Following are the facts and figures about China's technological development in the ninth Five-year Plan period (1996-2000), provided by the State Development Planning Commission.

China has so far set up 50,000 projects under the "Spark Plan", a technological program, started in 1986 aiming to improve the technological level in rural areas.

A total of 192.9 billion yuan has been invested in the "Spark Plan" since 1996, 3.5 billion yuan of which came from governments of various levels, 41.9 billion yuan came from bank loans and 147.5 billion yuan from enterprises and other social sectors.

Projects under this plan produced an output value of 460 billion yuan last year.

The Chinese government has injected 3.19 billion yuan in technical innovation projects in the industrial sector since 1996 and 19.5 billion yuan worth of treasury bonds has been used for technological innovation of State-owned enterprises since 1999.

The government has founded a number of districts for high-tech development, following the example of Silicon Valley, with a 101.5-billion-yuan investment in the infrastructure construction since 1996.

About 17,000 high-tech enterprises are in operation in those districts, with the employees totaling at 2.2 million.

(People's Daily 10/08/2000)