Law encourages govt purchase of innovative products

China's latest revision to the Law on Progress of Science and Technology is encouraging local governments to buy homegrown innovative products and services that enter the market for the first time as part of a broader push to encourage innovation and boost scientific vitality.

According to the latest revision, government procurement plans should purchase scientific and technological products and services developed by domestic natural persons, legal persons, and unincorporated organizations, provided that their functions and qualities can meet the requirements of governments.

And governments should give first consideration to buying these products that enter the market for the first time.

The revised law was passed by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, last week. The revised law will take effect from Jan 1.

The move is part of China's broader push to improve the nation's sci-tech innovation ecosystem.

The Central Economic Work Conference, a top-level meeting that concluded earlier this month, called for efforts to enhance China's strategic sci-tech strength, give full play to the role of national laboratories and promote the reform of research institutes.

It also pledged to strengthen the principal position of enterprise innovation, and deepen collaboration among firms, universities and research institutes.

Hu Weiwu, president of Loongson Technology Corp－a chip designer behind the country's first self-developed general-purpose microprocessor－said earlier that efforts are needed to support homegrown innovation of leading technology products and services such as chips and operating systems.

Only by putting these technologies into wider commercial applications will they have more chances to improve. "The wider the use of these technologies, the better they will become. It will take time, but we are confident about the process," Hu said.

In 2018, domestic processors were included in China's government procurement plans. According to a proposal published on the official website of the Central Government Procurement Center, servers powered by domestic central processing units including Loongson, ShenWei and Phytium were included in China's government procurement plan for 2018-19.

That was the first time that homegrown chip-driven servers have been included in such a proposal, underlying the determination to promote the application of domestic processors, which are making steady progress in performance. State-owned enterprises and government agencies are important buyers of information technology equipment in China.

China is also stepping up push to better regulate government procurement plans. A statement released by the Ministry of Finance in October said that in government procurement, goods and services in China, either provided by domestic or foreign-funded enterprises, will be treated equally, except for those involving national security and State secrets.