Beijing envisions future as top technology center

Beijing aims to become one of the world's influential technology centers by 2020, a senior official said on Friday.

Yan Aoshuang, head of the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission, said during a news conference that the city has advantages in science and technological development and will carry out a series of policies to build itself into a center of innovation.

According to the commission, by the end of 2015, half the academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering - the top think tanks in China - were working in Beijing. The capital is also home to 412 scientific research institutions, the most in the country.