technology innovation is a national strategy, Lang’s words will keep us sober-minded and stimulate companies to strive for hitech excellence.

Xiao Hai (freelance writer): Many of the so-called hitech products in our country cannot stand up to close scrutiny. It is because the key technology and core parts of many brands and products that we are proud of have not been independently researched and developed by our own country.

China does have a hitech environment and relevant products. But how many of those technologies are used by the vast population of the country? Those products are only used by a few people, and some of the products can only operate in the lab. How can these be called “national hitech products”? Some claim their products are designed for the future. But how far away is the future? When the market is totally occupied by other countries, what can those products be used for?

As an outsider, I don’t need to probe into the essentials. By what we see, what we hear and what we use, we can immediately tell whether hitech products are made by a domestic company or a foreign one.

No one can deny that most of the Chinese IT companies are hired laborers of the world’s elite hitech companies, and this identity cannot be changed in a short period of time. But the question is, how short will the period be? It is a world in which foreign countries hold the core technology and a market that is occupied by foreign hitech products. China has a long way to go before it can achieve the goal of independent innovation. But how much time and how many opportunities have our rivals left us?

Zhang Gang (Executive Editor-in-Chief of China New Era): Only the big and strong Chinese enterprises have realized the importance of hitech research and development. But the large number of small and medium-sized enterprises are at the stage of mimicking or even pirating others’ technologies. Those definitely cannot be called hitech products.

The industry is developing rapidly

Jin Xinyi (Internet critic): Although some hitech companies are not on the right track, many of them are developing rapidly.

China perhaps doesn’t have real hitech enterprises but it does have some high and new technology companies, doesn’t it? The key question lies in how to define the high and new technology.

The majority of Chinese provinces and cities have claimed that they will strive to develop the high and new technology, notably Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai. Beijing stated that the industrial output value of the high and new technology has accounted for over one third of its total industrial output value, while Shanghai’s rate is 40 percent and Shenzhen’s 50 percent.

From the Central Government to local governments, the science and technology departments at all levels have divisions that specialize in examining and affirming enterprises’ high and new technology status.

In China, we use the term “high and new technology industry,” but not “hitech industry.” The latter means developing real advanced technology and products, while the former’s extension is much wider. Generally, the high and new technology includes international preeminence, domestic excellence and an improvement over the original technology level.

We have to admit that China is lagging behind in terms of a hitech industry. The number of Chinese researchers ranks second in the world, while the country is still weak in competitiveness. It is not contradictory. With respect to technological reform, China is actually an emerging country. There are three ways to catch up with the frontrunners.

For example, we must work hard to get to know the key to advanced technology. While we still lag behind the pacesetters, we are much more advanced than those behind us.

Or, we must develop a new function for an existing technology, or modify it to suit other occasions. That is a path the Japanese have taken.