Chinese President Hu Jintao outlined major strategic tasks for building an innovation-oriented country at a national conference on science and technology that opened Monday morning in Beijing.

Hu said China will embark on a new path of innovation with Chinese characteristics, the core of which is to adhere to innovation, seek leapfrog development in key areas, make breakthroughs in key technologies and common technologies to meet urgent requirements in realizing sustained and coordinated economic and social development and make arrangements for frontier technologies and basic research with a long-term perspective.

Raising innovation capability should be given prominence to and the nation's competitiveness should be enhanced broadly, said Hu.

Innovation is the core of the nation's competitiveness and the strategic motif of China's future science and technological development. The practice of the world's science and technological development shows that only with strong innovation ability, can a country win the initiative in the international competition , said Hu.

The real core technologies cannot be purchased but can only be achieved by innovation, which should be given priority in the whole science and technological work, he said.