The ice-breaking tour to China by former US President Richard Nixon also started a new chapter for cooperation between China and the United States in developing science and technology.
In the early 1970s, sporadic mutual visits were the only signs of the two countries' relationship in the field of science and technology. In the last four years however, Chinese and US national scientific authorities have organized annual symposia on the frontiers of science.
Since 1979, the two countries' state leaders have attached great importance to exchange and cooperation in science and technology, which is regarded as one of the keys for enhancing the bilateral friendship.
During his visit to the United States in January 1979, the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and former US President Jimmy Carter signed a treaty of cooperation on science and technology between the two governments.
After President Jiang Zemin's US visit in 1997, cooperation in the fields of energy and environmental protection was discussed as well as monitoring the Earth from outer space.
During former President Bill Clinton's China visit in 1998, the two countries sealed an agreement on cooperation concerning the peaceful use of nuclear technology and a letter of intent on cooperation in monitoring urban air quality.
According to the first governmental science and technology cooperation treaty, the validity of which has been extended to April 30, 2006, China and the United States are cooperating in more than 30 scientific and technological fields including high energy physics, space technology, environmental protection, nuclear safety and energy use.
The two countries have signed a total of 34 official documents concerning science and technology, the highest number between China and any developed country in the world.
In order to coordinate inter-governmental cooperation, a joint commission on science and technology cooperation has been set up, which has organized nine meetings in the past two decades.
The commission has ensured further exchange and cooperation between the two countries in scientific fields of common concern. And willing cooperation between the scientists themselves has been stimulated.
In the last ten years, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), China's top scientific research body, further cultivated ties with US research institutes and universities.
The CAS Institute of Physics and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory jointly constructed a quantum physics lab; the CAS Institute of Computing Technology launched a lab on telecommunication technology with Texas A&M University; the CAS and the Missouri Botanical Garden has organized botanists to compile the English version of Flora of China.
A senior official with China's Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) said that for the past 30 years, China and the United States have carried out thousands of cooperative programs, in which thousands of Chinese and US scientists have participated.
The scientific and technological achievements made by the two countries' scientists include the ground satellite station for remote sensing, the Beijing Electron-Positron Collider (BEPC), the digitized network for monitoring earthquakes, the discovery of the largest twisted galaxy, CFC alternatives research and the development of freon-free refrigerators, nuclear safety codes and an experimental power plant.
Chinese-American scientists T. D. Lee, Chen Ning Yang and S. C. C. Ting, all Nobel laureates in physics, made prominent contributions to China's development. New generations of patriotic scientists are promoting bilateral relations in the field.
From 1976 to 1999, 95 out of the total 122 Nobel Prize winners have been US citizens. In 2001, expenditure on R&D in the United States reached US$240 billion.
Scientific frontiers and talented professionals have spurred Chinese scientists to step out of their "ivory tower". Their academic training in the United States and other developed countries has helped them to improve, not only in academic fields but also in research program management.
In the past two decades, about 10,000 researchers from the CAS studied or worked in the United States. Most of the CAS' leading scientists had a US education background.
At the same time US scientific circles have acquired a deeper understanding of their counterparts in China and have shared important academic data with them.
The MOST official said that both China and the United States benefit from the two-way communication in science and technology.
As an important factor in improving the bilateral relations, science and technology exchange and cooperation is expected to strengthen the friendship between the two peoples.
(Xinhua News Agency February 7, 2002)
