Vice-Premier Wen Jiabao has warned the country's scientists against indulging in ivory-tower research.
He said they should give priority to technology that could bring economic gain.
'Special focus should be on how technology upgrading can help to reform the abnormal economic structure of the nation and help to detect and confront financial crises and solve problems brought by it,' Mr Wen told scientists at a congress of the China Association for Science and Technology yesterday.
Mr Wen gave detailed accounts of how international financial crises had affected the mainland and said there were deep-rooted problems in the country's economic structure, Xinhua said.
'In some countries, massive numbers of enterprises went bankrupt, banks collapsed and productivity fell drastically in face of the financial crises,' he said. 'These cases all reveal a blatant fact: despite economic growth for the past decade, the economic structure of these countries has been unbalanced without the support of high technology development.' The country's industries, on the other hand, kept manufacturing products that could not be sold on the market.
'By adjusting science research orientations and boosting technology development inputs, it is hoped that a new generation of hi-tech products can help to boost domestic demand and in turn strengthen our economic growth,' Mr Wen said.
