It's the kind of technology that does not have a price tag because China cannot buy it - overseas developers restrict export sales of such advanced circuitry.

'The goal of building industrial production lines that can handle 10 nanometres is a huge challenge, but once it is acquired China will be a tough competitor - if not a leader - in the IT industry,' Dr Liu said.

His work is typical of the eight research areas identified in an unprecedented survey of mainland scientists about what technology will be key in the next 20 years to boosting the economy, raising living standards and strengthening national security.

Conducted by the Chinese Academy of Science's (CAS) Institute of Policy and Management (IPM), the survey canvassed the opinions of more than 2,000 top scientists. It took four years and millions of yuan to complete, but the results are making their way to the desktops of China's highest decision makers.

Mu Rongping , IPM director and the project's chief scientist, says the results of the poll are clear. 'Instead of playing catch-up, instead of taking orders, scientists should be able to set their own [technological] course,' Dr Mu said.

In a laboratory 4km away from Dr Liu's research centre, micro electronics specialist Chen Deyong is trying to build a whole set of mechanical sensors and actuators onto a chip-sized silicon substrate that can sense and respond to the external environment.

The technology is called MEMS - Micro Electromechanical Systems - and is used in industrial products such as car airbags. Dr Chen's goal at the State Key Laboratory of Transducer Technology is to improve it so that it can be more affordable, stable and applicable to China's manufacturing industries.

'It is revolutionising almost every product category,' he said. 'There can be hundreds of them in a car and millions in a spaceship, but only if we can make them smaller and more stable so they will cost only a few yuan each.'

The difficulty is that when engineers try to work out something so small, physical laws that have stood firm for centuries disintegrate into unpredictability. This, says Dr Chen, is the biggest obstacle.

The problems for Yan Ping from the Institute of Electrical Engineering are on a much bigger physical scale. She is trying to find a safer, more stable and more integrated way to transmit electricity from the country's resource-rich but impoverished west to the east's economic powerhouses.

It is a project that means building the world's biggest unified power network.

'Today no software can simulate the network's entire operation because the frequency and variety of problems that may occur are beyond our ability to calculate,' Dr Yan said.

Even simple questions present problems. Engineers still have to find a way to ensure on/off switches work reliably at half a million volts without affecting the network's stability.

Timing is another issue. Dr Yan said two power plants that were a few thousand km apart would need to synchronise their generators to turn on or off within a tenth of a nanosecond of each other, a requirement that defies the best of electronic clocks.

One solution may come from above. Shi Huli from the National Aerospace Observatory specialises in space technology and aims to help build up China's own global satellite guidance and positioning system (GPS).

Dr Shi says such a system would be able to provide data on position, time and speed accurate to within a tenth of a trillionth of a second to essential industries such as electricity, telecommunications and transport - sectors increasingly reliant on such technology.

'Any disturbance that comes from the sky can easily paralyse our national economy, not to mention impact on the military,' he said. 'Most civilian users are dependent or semi-dependent on GPS services provided by other countries. The government urgently needs to build a platform.'

But perhaps the biggest issue to confront the mainland over the next 20 years will be energy. Exploration in the South China Sea has revealed some promising results - so promising that some analysts have claimed it to be the second Persian Gulf in terms of gas and oil reserves. The problem is that those reserves lie 2,000 metres under the seabed.

Duan Zhongdong, executive research director of the Harbin Institute of Technology's Civil Engineering Institute, is a deep-sea physicist working to push the mainland's oil excavation technology past its existing 300-metre depth.

The engineers are confronting two main challenges - a lack of understanding about the area's maritime and undersea conditions, and limits to piping technology.

'We are like a blind person touching an elephant,' he said. 'Brazil and the US are the two most advanced [in this area], but they are not willing to teach much.'

Until the maritime reserves can be exploited, China will continue its reliance on coal, a fuel that pollutes and has yet to be harnessed to power the nation's growing fleet of cars. Chemist Cao Liren , from the CAS Institute of Coal Chemistry, is trying to build large-scale production plants to convert coal into oil.

He has spent 30 years in the field and says the country's coal reserves can satisfy the nation's energy demands for more than a century based on the current speed of economic growth.

Dr Cao says China is at least 10 years ahead of the US in the field and is building 16 experimental conversion factories - at 2 billion yuan each - in Inner Mongolia and Shanxi .

The scientist is optimistic that a total capacity of 20 million tonnes can be built up within 20 years.

'It is not much compared with total oil consumption today, but if our imports become tightened, the capacity can easily be tripled since we have the technology,' he said.

But however resourceful the efforts prove, fossil fuels are finite. That's why CAS Institute of Botany biochemist Bai Kezhi sees a future in turning grain, straw and sugarcane into alcoholic fuels and organic diesel. He estimates the country can produce enough organic fuel to replace 30 per cent of the fossil fuel demand.

Another renewable energy option is solar power. The technology already exists to turn sunlight into electricity, but it's a high-cost exercise. Yang Deren , a researcher at the State Key Lab of Silicon Materials, said the cost could be brought down if the materials used were more efficient.

Dr Yang says some laboratories around the world had produced materials that were about 30 per cent efficient, but the goal was to raise the bar to 50 per cent. 'We need new materials, some good ideas and lots of luck.'