China: Brilliant Engineering Achievements over 50 Years

Abstract

In 2001, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, with support and participation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other organizations, carried out a large project to select 25 greatest engineering achievements of China in the 20th century. This chapter focuses on these 25 engineering achievements that helped China to achieve the gigantic economic and social development in its 50 years of history. Its past political turmoil necessitated a strong national defense with advanced military technology. So in the 1950s, China started its independent research and development on A-bomb, H-bomb, missiles, and satellites, which resulted in the launch of it first short-ranged missile in 1960, the testing of its first A-bomb in 1964, the explosion of its H-bomb in 1967, and the launch of its first satellite in 1970. It also made a large number of major achievements in the field of agricultural technology, which includes the development of over 5,600 new high-grade, high-yield crop species in more than 40 crop categories. From 1949 to 1996, the average grain yield increased from 1,035kg/ha to 4,890kg/ha, and due to its large-scale water conservation efforts, its ability to reduce the damage of disastrous flood and drought to agriculture has also been greatly strengthened. The wide use of biological and chemical herbicides, pesticides, bactericides, and raticides has effectively prevented crop damage and decreased crop loss from 30%–45% in the 1960s to 10% now. China today feeds over 1/5th of the world's population with less than 1/10th of the world's arable land. The mineral prospecting in China was almost nil 50 years ago. Since then, huge efforts have been made, and a cross-disciplinary, comprehensive, world-level technological system of geological prospecting has been well established that helped it to make significant achievements in geological prospecting.