During a visit to Tsinghua University on Monday, China's top legislator Wu Bangguo called on the country's universities to make more efforts to conduct innovations in science and technology research.

Wu, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), made the visit one month ahead of Tsinghua University's 100th anniversary since its founding.

When visiting the department of electronics engineering, Wu made detailed inquiries regarding avant-garde research results and their prospects for application.

Wu said higher learning institutions, especially renowned universities like Tsinghua, should further enhance their capacity for innovation and strengthen scientific research in fundamental, cutting-edge and generic technologies.

He urged universities to "encourage innovation, tolerate failures and make breakthroughs in core and key technologies so as to offer science and technology support for the country's adjustment to the economic growth pattern as well as the development of a modern industrial system."

Wu also went to a library and chatted with the students.

He hoped the students could seize the good opportunities brought about by the national development, study hard to cultivate themselves to the need of the country and devote their whole life to the construction and development of the country.

"First-class universities should be an important source for fundamental research and innovation in the field of advanced technologies, an important force for innovation in theory and culture, an important platform for pooling innovative talents and a base for training them," he said.

He urged Tsinghua University to explore a way to cultivate talents and make achievements in technological research at the same time so as to build itself into one of the world's leading universities.

(Xinhua News Agency March 7, 2011)