By Wang Baoqing
China and the United Kingdom have good reason to be upbeat about bringing about an increasingly rosy win-win situation in science and technology cooperation. First let figures tell the story.
Innovative scientists and engineers are national assets for the UK, which has 1 percent of the world's population but 5 percent of the world's scientific research. The UK has produced 8 percent of the world's research papers and 12 percent of the scientific citations. In 2004, the British government published the 10 Year Science and Innovation Investment Framework (2004-14), which proposed spending 2.5 percent of UK's GDP on research and development (R&D) by 2014.
As for China, based on the country's ongoing economic progress over the previous 30 years, China has ambitious plans to use science and innovation to sustain its economic miracle.
Since 1999, China's spending on R&D has increased steadily. According to the National Medium and Long Term Plan for Science and Technology Development (2006-20) released by the Chinese government in 2006, its R&D investment will rise from the current 1.3 percent of the GDP to 2.5 percent by 2020.
Careful examination of China's strengths and weaknesses is also helpful in explaining why cooperation is vital.
China has some exclusive strengths and expertise in such areas as biomedicine, information and communications technology, and space technology. It has the world's largest scientific workforce, is attracting an increasing number of multinational companies to outsource their innovative work here, and successful strategies for attracting its overseas talent back to China.
But the weaknesses are apparent as well. China lacks innovation and core technologies. Also, language barriers create problems for many Chinese scientists in communicating with their foreign peers.
This makes it necessary for Britain and China to collaborate horizontally for mutual benefits.
In fact, Britain is paying increasing attention to collaborations with China. In October 2006, the international cooperation strategy for R&D published by the National Science and Innovation Forum of the UK identified China as an important partner.
A number of seminars and workshops on China took place in the UK last year. The Atlas of Ideas: Mapping the New Geography of Science organized by Demos, "the think tank of everyday democracy", was successfully held in London in January 2007.
Reports released at the conference showed that UK-China collaborative research articles grew from about 400 to 1,600 from 1996 to 2005.
The conference showed that the paradigm for international research has changed. China, India and South Korea are included in the new geography.
According to the conference report, the rise of China has been positive for the UK. Relations between China and the UK are now witnessing one of the best periods with the establishment of a strategic partnership.
There exists great potential for cooperation, with our continuous efforts based on the extensive common ground that the UK and China share in the fields of science and technology. Both countries regard science and innovation as vital to sustain economic development.
Both have identified six areas as priorities for collaboration: clean energy and renewable energy, climate change and environmental protection, infectious diseases, biomedicine and traditional medicine, nano technology and material science, and space technology.
We cherish the win-win situation. Premier Wen Jiabao said during his visit to the UK last year that the cooperation has shown how well China and the UK can mutually benefit.
There is room for improvement. We are working hard to increase UK scientists' collaboration with Chinese scientists.
We are exploring new ways to upgrade project collaboration with more exchanges of ideas and bilateral and multilateral action. We are trying every means to remove future barriers.
Sir David King, the UK's chief scientist, recently said: "We are in an era where many of the scientific questions that we need to address are too large for a single researcher, university, or often indeed nation. There is a need for sharing data and computational models and bringing together teams of skilled individuals wherever they are. This type of global collaboration is only feasible with commonly agreed open standards."
With this down-to-earth attitude, the partnership between the UK and China will be further strengthened and China's dream of becoming a scientific power can be realized.
The writer is Minister Counselor for Science and Technology of the Chinese Embassy to the United Kingdom.
(China Daily February 27, 2007)
