China: David Willetts Hosts UK China joint commission on science and technology – April 2014
Published 16 April 2014
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Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts, chaired the 7th UK China Joint Commission on Science and Technology in London with his Chinese counterpart Minister Wan Gang on Monday 31st March. Wan Gang was accompanied by representatives from the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Ministry of Education.
Ministers discussed the new UK-China Research and Innovation Partnership (known in the UK as the Newton Fund), £200m joint funding over five years for cutting edge research and innovation collaboration between the UK and China, which was announced during the China Summit in December 2013. It comprises three strands: people exchanges; research partnerships; and innovation and translation partnerships. Across these, it will support priority areas for both countries, aligning with the UK’s Eight Great Technologies and Industrial Strategies: health, environmental technologies, food and water, urbanisation, energy, education and creative economy.
Ministers agreed that the first joint calls and programmes should be announced at the upcoming People to People Dialogue in Beijing on 23rd April. The proposals for the Fund covered: basic research programmes under the highlighted themes; developing joint labs including through a Science and Innovation Bridges programme; using people exchanges to tackle global challenges; extending the Royal Society’s fellowship scheme; PhD exchanges; capacity building in Chinese Universities; student exchanges; helping SMEs to become more innovative; using China’s network of science parks and national high tech zones; and building platforms for collaborations.
The UK China Innovation Dialogue was upgraded to Ministerial level and incorporated into the Joint Commission. Chief Scientific Adviser Mark Walport chaired this session which allowed both sides to exchange innovation policy developments. It was agreed that public private partnerships were important and the UK and China should consider how best to develop them together. Both UK and China are focusing on R&D tax incentives and bank lending to drive innovation. China is keen to work with the UK on developing a tech transfer market and highlighted their new policies to protect IP.
Under the recently signed MOU between the two countries on Science and Technology Financing Cooperation, Ministers also discussed new ways of financing science and innovation collaboration, focusing on venture capital. They agreed to task the UK China Experts Group to explore the most promising models, with the British Venture Capital Association conference on Private Equity and Venture Capital in Asia in May, as a good place to start exploring the issues. There will then be a full meeting of the Expert Group in the second half of 2014.
0.1 Comment
Our aim to become China’s partner of choice in science and innovation collaboration is coming to fruition. The range and level of representatives on the Chinese side reinforces this growing level of engagement and demonstrates they are taking the scale of opportunity presented by the Newton Fund very seriously. We capitalised on the presence of China’s top three science funders to get high level endorsement for plans under the Newton Fund and the S&T Financing MOU.
China wants to learn from the UK’s experiences and recognises UK excellence, partly reflected in the fact the UK is one of just a handful of countries to have a Ministerial level Innovation Dialogue. Once again, the complementarities between the UK and China’s priorities were clear, creating a wealth of opportunities to research and develop technologies together, bringing in SMEs and private sector financing to drive forward the partnerships and investment in each other’s countries.
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