863 is a large-scale Chinese hi-tech R&D program. It is an umbrella for over 4,500 chinese projects including:
- Supercomputering - 10 Million Megaflops and up.
- Rice genome; also rice suitable for growing in space;
- Drugs preventing early pregnancy, virus based anti-cancer treatment, hepatitis B vaccination - all at clinical trials stage.
- Semi-conductor based lighting - presumed to be an extension of semiconductor lasers.
- Process improvements for silicon wafer fabrication.
- Use of superconducting cable in the national grid
- Medical robots perform 607 brain surgery operations (as of end 2004).