reform of systems for identifying and prioritizing research subjects, as well as reform of the organizational model and management systems.

We will innovate our organizational structure, optimize our management, strengthen our open collaboration, link basic research with technological breakthroughs and their application in industries, work hard to deliver original achievements and speed up efforts to establish a leading position in scientific and technological frontiers.

To meet the country's demand for major breakthroughs in science and technology, we need to keep deepening reform, and improve the incentive systems to enhance the country's strengths in science and technology. To achieve breakthroughs, the coordination between interdisciplinary and cross-organizational efforts needs to be strengthened.

The recommendations have put forward a series of steps for pursuing the integrated development of education, science and technology, and human resources.

These measures are expected to help China achieve the goal of becoming a major power in education, science and technology and talent by 2035.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences will actively focus on talent cultivation with the aim of producing an additional 100,000-plus outstanding young talents in the field of science and technology before 2035.

To achieve this, we will improve the coordination between the readjustment of disciplines and majors with the efforts to promote scientific research and cultivate talent. The focus should be on the demand in key areas, such as artificial intelligence, quantum technology, integrated circuits, biotechnology and advanced nuclear energy.

We need to adopt unconventional measures to develop urgently needed disciplines and majors, and explore ways to cultivate "customized" talent for major scientific and technological tasks.

The academy will work to create synergy among leading laboratories, key scientific and technological tasks and major research infrastructure to cultivate talent. There is a need to deeply integrate scientific research and academic research to produce technological breakthroughs.

We will strengthen the development of academic programs, and enhance the evaluation and awards systems to improve the dynamism between education, science and technology, and talent, thereby forming a stronger force to propel high-quality development.