The Academician Workstation of Xinjiang’s Long Cheng Industrial Group, which is stationed in the Urumqi Economic and Technology Development Zone (Toutunhe District) and opened July 3, was funded with 200,000 yuan ($32, 215) from the Zone’s local government.

Yao Hong, deputy secretary general of the Science and Technology Association of the Urumqi Economic and Technology Development Zone (Toutunhe District), said that this year the district finished its work revising the “Regulations on the Administration of Urumqi Economic and Technology Development Zone (Toutunhe District), (Pilot Version)”, according to which all well-equipped academician workstations will be awarded with as much as 200,000 yuan.

To show stronger support for enterprise academician workstations, as written in the “Regulations”, workstations that pass evaluation by the Science and Technology Association of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region will be subsidized with 50,000 yuan for their establishment. Also, 100,000 yuan will be awarded to enterprises that set up workstations for state- and provincial-level projects as soon as they are accomplished.

As sponsor, Xinjiang Long Cheng Industrial Group is now the biggest private lubricating oil enterprise in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Academician Liu Weimin is the first academician from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) to came to Xinjiang to help found the workstation since the 2nd Central Xinjiang Work Forum. He is a scientist who focuses his research on aerospace lubrication, material friction wear and synthetic lubricants.

“Xinjiang enjoys great resource advantages in terms of the naphthenic-base lubricating oil, botanical-base lubricating grease and synthetic-ester lubricating oil,” he said. His team is working on a three-year research plan that will bring the manufacturing of botanical-base lubricating grease and synthetic-ester lubricating oil to the international level.

The collaboration between Long Cheng and CAS will fill the void in China’s lubricating oil technology and strengthen the competitiveness of Xinjiang’s petrochemical enterprises. It will also provide product and technology support for Xinjiang enterprises in competitive and specialty industries including Goldwind Science & Technology Co Ltd, Bayi Iron & Steel Co Ltd and Shanghai Volkswagen (SVW).

According to Mining, secretary general of the Science and Technology Association of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the number of the academician workstations has grown to 16 in recent years. Workstations mainly consisted of academicians from CAS, the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) and their teams.

Edited by Noelle Mateer 

(From China Daily, 2014-07-16)