Chinese vice premier urges efforts to continuously enhance industrial innovation capabilities

CHENGDU, Sept. 10 — Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing has stressed the importance of integrating sci-tech breakthroughs deeply with industrial innovation and continuously enhancing industrial innovation capabilities.

Zhang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks during an inspection tour in southwest China’s Sichuan Province from Monday to Wednesday.

Zhang has also urged efforts to nurture new quality productive forces tailored to local strengths and continue generating momentum and new competitive advantages for high-quality development.

After visiting local enterprises, he called for efforts to cement the role enterprises play as the main drivers of innovation, and to steer them to increasing spending on research and development.

Zhang emphasized that industrial innovation must be driven by sci-tech advances and anchored in the real economy, and that both applied basic research and frontier research should be geared toward the pressing needs of industries.

Zhang also visited labs and factory production floors during his tour, as well as a food manufacturer, where he inspected food-safety work, stressing the need to strengthen oversight across the entire food production to ensure food safety.