People's Daily Online's Exclusive: Future of a pillar industry
Chinese people born in the 1980s were taught that China's pillar industries are in the auto, construction, mechanical, electrical and petrochemical sectors, but the government is hoping that later generations learn something else.
The Chinese government is speeding up efforts to increase the proportion of emerging sectors in the country's economy. It expects that when the children of the post-80s generation start school in a few years, they can learn about four new pillar industries -- energy conservation and environmental protection, new-generation information technology, bio-tech industry and high-end equipment manufacturing.
TECH-INTENSIVE PILLARS
At a water recycling plant on the Wenyu River in northeast Beijing, sewage is forced through thin membranes dotted with holes about one five-hundredth the size of a human hair.
Every day, 200,000 tonnes of wastewater are processed by the micro-filtration system in this plant. The recycled water then runs into factories and fields in Beijing.
"The cost of recycling one tonne of water is 0.7 yuan," said Wen Jianping, president of Beijing Origin Water Technology Company, the developer of the micro-filtration system. (0.7 yuan is equal to about 0.1 U.S. dollar.)
"We develop the membranes ourselves, rather than importing them. That is why the cost is low," said Wen, 50, who researched membrane technology since 2000.
