Innovation, Integration and Inclusion of Sustained Growth

——Innovation: Propelling Social Progress

Wu Jichuan

The Microsoft Government Leaders Forum – Asia

2007.4.18

Beijing China

Mr. Chairman, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

Good morning. First of all, I would like to extend my congratulations on the successful inauguration of this forum. I want to thank Microsoft for arranging such an important and high-level meeting in Beijing, and to express my warm welcome to the officials, experts, scholars and friends from all of the world. The theme of this forum: “innovation, integration and inclusion of sustained development”, is a most concerned subject of all countries. I have worked in Telecommunications & IT industries for many years, and as a member of Standing Committee of National People\\'s Congress, Chairperson of the Education, Science, Culture and Health Committee, I am very interested in this topic. Now I would like to talk to you through my following speech titled “Innovation: Propelling Social Progress”, to share my views and discuss with you.

The history of the development of human society is the history of mankind’s understanding of the world and the history of innovation. Innovation is mankind’s scientific discovery of the laws of nature and the invention and creation by man in response to what is needed for productive activities and in the course of living. These practices have played a decisive role in helping people to understand nature, to improve tools for production and to raise the quality of people’s lives.

In ancient times, that is in the primitive era, man made fire by boring into wood so that he could eat cooked rather than raw food. Marked by the progress in the tools used for production, man progressed through the Stone Age, the Iron Age, the Agrarian Age, the Industrial Age and ultimately entered the age of modern civilization. In a history of thousands of years, man has experienced many different levels of productive forces which can all be attributed to his innovation.

In ancient China, the Four Great Inventions -- the compass, gunpowder, papermaking and moveable type printing -- significantly drove human progress. The compass opened up world markets and enabled man to navigate the seas, thus playing a decisive role. Gunpowder blew to bits the troops of knights of the day. Papermaking and moveable-type printing foreshadowed the advent of civilized society where it was possible for people to communicate through the written word. The ancient Indians invented the ten numerals, including “zero”, and decimal numeration, which is still well known and recognized by us today. These “innovations” are all over a thousand years old. At the time, it could take about a thousand years for an influential innovation to be disseminated and widely. However, we could not have built modern civilization without these basic, primitive innovations. As we went from the Agrarian Age to the Industrial Age, people were very dissatisfied with hand-operated equipment. There was an increasing demand for engine power due to industrial development. As early as the 2^nd century BC, the ancient Greeks invented an engine that was powered by the reaction from spurting steam; in 1690, the Frenchman Barben invented the first piston steam engine. On the basis of his predecessors’ work and with his own hard work and numerous trials and failures, James Watt invented the steam engine with connecting rod, flywheel and centrifugal speed governor in 1782.

In 1784, the British government granted a patent to James Watt for producing steam engines, which signified that man had entered the age of the steam engine and also significantly expedited the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in 18th century Europe. By the 1830s, steam engines had been widely used in various sectors such as textile, metallurgy, coal mining and transportation; for example, the American Robert Fulton invented the steamboat and the Englishman George Stephenson invented the steam locomotive. The invention of the steam engine brought enormous benefits to production and everyday life as well as having served as a huge impetus for historical development, making Europe the base for industrial civilization. Based on the results of his research, Benjamin Franklin, the famous American inventor, published the well-known fundamental theories of electricity, “Experiments and Observations on Electricity” in 1751. The work immediately took Europe by storm and simultaneously made Franklin the father of the study of electricity. In July 1752, Franklin risked his life in performing an experiment to attract electricity from thunderclouds in a successful test of his hypothesis. That is why people say, “It is Benjamin Franklin who separated God from his thunder”. Establishing the theories of electricity laid down the theoretical foundation for the birth of electrical machines and generators, triggered the invention of the electric light, the telephone and electric-powered vehicles --- things we see in our everyday lives --- as well as various cutting-edge electrical technologies. It was these same theories that enabled man to move from the age of the steam engine into the age of electricity.

The transformations referred to above took place over centuries. Going into the 20th century, the United States emerged as the leader of innovation with the invention and use of electricity, the semiconductor and the telephone. Now let’s analyze the advancement of modern civilization by looking at some inventions and innovations in the field of information and communication technologies.

In the 1820s, Samuel Morse’s telegraph, Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone and Guglielmo Marconi’s radio were ranked as the three major inventions in the telecommunications sector, with radio being the most important one. In the 1930s, with the advent of carrier technology, radio transmission was replaced by copper wire, which brought increased capacity. In 1960, an American scientist invented the ruby laser, which laid the foundation for optical transmission. In 1970, Corning produced the first optical fiber as a satisfactory carrier for the transmission of electrical signals. Then, optical fiber transmission took the place of copper wire transmission and capacity was greatly expanded. Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) was employed in optical transmission, which increased the transmission rate to a few hundred Gbps, fully breaking the bottleneck in telecom transmission. In 1965, Bell Labs invented the first SPC (Stored Program Control) switch, which unveiled the SPC era, promoted the transition from mechanical switches to SPC switches and laid down the foundation for the future convergence with computer networks.

