China will initiate six measures to facilitate technical innovation and industrialization of scientific research and to boost the information industry, said a ranking official with the Ministry of Information Industry in Beijing Thursday.

Lou Qinjian, vice-minister of information industry, said China's information industry should target the domestic market while exploring and developing the international market, and forge a market-oriented system for technical innovation, in which companies should play leading roles with governmental support.

China should guarantee the implementation of a law on intellectual property protection and strengthen information collection and analysis, Lou noted. Research and development centers set up by multinationals and domestic companies should be encouraged to accumulate self-developed patent technology. Local companies' awareness of intellectual property should also be enhanced.

He said there was still a big gap between China and developed countries in the information industry sector. Since China is short of nuclear technology in some important areas, multinationals have occupied the market with better and more funding and technology.

Although the annual increase rate of patent applications remained at over 23 percent in recent years, most Chinese companies still needed to strengthen their awareness and management of intellectual property. The added value of China's exporting commodities was relatively low because of the lack of intellectual property.

Statistics showed the growth rate of China's information industry was twice or even three times the country's gross domestic product (GDP). Despite the impact of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) disease earlier this year, China's information industry still completed an added value of 530.4 billion yuan (about US$64 billion US dollars) from Jan. to Oct., accounting for 5.7 percent of the GDP.

(Xinhua News Agency November 28, 2003)