Hefei eyes cutting-edge breakthroughs

Rich talent pool, advanced, modern facilities to help eastern province become a top-tier hub for research

Kuang Guangli remembers clearly that 20 years ago when Chinese researchers submitted papers to global science forums nobody cared.

"We did not have the facilities to do cutting-edge research. That was the biggest bottleneck back then," said Kuang, a physics professor and current president of the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, a branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.