China has many important scientific achievements to its credit this century. Enviable even by the standards of some established science and technology powers, the achievements demonstrate China's strong scientific and technological strength and potential for development.
China's rise is in contrast to some developed countries' struggle against economic downturn. But, at the same time, it has intensified the clamor of the "China-threat" theory and made some foreign media make groundless speculations. It is imperative, therefore, that China should spare no effort to promote innovations in science and technology to build a strong and resplendent society.
The country had made significant advances in science and technology even in 20 years preceding the reforms and opening-up, but the West did not perceive them to be a "threat" because those were not in cutting-edge areas. As a latecomer to the field of science and technology, China had invested a lot of resources to strengthen its innovation capability, but it was still not seen as a competitor in the world arena.
In the past decade, especially since the release of the National Medium- and Long-Term Program for Science and Technology Development (2006-2020), China has achieved revolutionary breakthroughs in a number of important fields such as information technology and communications, aeronautics, space technology and biotechnology. For example, Chinese supercomputer Tianhe-1A, with a performance of 2.57 petaflops per second (one petaflop equals 1,000 trillion calculations per second), was adjudged the best among the world's 500 most powerful commercially available computer systems in November 2010.
What have shocked developed countries are the docking of the manned Shenzhou-9 spaceship at Tiangong-1 space lab module in June 2012, Jiaolong's journey to a depth of 7,602 meters in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean in its fifth dive, and the strength of the Beidou satellite navigation system to provide services in comparison with the US Global Positioning System and Russia's Global Navigation Satellite System.
China's rapid development in science and technology is by no means accidental. The country's huge inputs into science and technology research and human resources over the years laid a solid foundation for its leapfrog development.
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