The East Lake High-tech Development Zone -- also known as Optics Valley, located in Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei province -- was selected to take part in an important national program, zone officials said on July 14.

They said Optics Valley was in the first batch of pilot venues for "Innovation China"-- set up by the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) in 22 cities and industry parks in China.

Founded by CAST, the Innovation China program focuses on six emerging industries, to establish 63 key science and technology service groups.

The industries are high-end equipment manufacturing, medicine and health, new generation information network technology, new materials, energy and chemicals and rural revitalization.

All pilot cities or parks in the project will integrate national academician resources and promote cooperation between scientists and entrepreneurs.

They will focus on ensuring, among other things, that more scientists are in place to help companies make technological achievements in timely and accurate fashion and realize their commercialization. They will also provide long-term direct channels for scientific and technological workers to serve enterprises.

At the same time, the pilots will establish a new type of collaborative organizational carrier, which explores a new type of science and technology economic integration mechanism that is supported by the government and led by the market.