China releases five-year programme for large research facilities
China’s Ministry of Science and Technology has released the five-year programme for large research facilities. The Plan envisages the construction of ten new top-priority facilities. China has made sizable investments in order to acquire a large infrastructure of facilities capable of competing with the most advanced systems in the United States, Europe and Japan. Numerous large laboratories are already operational and regularly used by the national scientific community such as the third-generation synchrotron in Shanghai, the large five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, the Free Electron Laser in the UV Dalian Coherent Light Source and the Beijing Electron Positron Collider II. The Spallation Neutron Source is currently being completed in the Guangdong Region, thus bringing to 55 the total number of large scientific facilities built or in progress of being built.
