A large four-column labyrinth seal compressor development project being carried out by the Tianhua Institute of Machinery & Automation recently received Ministry of Science and Technology approval in Beijing. The project is part of a state-supported project, at an advanced international level (the Development of Megaton-level Ethylene Equipment and Correlation Techniques), and a part of the 11th Five-Year Plan that was organized by Sinopec, which owns the rights to it. The machine has functioned well for almost a year, showing that China is fully capable of design and fabrication work on a large ethylene project, and that it has the technology to produce megaton-level equipment at a lower cost. This is significant for the nationalization of large ethylene projects and other compressor units as well as for other large technical equipment.