In 1960, Bell Labs accomplished, for the first time, a frequency division analog cellular mobile wireless communications trial, which unveiled the global study and use of wireless mobile cellular communications. Today the services provided by wireless cellular technologies are making our daily lives easier and mobile phones have become indispensible. The invention and application of the Internet have had an enormous impact. In 1986, the United States connected several computers disbursed over various locations via the communications network. Initially intended to expand the function of a single computer through resource sharing, this ultimately turned out to create the Internet, which has completely changed our way of life. Intellectual property (“IP”) has become a household word in modern society. With the advent, innovation and development of computers, microelectronics, communications and software technologies, the most dynamic IT industry has become a star attracting the world’s attention. The development and practice of China’s IT industry is just an example. It took China only around twenty years to develop from a country with a telephone penetration rate of less than 1% to one with 800 million subscribers. With the largest network in the world, China now boasts the world’s biggest fixed and mobile telephone subscriber base and ranks second in terms of the number of Internet users. New technologies and services are all deployed in China. Telephone coverage has reached 98%. 45% of all handsets and 60% of all PCs in the global market are produced in China. All these achievements would not have been possible without innovation and they demonstrate what a powerful driver innovation is for development. The IT industry is the most innovative industry today. It is its very innovative nature that has broken the limits of time and distance and enabled us to actualize the concept of the “Earth Village”; and it is these innovations that are creating conditions for realizing global informatization and driving forward the progress of the world from a modern industrial economy towards a modern knowledge economy.

History demonstrates that innovation is the driving force behind progress and is essential to the progress of mankind. All nations and countries have to value and protect innovation and offer favorable conditions for innovation and for the improvement of innovative abilities. The divergence, crossing and convergence of sciences are accelerating. Breakthroughs have been made in scientific findings, technological inventions, and significant integrated innovations. Different disciplines are crossing boundaries into other disciplines, which has, in turn, resulted in the emergence of many new disciplines, such as informatics, life sciences, environmental sciences, energy science, nanoscience and space science. The interpenetration of physical science with human and social sciences reflects the unification of natural organization at a deeper level and has transformed the value, way of thinking, and lifestyle of people. The convergence represented by nanosciece, biology, informatics and cognitive science brings new challenges to innovation. The explosive growth in the volume of information and the incompatibility of currently available information technologies lead to the arrival of the post-Moore era. The unremitting exploration of life’s mysteries has triggered even more mysteries in the world. The findings from the observations of the universe indicate significant conflicts with our understanding and knowledge about the physical world. Similar matters have brought new challenges to innovation as well as unprecedented opportunities for mankind to promote the progress of history.

The cycle for scientific findings and technological inventions and innovations to be applied in production is getting shorter and shorter. What significant improvement it is! Economic globalization speeds up the trans-boundary flow of capital, information, technologies, people and other innovative elements, and accelerates the adjustment of the industrial structure on a global scale. On the one hand, international large-scale scientific projects have enabled scientists to collaborate on a worldwide basis in large-scale AND cross-disciplinary front-line researche; on the other hand, Multi-National Corporations (MNC) of developed countries set up research institutes in places perceived to be the best in the world to attract talent, control intellectual property rights in order to obtain competitive advantages. Original innovation is getting more and more important. The intellectual property rights generated through innovations are attracting more attention and getting more protection. Only those who take the lead in innovation can utilize resources and capture markets. The governments of all countries are taking important measures and formulating strategies to encourage innovation and therefore obtain a competitive edge based upon independent capabilities for innovation in a bid to serve economic growth and social development.

The Chinese government also attaches great importance to innovation and has adopted a guideline of “rejuvenating the country through science and technology”. China is building a human-centric harmonious society and is striving to mobilize all positive factors to build up the systems for innovation, develop the capacities to innovate, and promote the protection and commercialization of innovation results. China has formulated the 11th Five-Year Plan, making comprehensive plans for innovation ranging from the design of basic capacity building for indigenous innovation, the protection and promotion of innovative activities and the cultivation and retention of high-level talent to the creation of the necessary physical and technological foundation for China to become an innovative country. For a developing country with a population of 1.3 billion, universal access to compulsory education and the improvement of the caliber of people remain significant and fundamental tasks. We must respect China’s realities in terms of scientific and technological innovation, make choices between different priorities and get ourselves focused on top priorities.

To feed a population of 1.3 billion, China must increase its investment in agricultural sciences and technologies, such as hybrid seeds and compound fertilizers. In the IT field, China should also increase its investment in core electronic devices, high-end generic communication chips, integrated circuits and software, next-generation information networks, new-generation wireless communication, advanced computers and information security. In bioengineering, the focus should be on the development of new drugs, the prevention and treatment of major infectious diseases and the development of modern traditional Chinese medicine. These issues concern the livelihood of the people and therefore we should intensify our efforts regarding innovation, offer preferential conditions, and create new policies and a legal environment conducive to innovation.

To protect intellectual property rights (IPR), the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) conducted an investigation on the enforcement of the Patent Law with the intent to protect patents, the rights and interests of patent holders and enhance the public’s awareness of IPR protection. Through a series of campaigns, the public’s awareness regarding IPR protection has been strengthened.

The Standing Committee of the NPC will revise the Law on Scientific and Technological Progress. Priority will be given to scientific and technological innovation and market orientation. Scientific and technological progress must make enterprises the focus of technological innovation and combine production with education and research. In the process of scientific and technological progress, we must respect knowledge and talent and take substantial measures to protect IPR, take existing relevant rules and systems and codify them into law to create a good legal environment for innovation.

Finally, I wish the Forum a success. Thank you!