Zhong Zhihua:China's independent innovation

【Moderator Fu Yuwu:

I am very thankful to Mr. Yao’s wonderful presentation. I would like to use three words as comments, i.e. “deep-going, splendid and simplified”. I have been always involved in micro work and not familiar with macro things. It’s very amazing that such a complicated economic phenomenon was explained by you with such simple words as “three reasons, four difficulties and three sentences”. Your elaboration is very deep-going. I think you are a really good teacher. I have the feeling of being a student now.

Just now when talking about macro-economic situation, Mr. Chen, Director General, has made a brief introduction about plans on industrial adjustment and revival. Let’s listen to the cooperation of production, teaching and research on the technical level. Warm applause please goes to Mr. Zhong Zhihua, President of Hunan University and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The title he is to present is “Enhance the self-innovation capacity building through innovative mechanism of integration of production, teaching and research”.】

Mr. Zhong Zhihua, President of Hunan University and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering

Zhong Zhihua:

Distinguished leaders, Honored guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good morning!

First, I am very grateful to the Forum for providing us such an opportunity of learning and communication. What I am going to talk is something I talked before somewhere, however, I think it is extremely important. I was particularly pleased when Director General Chen asked the companies to regard the self-innovation as a priority against the current good situation. As a result, I think my topic is both in line with my personal focus and interest and of great importance to the future development of China’s automobile industry.

Let me brief all of you from the following aspects:

First, what’s the meaning of self-innovation in automobile industry?

We talked a lot about automobile self-innovation. I remembered that all of us have focused on the auto self-innovation no less than 2 months after the National Conference on Science and Technology in 2006. Whether automobile needs self-innovation is not a question now, but there still lacks enough discussion on how to make technological innovation. I personally think we need to understand the meaning of innovation firstly. This is quite important because we always talk about technological innovation at different levels. If we don’t understand the exact meaning of innovation, there will be probably some negative influence on our strategy and decision-making.

My personal understanding to this question is that, innovation happens at levels of technology, product and management. To be more specific, the technology includes fundamental research, applied basic research and hard technology. If we do the classification in line with the system, there shall be technology of components, assembly and entire vehicle. Furthermore, there shall be technology of designing, manufacturing, material and controlling according to the angle of different links of vehicle production process. That’s what I think about the innovation from technological level.

Products include the vehicle and its utility system. What’s the utility system? It is the system that equipped on the vehicles, extension in other words. So the construction machinery and many commercial vehicles shall be covered by the automobile products innovation. The utility system shall also include the management mode, i.e. the innovation on management, mode of production, mode of operation, etc.

When talking about self-innovation, we often hear about the outsiders mention the pressure what the vehicles face. For instance, being a researcher on auto technology and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, I have been always asked and embarrassed by a question, that is, “Why don’t we have a very high-end self-brand of auto while we have such a good national auto industry?” Such questions are raised for many times. Sometimes I answered in this way. I said it is caused by many reasons and many our current brands are self-made. But people who ask those questions are concerned about the high-end brands. Therefore, I think name brands and high-end brands are related to management. It is related to mode of production and operation and it is a process of long-term accumulation. When talking about the self-innovation, I think we need to distinguish these meanings and levels. These are the basis of the good understanding and response to the problems in the auto industry.

When talking about the self-innovation, there are many concepts with confusion. For instance, what’s the linkage and difference between the independent technology, product and management and self-innovative technology, product and management? And how is the capacity of self-innovation? Nowadays we can have technologies, products which are both independent and innovative, but we do not own such ability. So what I am concerned about is the capacity building of self-innovation. We can have one product or one technology which is independent or many are independent, but I am most concerned about whether the ability owned by ourselves or not. This is a question which will have profound impact on China’s development of auto technology and industry in long term. Capacity includes talents, equipment and craftwork. It also includes the technological process, norms and database which we often mention. Capacity is composed of the experience which is embodied by putting the experience into database.