Education Reform Plan Requires Scientific Research Equipment

Scientific instruments are the most high value-added products in the instrument and equipment industry. In recent years, according to statistical data, although the development of scientific research instruments in China has achieved certain results, compared to the international environment, local instruments are still surrounded by foreign products. Under difficult conditions, the overall state of survival has not been much improved.

Analytical instruments, as the star family in laboratories and scientific instruments, occupy most of the laboratory construction funds. However, with regard to the current development status of analytical instruments, whether they are universities or national key laboratories, analytical instruments are mostly European and American brands. Although there are few domestically produced equipments, they are poor products, and all belong to low-end products. The high-end scientific equipments and domestic brands are basically left blank. In the first half of 2010, among the new laboratory analysis instruments, only the Dai-an company introduced an ICS-5000 ion chromatograph. Shimadzu and Agilent respectively introduced a liquid chromatograph. Domestic equipment manufacturers did not introduce innovations in this field. Products, mass spectrometers In addition to the introduction of one or two new foreign major international analysis companies, local companies have only introduced a portable mass spectrometry device from Beijing East-West Instruments.

At present, though China has a large number of scientific instrument companies, they are very serious in their hearts and do not want to be “sparrows”. This often leads to a decline in the core competitiveness of enterprises. According to statistics, there are nearly 1,000 scientific instrument manufacturers in China, and most of the production values ​​are below 10 million yuan. There are more than 200 analytical instrument manufacturers, but only a few million yuan in output value, and the independent research and development capabilities are weak and the products are single. All the small “sparrows” are fully-equipped and the competition between them is inevitable. Moreover, some enterprises in China still have vicious competition. This led to a weak state of development of the entire instrument market.

Second, China's investment in scientific instruments and the proportion of independent research and development have been seriously distorted. Simply put, the money we spend on buying other people’s equipment is far greater than the amount of money we spend on equipment research and development. In recent years, the scientific instrument industry has experienced a very bad phenomenon of re-introduction and light self-development. China's annual purchase of imported scientific instruments amounts to nearly 100 billion yuan, and it grows at a rate of 20% each year. However, the investment in independent innovation of scientific research instruments is seriously insufficient. In the long run, it is not a foreign brand that has pushed our national brands out of the market. Instead, it is a decisive battle that we have given up on our own. The national key universities and colleges are looking for equipment management offices. Together they cannot find a few mass spectrometry instruments. Yes, but few of them are applied to scientific research fields. At the most, they are used as a simulation and demonstration in teaching. How do you make these scientific instruments develop?

Another point is that from the aspect of enterprises, that is, "another problem in China's scientific instrument industry is more tracking imitation and less original innovation. And because China's scientific instrument companies have relatively weak research and development capabilities, most of the technology is from higher education institutions. And scientific research institutions are responsible for this, but currently the technical cooperation between the school and the enterprise is very limited, which leads to a low conversion rate of scientific and technological achievements, and companies can not independently undertake innovative research and development of new equipment.So this area is lagging behind the development is an inevitable result.

The year 2010 is the year of the 11th Five-Year Plan for China, and it is also the year of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan. The National Decade of Education Reform Plan also puts forward requirements for educational research equipment. This is both an opportunity for domestic scientific equipment manufacturers. It is also a challenge. Since we recognize the existence of the problem, we cannot simply discuss the drawbacks of the problem, but we must strive to seek change while understanding. Let China's scientific instrument industry have a good start in the next five-year plan.