The timetable for China's first manned moon landing, as well as the launch of a space station, lab and probes to explore Mars and Venus, was announced by scientists over the weekend. Chinese analysts, however, dismissed international concerns that Beijing is engaging in an outer-space arms race, stressing that recent activities and future missions are for scientific purposes and for the benefit of mankind.
For China, coal has been both an economic driver and a source of pollution. However, the world's fastest growing economy will continue to rely upon coal in upcoming decades to fuel its economic growth; the difference is that it is also striving to do so in a greener fashion to keep its promise on emission cuts.
China's science and technology could reach the average level of Western developed countries by the mid-century, but before that it still has a long way to go, a Russian expert told Xinhua in a recent interview. Chinese leadership has been trying to push modernization in one form or another for 30 years, Professor Yakov Berger from the Far East Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences told Xinhua.
Li Dongdong, a vice-minister of state and deputy director of the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) — the powerful government body that regulates all publications in China — acknowledged that the country's scientific publishing had a "severe" problem, with "a big gap between quality and quantity", and needed reform.
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