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This paper briefly introduces the current status of the Chinese VLBI Network (CVN) Project and its astrometric and geodetic goals.

During the period, work on the problem of the Earth’s rotation has continued to expand and increase its scope. The total number of institutions engaged in the determination of the Earth’s rotation parameters (ERP) by different techniques has been increased significantly. The rotation of the Earth is currently measured by classical astrometry, Doppler and laser satellite tracking, laser ranging of the Moon, and radio interferometry. Several long time series of the ERP are available from most of these techniques, in particular, those made during the Main Campaign of the MERIT project. The various series have been intercompared and their stability, in the time frame of years to days, has been estimated for the purposes of establishing a new conventional terrestrial reference system (COTES). On the other hand, the difficulties of maintaining a regular operation for laser ranging to the Moon (LLR) have been recognized. It resulted in the proposal to organize an one-month campaign of observations in 1985 in order to complement the COTES collocation program and to allow additional intercomparisons with other techniques.

The space age and modern technology have opened a new era for astrometry. A great amount of modern, precise astrometric data and approaches is urgently needed not only for astrophysics but also for Earth Science research. The Astrometric Community looks forward to establishing a precisely specified uniform celestial frame of reference for all purposes, which will link the bright stars, faint stars, and galaxies, down to the remote radio sources, and to establish a terrestrial frame of reference as well as to specify a precise transformation between these two frames. Effective international cooperation is the goal of all astrometrists. The Chinese astronomers are ready to join and play an active part in this cooperation.

This paper is based on optical observations of 85 instruments (Table 1-a) from January to October 1980. The accuracies of all instruments, 62 for time and 54 for latitude, are shown in Table 1-b, in which:–the roughness ε1i of daily observations is defined by the standard deviation of the observation values of the i-th instrument with respect to the smoothed values of themselves;–the ε2i is the standard deviation of mean observation values during every 0.05 year with respect to the global reference system.The average accuracy of each type of instrument is given in Table 2, regional averages are given in Table 3.These tables show that errors in time observations are greater, generally speaking, than those in latitude, and low frequency errors are greater than high frequency ones in time observations.

The present report covers the period 1 February 1985 to 30 November 1987. During this period a total of 23 travel grants were awarded as follows