China is planning to build several comprehensive national laboratories. These facilities will further boost the country's scientific research prowess as well as support large-scale projects.

Beijing will soon have another first in China -- the country's first multi-program National Laboratory. The complex is located in Huairou district and will be constructed this year. To rev up its construction, 12 of the world's top national laboratory experts have been invited to share their experiences and insights.

"Actually for the last several years, the largest number of foreign visitors to Oak Ridge came from China. And of course that reflects the fact that China's research capacity has been growing rapidly as universities and research institutes have been expanding. So that means for those programs we have that are of an international nature, it is probably not surprising that China is strongly represented," said Dr. Thomas Mason, director of the Oak Ridge National Lab in the US.

Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has long been the center of the country's scientific innovation. It contains 80 percent of China's research facilities and other leading research disciplinary labs.

As China now has many labs specializing in one particular area of research, the need for cross-disciplinary research and projects calls for creation of national laboratories.

"A great deal of urgent research is now demanded by the country. There are cross-disciplinary research projects requiring cutting-edge facilities that could only be funded by the government and that require hundreds, even thousands of talents. And a multi-program national laboratory is needed," said Ding Hong, deputy director of CAS’ s National Lab for Condensed Matter Physics.

Together with Research and Development (R&D) testing facilities, the state-of-the-art national laboratory will eventually include three major scientific research facilities focusing on clean energy, material genome, environmental science, and brain science.

Source: CCTV.com