The Communist Party of China (CPC) calls for stepping up development of the manufacturing industry, saying the role of the industry in supporting national economic growth should be brought into full play.

The proposal of the CPC Central Committee for formulating the 2006-2010 national program for social and economic development, released Tuesday, says new and high technologies should be widely used to develop China's name brands with proprietary intellectual property rights in the coming five years.

It suggests policy support to boost localization of major technological equipment, especially breakthroughs in high-efficient and clean power generating units and transmission equipment, large petrochemical installations, advanced transportation equipment, high-grade numerical-control machine tools, equipment for automatic control and integrated circuits, and advanced power devices.

Efforts should be made to vigorously develop information, biology, new materials, new energy and aerospace industries to cultivate more new growth points, the proposal says.

As for the information industry, emphasis should be placed on developing integrated circuits, software, new-generation mobile telecommunications, high performance computers and network equipment, while boosting the development and sharing of information resources and popularizing information technology.

To promote the biological industry, the proposal suggests efforts to take advantage of the country's resources and technologies to make new breakthroughs in the fields of health care, agriculture, environmental protection, energy resources and materials.

The proposal also stresses the development of the defense industry in a view to fostering a coordinated mechanism under which high technologies for national defense can be used for civilian purposes or the other way round.

Source: Xinhua