Sichuan the new hub of scientific and tech innovation

Sichuan has advanced high-quality development and has made headway in transferring itself into a hub of science and technology and a center for innovation factors, said Zheng Li, head of the Publicity Department of CPC Sichuan provincial committee, at a news conference on Wednesday afternoon.

Zheng, also a member of the Sichuan provincial committee of the CPC, made the remarks at the conference during the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

Many national-level labs and research institutes have been established in Sichuan province, according to Zheng.

Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) in Daocheng, the world's highest and largest cosmic ray detection instrument, "is exploring the universe while we're having this conference," she said. The world's deepest and China's first dark matter lab in Jinping Mountain help human beings detect, capture and study dark matter from outer space.

About 60 percent of the nuclear power generator units in China were made in the city of Deyang, and 70 percent of the high-speed rail is produced in Panzhihua.

These major projects, to some degree, could demonstrate the capacity of innovation and industrial production of Sichuan province, and Sichuan has experienced continuous growth and progress in the past 10 years, Zheng said.

Sichuan is also an important part of the national strategic scientific and technological forces. For example, The steal fighter J-20 was developed and produced in Sichuan. The heads of the Y-20 cargo jets and C919 passenger jets were all made in Chengdu. The Chang'e robotic lunar probes and BeiDou satellites were all launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, and the core technology of the Hualong One – a domestically developed third-generation reactor design with proprietary intellectual property – also came into being in Sichuan.

"In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Sichuan was just a third-tier construction base, now it has thrived to become the country's new hub for scientific and technological innovation," she said.

As Sichuan has made solid efforts to promote innovation-driven and high-quality development, and has striven to build a key manufacturing hub, the province's total economic output has achieved leapfrog growth and its GDP reached 5.38 trillion yuan ($744.5 billion) last year.

Meanwhile, the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle has achieved progressive results on its construction and development. "We were thrilled to find that the construction of the circle was mentioned in the report delivered to the 20th CPC National Congress," said Zheng. "Sichuan will continue to work together with Chongqing to tell the 'tale of two cities' and push forward the development of the dual-city economic circle."