Private science-tech enterprises should take measures to upgrade their operational structures and raise their scientific and technological level to face the challenges that will come with China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Science and Technology Minister Xu Guanhua expressed the above viewpoint in a keynote speech last weekend at APEC Technomart IV in Suzhou.

China's private science-tech enterprises started to mushroom in 1992 and have maintained a strong growth momentum ever since, contributing significantly to the prosperity of the national and local economies.

Their numbers have grown extremely fast, from 2,500 in 1992 to 86,000 in 2000 - an average annual rate of 30 percent.

More striking is the growth of their fixed asset value. Started as small businesses with modest investments in the range of several hundred thousand yuan, 2,214 of them now have a fixed asset value of over 100 million yuan (US$12 million) and 76 have a fixed asset value of over 2 billion yuan (US$240 million).

They are also involved in almost all the industrial and manufacturing sectors, both in traditional and high-tech industries.

However, in face of economic globalization and China's imminent entry into the WTO, private science-tech enterprises are encountering severe challenges.

"To ensure a sustainable development in the global competition, private science-tech enterprises need to tackle several urgent problems," said Xu.

The foremost thing they need to do is develop modern enterprise systems to enable them to survive and develop in the context of increasingly intense competition, Xu said.

The point was raised because many private enterprises have been run on the traditional family model which does not clearly separate ownership from management.

(China Daily 09/24/2001)