An international seminar on the construction and management of national laboratories began in Beijing on Tuesday.

Lasting one-and-a-half days, the event was organized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It was attended by 13 national lab directors from China and seven other countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Japan and Singapore.

The directors shed light on topics including personnel, funding, research fields of their labs and how they run and manage them, from which Chinese experts and officials could learn a lot in building China's own national labs.

The emergence of national laboratories as an important type of research institute backed by governments to address countries' strategic needs can be traced to the period around World War Ⅱ.

Different from ordinary labs, national laboratories usually shoulder cross-disciplinary research and programs that are key to the security of a country, as well as the development of the economy and society.

In late October, Chinese leaders decided at the Fifth Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, a meeting to set economic goals for the following five years, that a batch of national laboratories would be built in some important, innovation-driven fields.

Bai Chunli, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the Chinese government is making specific plans on the construction of national laboratories and there are two major considerations.

"One is to build a number of large-scale, cross-disciplinary and comprehensive research bases focusing on national goals and strategic needs; the other is to create a new pattern of co-innovation in which major cooperative research and innovation is carried out at the international scientific frontiers and priority areas with the integration and maximization of resources and talent," he said.

Bai added that the hope is to build national labs that represent national advanced level able to attract and retain the best scientific talent from home and abroad.

"This initiative will significantly transform the science and technology structure of China," he said. (China Daily)