BEIJING, May 16 (Xinhua) -- The International Center for Theoretical Physics Asia-Pacific (ICTP-AP) has been launched in Beijing, capital of China, according to China Science Daily on Thursday.

The ICTP-AP will be a talent training base and international academic exchange center with global vision, Xie Xincheng, the vice president of the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC), told the newspaper. He believes the ICTP-AP will support young scholars and develop regional cooperative research.

"The world's science and technology progress has been speeding up," said physicist Yang Zhenning, a 1957 Nobel Prize winner known as Chen-Ning Franklin Yang in the west. He added that the ICTP-AP will keep the Asia-Pacific fully participating in the fast progress.

The ICTP-AP, jointly built by Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), NSFC and ICTP, will operate in affiliation to the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS).

Wu Yueliang, vice-president of UCAS, said the ICTP-AP will help the future education better serve the global sustainable development by conducting basic science research, innovation and application.

A total of 140,000 scholars and researchers have visited the ICTP since it was established in Italy in 1964, said Quevedo Fernando, director of the ICTP.