According to statistics, the output value of the country's hi-tech industries grew at an average annual rate of 20 percent between 1996 and 2001, 12 percent higher than the national economic growth rate in the period.

The Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, the region around the Bohai Bay, and several other areas have been turned into famous hi-tech belts in China, where a large number of hi-tech firms cluster.

Information and biological technologies have been put to extensive use in agriculture, machinery, metallurgy and other traditional industries.

The fast growth of the hi-tech industry has also greatly improved the industrial structure in China.

Since the early 1990s, microelectronics, computers, telecommunications, space engineering, new energy, and a host of other new industries have boomed in the country.

In 2001, the output value of new hi-tech products reached 929.8billion yuan (112 billion US dollars), increasing 160 percent over1995 and accounting for 9.7 percent of the national industrial output value.

(Xinhua News Agency October 30, 2002)