Nation aims for core tech breakthrough

More efforts needed to cultivate firms focusing on high-end sensors, chips

China will ramp up resources to develop core technologies such as artificial intelligence chips and sensors, as part of its broader push to integrate AI into the manufacturing sector, the nation's top industry regulator said on Thursday.

Zhang Feng, chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said China is now the world's second-largest owner of invention patents and international scientific papers, with significant progress made in voice and image recognition, as well as natural language understanding.