The new generation of "artificial sun" HL-2M Photo: Courtesy of the Southwestern Institute of Physics

The steady emergence of scientific and technological innovation achievements and the acceleration of innovation in China over the past decade owe a great deal to the strong determination and deep understanding of the innovation-driven development strategy by the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese government - scientific and technological innovation has been placed in an unprecedented position of importance: The core of China's overall development.

This is especially true in the aerospace technology front. As a highly comprehensive high-tech industry, aviation equipment research and development is regarded as an important starting point for China to promote its overall industrial scientific and technological capabilities, in areas such as electronics, optics, composite materials, precision manufacturing, the chemical industry, and other fields.

China has been exploring the field of innovation. It takes huge investment, great innovative ability and a capacity to bear high risk, and needs long periods of time for the research and development of advanced aviation equipment, but it is very difficult to accurately predict the results. Based on this situation, China increased research investment, enhanced its requirement on the argument of innovative solutions, and carefully investigated risks in the research environment so as to put researchers more at ease. These practices have significantly promoted the enthusiasm of scientific research teams for innovation and improved the effect of innovation work.

In the aviation field, civil and military equipment are regarded as the two pillars of the healthy overall development of the industry. Based on the concept of independence and openness, China's commercial aircrafts have developed by leaps and bounds in recent years.

Over the past few decades, China has learned that scientific and technological innovation in upstream industries needs strong support from basic science. This has prompted China to pay more attention to basic scientific research and a continuous increase in resource investment. It has, in fact, laid a solid foundation for innovation in aerospace and other upstream sectors.

In the past 10 years, another important feature of scientific and technological innovation in China's aviation sector has been a gradual shift from follow-up innovation to pioneering innovation, with the country's scientists actively exploring more new concepts and technologies. Many people may feel that new aviation equipment has mushroomed only in the last 10 years, but the real reason behind this growth is the CPC's enhanced understanding of the essential characteristics of technological innovation, and the policies and measures the Party has adopted to adapt innovation efforts to these characteristics.

The author is Chief Editor of Aerospace Knowledge magazine and an aerospace expert at Beihang University