Commission for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense  The Commission for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND; Chinese: 国防科学技术工业委员会) was a civilian ministry within the State Council of the People's Republic of China, responsible for setting policy for defense procurement. It was considered as the Chinese counterpart of DARPA of the USA. The ministry was formed in 1982 to centralize Chinese defense procurement and technology whose responsibility had been distributed among several agencies. In March 2008 COSTIND was merged into a new super bureaucracy called the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and renamed as the State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND). Former COSTIND deputy director, Chen Qiufa, was named as the head of SASTIND. According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, the China Atomic Energy Authority was part of COSTIND. In the late-1990s, there was a massive reorganization of the Chinese defense industry. The main focus of this reorganization was to separate the purchasing of weaponry which became the responsibility of the General Armaments Division of the People's Liberation Army, the production and development of weaponry which became the responsibility of several different enterprises such as China Northern Industries and China Southern Industries which were state-owned but not under direct state management, and the development of policy for these industries which became the responsibility of COSTIND. Because of the massive change in COSTIND, many analysts referred to the new COSTIND and the old COSTIND. COSTIND played an important role in the space program of China as one of its subagencies the China National Space Administration is responsible for Chinese space policy.