Zhong Zhihua:China's independent innovation

The restructuring of our many research institutes is quite successful which play a very explorative role for the technological innovation of our country. However, one of the remaining problems is that our bases and platforms of research for technological contribution still fall far short of the development demand of our industry, not to speak of the demand of self-innovation. So I think this is an extremely important question which needs our high attention.

I think the three aspects of meaning of integration of production, teaching and research are equally important. We shall know them full well and try our best not to misplace them. I talked just now that we have some misplacement in the three aspects and the integration needs to be strengthened. This involves a question of integration of mechanism. As a matter of fact, it is very difficult to do such a thing. I think this is also a question of culture, a question of our history of industrialization, because we have not tasted the sweet of successful integration of production, teaching and research. At the same time, we do not know how we can best integrate production, teaching and research. Therefore, we are not very certain in mind on the initiative, confidence and expectation of integration. We need a long-term process to achieve that even that we have some very successful case in these area. I think if we can not do very well in these areas, the self-innovation will be influenced negatively.

Thirdly, the necessity and great potentiality of integration of production, teaching and research.

Automobile products are high-tech ones of integration of many disciplinary areas. It is not a long time ago we did not regard the automobile as high-tech products. This phenomenon was caused by many factors and I believe everyone was aware of this. We usually talk about that science is a pursuit of truth, humanities a pursuit of goodness and art pursuit of beauty. Our automobile industry also needs to pursue truth, goodness and beauty and we are supposed to achieve these. What are the truth, goodness and beauty about here? The truth is mainly about the physical science and advanced technology; the goodness means the automobile shall be human-based secure, energy-saving and environmental friendly; the beauty requires us to be exquisite about the vehicle’s appearance and inner room. In a word, automobile products are industrialized products integrating art and high-tech. On the other hand, automobile products also need a lot of inputs. Some of the applications of technologies like new materials and electronic technique need accumulation of many years, 10 or 20 years or even more. The kind of input will produce a lot deficiency if not integrated by production, teaching and research.

The technological level of a country’s automobile products actually reflects the level of one entire country. The entire product will not satisfy the demand of customer if any link of the industrial chain does not meet the requirement. So it is true that we use components from abroad can not be assembled well. The reason is that any link can not be handled with careless if you want to produce a good product.

So the development of automobile technology and industry can not be achieved through a single angle. To improve the ability for auto self-innovation and industry need technology. Of course we have to cooperate with foreign countries on many high-end technologies. Everyone is aware that the real and major technology can only be acquired through cooperation with foreign counterparts even we have a lot of emerging new technologies continuously. It is true that we made a lot of achievement through digestion, absorption and improvement of introduced technologies. What I am going to say is that we need support from all sides if we want to achieve the capacity of self-innovation at the international level.

At the same time the higher education institutes have great potentials under the current situation of China. It will take a long term, 5 years or 10 years, for our enterprises to develop a leading technology and product in the world from the very beginning. Everyone knows that the enterprise will spend a lot of money on all areas if they are determined to do so. However, our higher education institutions have much resource to utilize. For instance, we have 38 universities on the “985” project list and 20 billion RMB is invested into these universities. I don’t know whether the enterprises here are aware of the fact or not. What’s the money for? The answer is that they are invested for initial research to meet the demand of national economic construction and social development. If our auto industry does not utilize the resource, the other industry will do this job. One of the utilizing ways is to integrate the military with civilian purposes. This means that enterprises do not have to spend much money investing the higher education institutes. Actually, small amount of money from the enterprises will guide the 20 billion RMB in 985 universities to produce big results. On the other hand, the talents in these areas are more important. There are much resource with regard to the research bases, state key laboratories, state engineering centers and other research bases at the provincial and ministry level. If our enterprises guide them a little bit more, the resource can be mobilized to make more contributions towards the self-innovation in the auto industry.

I have some experience of own in this regard. Why do I think the self-innovation in auto industry needs the integration of production, teaching and research and simultaneously have great potentials? That is because I have very profound experience in the following aspects:

First, we have a very cooperation with SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co., Ltd. for over 10 years. Of course we did not enough. Mr. Shen and Mr. Yao, senior executives from SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co., Ltd. are supposed to be present here. I am really grateful for the support they provide to us. In addition to that, there are many other auto enterprises like Changfeng Corporation which gave us much support. The laboratory of my university has achieved a lot in the areas of technology innovation, academic research. The achievement we made actually is the reflection of our services to the enterprises in the area like security technology, light weight technology and structure optimization technology. We now have more than 100 teachers and postgraduates residing long in the SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co., Ltd. We also have a plan for mutually cultivating talents. The integration between us is very close and the orientation is relatively clear. This is the first practical experience I mentioned.

Secondly, we undertook a mid-term plan. The meaning of the plan is to focus on the self-innovation capacity. The Chinese traditional medicine has a concept of sufficiency or deficiency of Qi in middle-jiao. We want to talk about this because we hope the Chinese auto industry can make a good showing (having some Qi in Chinese). We China have already developed quite well. But what I am here talking about is the capacity of self-innovation. This project is progressing quite well now. We are planning to present some sample cars in celebration of the 60 anniversaries of National Day. These sample cars projects are worked by many related universities, enterprises and research institutes, like Shanghai Automotive Group and Changfeng Corporation etc.

Thirdly, we have make great progress in the development of buses and cars. Recently we are prepared to use the above-mentioned platform to develop the vehicles of new energy. I believe that we can bring into full play the innovative mechanism of integration of production, teaching and research if we make advanced research by centering the subjects of security, energy-conservation and environmental protection and centering the subjects of truth, goodness and beauty.

In essence, I believe that self-innovation in auto industry is not only the security needs of auto industry, economy and international situation, but also the needs of transformation of development mode in the relevant social areas. The self-innovation of China’s auto industry has established a certain basis but the gap is still quite big in comparison to the foreign counterparts. The top priority for us now is to promote the awareness of the self-innovation and continuously improve the innovative mechanism. To develop the self-innovation in auto industry by integration of production, teaching and research already has some experience and basis too, but the potential has not yet brought into full play. It is not an easy job to make a success in integrating production, teaching and research. It needs us to continuously deepen our understanding, promote our consensus and work together. I firmly believe that the integration of production, teaching and research surely can play a very unique role in the process of self-innovation of auto industry.

Thank you all!（尚莱/螃蟹）

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