Xi'an sees future as innovation hub

Xi'an, Shaanxi province, aims to become a global center for cutting-edge technology by 2025, officials said on Tuesday.

"Xi'an will become the world's capital in the hard sciences and core scientific fields, and become a model city for cutting-edge innovation, applications and trade by 2025," Wang Yongkang, the Party chief of Xi'an, said at the opening of the Global Hard and Core Technology Innovation Conference in the city.

Hard and core sciences are "fields that are more advanced and influential than high-tech", Wang said. These areas of the natural sciences "have extremely high threshold of entry, are nearly impossible to duplicate and require decades of rigorous research and huge investments from the nation".