A six-member delegation of science and education officials from Germany concluded Tuesday a two-day visit to the northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, trying to apply its advanced technologies into rejuvenation of the rust belt industrial center of China.

Officials from Germany's Ministry of Education and Research, the German Embassy to China and the Fraunhofer Association, a famous German industrial organization, visited the State-level Harbin Economic and Technological Development Zone and robot manufacturing and other high-tech enterprises of the province.

They also met with Heilongjiang government officials, scientific and technological workers and business people. The two sides exchanged views on the possibility of cooperation in the fields of equipment manufacturing, deep processing of energy resources, material science, equipment serving environmental protection and training of engineers and technicians.

The Chinese government launched a strategy last year to modernize the industrial centers in the northeast, aiming to turn them into new and essential growth areas of the national economy.

Comprising the provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning, the northeast China region played a vital role in the country's industrial development from the 1950s to the early 1970s.

The northeast contributed China's first batch of steel, machine tools, locomotives and planes after the founding of New China in 1949, and still has potential in these fields.

However, many traditional industrial enterprises established in the 1950s when China adopted a planned economic system, became less competitive and some have been losing money over the past 20 years, during which time China implemented the policies of reform and opening up to the outside world, and moved from a planned economy toward a market economy.

Herbert Diehl, head of the international cooperation department of the German Ministry of Education and Research, said the Chinese government's strategy to revitalize the northeast rust belt provided good opportunities for Sino-German cooperation in many fields.

German government and scientific institutions hoped that the bilateral enterprise-to-enterprise cooperation in the economic and technological fields would be promoted, so that science and technology could contribute to the rejuvenation of the region, Herbert Diehl said.

He said Germany was willing to support northeast China region in training technical workers.

Germany started cooperation with northeast China region 25 years ago in the fields of deep processing of coal, aviation and space flight, automotive and heavy equipment manufacturing.

(Xinhua News Agency March 31, 2004)