Description
Summary:In the last ten years, Chinese astronomers proposed two optical and near-infrared Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) projects, one is 30m Chinese Future Giant Telescope (CFGT) the other is a 30m Ring Interferometric Telescope (RIT). The current status in the development of these two projects and their key technology research and progress are described in this paper. Both of the two plans are the preliminary projects of the National Astronomical Observatories (NAOC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and finance-supported from the NAOC. The National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) also gives supports to key technology researches of the projects (such as, adaptive optics and high-resolution imaging techniques). In the final part of this paper a brief description is given on the possibility of international cooperation in the development of Chinese ELT. A review is also presented of other two ground-based Extremely Large Projects (ELP), one is Five-hundred-Meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), and the other is a challenging PANDA (The Prydz bay, Amery ice shelf and Dome A Observatories) project in Antarctica.