China's high-end instruments and meters have been dependent on imports for a long time. In recent years, the import and export deficit of China's instruments and meters products has been more than US $15billion, which is more serious than machine tools and other large mechanical and electrical products. Take large-scale scientific research (scientific) instruments for scientific research as an example. As of 2015, China's colleges and universities, testing institutions, scientific research institutions and transformation institutions have a total of 61251 sets of large-scale scientific research instruments, of which the total amount of imported large-scale scientific research instruments is 46127 sets / set, accounting for 75% of China's existing large-scale scientific research instruments. The main sources of import are the United States, Germany, Japan, Britain and other developed countries; In fact, since the eighth five year plan, the import proportion of large-scale scientific instruments required by our national central and local scientific research institutes and universities has remained at more than 90%, and reached 95.9% during the eleventh five year plan.

Many industry categories, many product varieties, complex industrial chain and special technical support (such as value traceability) are important characteristics that distinguish instruments from other large-scale electromechanical equipment. In the industrial classification of China's national economy, the instrument industry belongs to the major category of manufacturing industry, which is divided into 6 medium categories and 20 sub categories. The classification is shown in Table 1. In addition, in the special equipment manufacturing industry, "manufacturing of medical diagnosis, monitoring and treatment equipment" also has part of the instrument industry. When the instrument and meter industry association makes statistics on products, it refers to the sub categories of instrument and meter manufacturing industry, mainly including industrial automatic control systems and devices, electrical instruments and meters, drawing calculation and measuring instruments, experimental and analytical instruments, testing machines, measuring instruments and meters for supply, optical instruments, weighing instruments, special instruments for geodetic surveying and mapping, electronic measuring instruments, medical instruments and other instruments and meters, The name is slightly different from the description of industry classification. See attached table 1 for the statistical breakdown of instrument products. For scientific instruments and equipment products, our country also has classification and code standards for large-scale scientific instruments and equipment. The standard divides large-scale scientific instruments into 18 categories of general-purpose large-scale scientific instruments and 13 categories of special large-scale scientific instruments. The representative products of each category of scientific instruments are shown in Table 2 and table 3 respectively. The structure of the industrial chain of instruments and meters is very complex. The downstream involves many fields such as industry, agriculture, transportation, science and technology, environmental protection, national defense, culture, education and health, social life and so on. The upstream of the industrial chain involves a variety of electronic components, organic and inorganic materials, electromechanical accessories, communications, software and other components, as well as the necessary third-party guarantee technology system (such as measurement, certification, etc.) that is different from other industries.

China's instrument industry has a history of more than 70 years, and has experienced private, state-owned, capitalized operation and other stages. Since the 12th Five Year Plan, the development of the instrument and meter industry has received more systematic national support. The National Natural Science Foundation of China has set up a special project of "development of major scientific research instruments", and the Ministry of science and technology has set up a special project of "development of major scientific instruments and equipment". The Ministry of industry and information technology has guided and supported instrument and meter enterprises to implement enterprise upgrading and technological transformation in a number of development policies. At present, China has basically solved the variety problem of instruments and meters, but we should be soberly aware that the development of instruments and meters in our country has been in a state of tracking for a long time, basic research is weak, products are concentrated in the middle and low end, high-end instruments and meters and cutting-edge leading scientific instruments rely heavily on imports, and the instruments and meters developed by ourselves are generally ineffective. In the face of the current new economic and technological situation, as well as the needs of the era of interconnection of all things, the instrument and meter industry must fully understand the current situation and problems of its own development. In view of these problems, combined with China's national conditions, we should think deeply from the four aspects of top-level design, industry management, technological innovation and industrial development, and put forward development suggestions from the aspects of industry ecology, service platform, original innovation and quality foundation, It is hoped that these suggestions can provide valuable references for the policy planning, industrial upgrading and enterprise development of the industry. (the author is Ouyang Jinsong, duxiaohui and Fang Yifang of the Institute of integrated technology and economy of machinery industry instrumentation)

[source: CPPCC website]