"Virtually Everything Needs to Be Done"

We must foster lofty ideals and set high goals, work out a strategic plan, fully mobilize all positive factors and organize all our forces well." So said Fang Yi, Chi na's powerful but little-known Vice Premier and Minister of Science and Technology. The occasion was his announcement last year of China's audacious plan to overcome a lag of 15 to 20 years and by the year 2000 reach the scientific level of the advanced industrial world. Last week, while Teng Hsiao-p'ing politicked his way across the nation, Fang embarked on what was in effect his own separate tour of the U.S. technological landscape.

A scholarly man of 69, his face blemished by a large purple birthmark, Fang is not a scientist. He was an editor at China's leading publishing house, the Shanghai-based Commercial Press, before joining the Communist Party in 1936. A military commissar during World War II, he worked his way up through a series of economic posts to become Vice Minister of Finance in 1953, coordinator of China's North Viet Nam aid program in 1956, and director of China's entire foreign aid program during the 1960s. A protege of Premier Chou Enlai, Fang managed to avoid being purged during the Cultural Revolution, but it was not until Teng rose to power again in 1977 that Fang achieved his present eminence.

"Virtually everything needs to be done," Fang has said in summarizing China's technological position. As president of China's Academy of Sciences, he is interested in all areas of direct scientific research. After a talk last week with White House Science Adviser Frank Press on future Chinese-American projects, Fang left for Atlanta's Georgia Institute of Technology. There he inspected the Landsat photographs surveying natural resources and a solar-energy farm that can produce 400 kw of electricity. In Houston, he visited the Texas Medical Center, M.D. Anderson Hospital and Methodist Hospital. But the highlight of Fang's U.S. trip was Los Angeles. Fang was given a detailed tour of Lockheed's L-1011 assembly plant at nearby Palmdale and shown the company's closely guarded research laboratory at Rye Canyon.

Fang now must ponder China's plan to develop modern technology. This, as expressed by his Academy of Sciences predecessor, Kuo Mojo, will be "a magnumopus" which will "not be written on limited reams of paper but in the universe that knows no bounds."

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