BEIJING, Sept. 28 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has released its development plan for the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), setting priority directions for sci-tech breakthroughs in three major fields: basic research, strategic high technologies and sustainable development.
The plan defines the strategic priorities guiding the academy's sci-tech work in the coming years, and calls for stronger foundational sci-tech capabilities and better coordination of the regional layout of sci-tech research.
It designates the academy's important priority fields, strategic high-technology fields, sustainable development fields, as well as basic frontier and interdisciplinary fields in its sci-tech innovation layout, targeting to cultivate a batch of key development directions and make the layout more strategic, forward-looking and systematic.
According to the plan, the important priority fields include integrated circuits, AI, quantum technology, life sciences and biotechnology, brain-computer interfaces, controlled nuclear fusion, among others.
The strategic high-technology fields cover optoelectronics, space, information, ocean, energy and materials. Its sustainable development fields include agriculture, Earth and resources, atmosphere, ocean and ecological environment. As for the basic frontier and interdisciplinary fields, the plan lists the mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy and geoscience.
To coordinate and optimize the regional sci-tech layout, the plan will accelerate the construction of a tiered regional layout system as an endeavor to provide systematic sci-tech support for the country's major regional strategies.
In this system, Beijing (the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region), Shanghai (the Yangtze River Delta) and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area are considered as the strategic highlands, and Hefei, Chengdu-Chongqing, Wuhan and Xi'an as strategic pivots, with a number of key regions as strategic nodes.
The plan also pledges to step up AI-enabled scientific research. It aims to leverage the academy's strengths in mathematics, computer science, control science, and scientific data to enhance the development of new sci-tech infrastructure. This includes the ScienceOne Omni foundation model, intelligent scientist systems, a sci-tech corpus, and a scientific data center. The goal is to accelerate efficient, collaborative support for research.
The plan will actively promote the digital, networked and intelligent iterative upgrading of facilities and platforms such as major national sci-tech infrastructure as well as national field scientific observation and research stations.
It will also step up efforts to collect and integrate data, unify standards and specifications, and strengthen data security. At the same time, it aims to improve data fusion, interoperability, and application, providing strong support for scientific research in key areas and the implementation of major sci-tech projects.
Guided by the needs of building a modern industrial system, the plan will focus on important fields, key regions and major projects, and adopt a two-pronged approach that combines supply-side advances in sci-tech innovation with demand-side pull from industry, so as to accelerate the transformation of sci-tech achievements into real productivity.
Aiming to build a world-class research institution, the plan also outlines reform and development tasks in areas including integrated development of education, science and technology and talent, construction of a national science and technology think tank, reform and management innovation of research organizations, transfer and application of sci-tech achievements, and international sci-tech exchanges and cooperation. ■
