So far, China has established cooperative relations in science and technology with 150 countries and regions. Meanwhile, international scientific and technological cooperation and exchanges carried out on a non-governmental basis are increasing. The China Association for Science and Technology and its affiliated organizations have joined 244 international scientific and technological organizations; 293 scientific researchers hold the posts of executive member or director of the executive councils or boards of directors or higher posts in international scientific and technological organizations; 281 hold leading posts on the special committees of international organizations; and 253 scientists from the CAS hold posts with international scientific organizations. The China Natural Science Foundation has concluded cooperative agreements and memorandums with science foundation organizations of 36 countries.

China held the 24th session of the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM 2002) in August 2002 in Beijing, which was one of the most influential events of the year in the science circles of the country. This session was the first ICM convention ever held in a developing country over the history of the Congress. It attracted many distinguished scientists to participate, including the prominent physicist Stephen Hawking, Nobel Prize winner John F. Nash, Jr. and six Fields Medal Prize winners. At the opening of the Congress, President Jiang Zemin awarded the 2002 Fields Medal—considered the most distinguished international award in mathematics—to the French mathematician Laurent Lafforgue and the Russian mathematician Vladimir Voevodsky.

China and France launched their biggest ever research program on life science and human genome research in April 2002 in Shanghai at a ceremony to unveil the Sino-French Life Science and Genome Center. Liu Yanhua, Chinese vice-minister of science and technology, and Gilles Le Chatelier, a French official with the Ministry of Research, were in attendance.  The center will pool research resources from the Shanghai-based Institute of Life Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, local medical schools, and three French national research institutions, including the French Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Medical Research. Their research will include the sequencing and functional research of some genomes, including a comparative research on the effect of the mutation of the human genome on diseases.

The Chinese Research Institute of Space Technology announced the launching of a second satellite in a major cooperative project between China and Brazil. The new satellite was sent into orbit to replace its predecessor, which completed its two-year lifespan. Scientists are turning to the orbiting eyes in the sky for data collection on land resources, agriculture, deforestation and urban planning. The first earth resources satellite, the ZY-1, jointly developed by Chinese and Brazilian scientists, was put into orbit in October 1999. With a designed service life of two years, the high-resolution satellite had been working overtime. The image data it sent back has been widely used in over 20 departments of the State Council and more than 40 Chinese provinces and cities. Both ZY-1 and the one recently launched belong to China's first-generation earth resources satellite. Chinese and Brazilian scientists will now cooperate in developing the second-generation earth resources satellite.

In October 2002, the CAS delegation led by Lu Yongxiang, the president of the CAS, attended the 13th Meeting of the Third World Academy of Sciences held in India, which aimed at narrowing and finally eliminating the gap between developing and developed countries in scientific and technological fields. Three Chinese scientists were honored at the meeting for their outstanding contributions to sciences.