Abstract:

Scientific instruments serve as foundational pillars for both scientific progress and industrial innovation, enabling deep exploration and driving technological breakthroughs. Their independent controllability and continuous innovation are indispensable for sustaining a competitive advantage in technological development, thereby securing national scientific capacity and long-term strategic growth. At present, however, China faces substantial risks of technological “stranglehold” in the high-end scientific instrument domain. The underlying causes are multifaceted, arising not only from insufficient accumulation of core technologies but also from entrenched systemic and ecosystem-level barriers that impede the application, scaling, and promotion of domestic instruments. This paper provides a systematic analysis of the challenges hindering the widespread adoption of domestically developed scientific instruments and proposes practical pathways to build a new, integrated “R&D-application-promotion” ecosystem. This ecosystem is anchored in trust, driven by user demand, and shaped through collaborative innovation. Key initiatives include organizing user visits to instrument manufacturers, convening seminars on domestic alternatives to imported equipment, establishing demonstration centers for application and promotion, and involving end-users directly in the R&D and iterative upgrading of domestic instruments. Together, these efforts aim to close the final critical gap, advancing domestic instruments from merely “functional” to genuinely “user-friendly”, and ultimately to “widely implemented”. By doing so, this framework offers both theoretical grounding and practical guidance for achieving high-level scientific and technological self-reliance and sustained innovation capacity.

Key words: Domestic scientific instruments, Stranglehold of key technology, Application promotion, Industry-university-research-application collaboration, Scientific and technological self-reliance and strengthening