Mr. Robin Porter, Head of the British Foreign Office Science and Technology Network in China, is firmly convinced that the tech transfer and cooperation between China and his country enjoys an "excellent prospect".

It is, of course, a win-win situation. According to Mr. Porter who would refer to be called Robin in Chinese, by investing in UK, Chinese hi-tech start-ups have the access to the state-of-art technologies and new markets and their growth will in turn benefit their host country.

His optimism for the potential of Sino-British cooperation was shared by both government officials and executives of businesses who were present at the Forum on Sino-British Technology Commercialization sponsored by Science and Technology Section of British Embassy Beijing and Beijing Tech Exchange Center on November 22. Mr. Yin Jun, Director of European Section of International Cooperation Department of Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology, agreed on Robin' vision.

Their confidence is underpinned by the commitments of the governments of the two countries on bilateral collaboration on technology. UK Science and Technology Year will be staged in China next year and last through the whole year of 2005. Beijing will host the 3rd China-UK Hi-Tech Forum in January, 2005 to mark the launch of the significant event which will then be hailed by the whole country. The British Minister of Science and Technology will come to China, deliver speeches, and talk extensively with his Chinese hosts.

In fact, multi-facade channels are in place to promote the Sino-British partnership in science and technology. As both Robin and Yin mentioned at the forum, the Agreement on Science and Technology Cooperation was signed by the two countries in 1978 and renewed in 1998. Mr. Yin added in his presentation that regular dialogues are held between Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and UK Office of Science and Technology and that the China-UK Scientist Network Scheme promots communications between young scientists of the two countries. Manchester and Cambridge have launched Chinese science parks. And China Hi-tech exhibition was held in London in November last year as a sideline of the Second China-UK Hi-Tech Forum.

Mr. Robin recognized that the issue of intellectual property rights (IPR) was of common interest and attracting more and more attention. He praised China had made "tremendous progress" on IPR protection, esp. in the last couple of years since China jointed the World Trade Organization.

He also noticed that Chinese businesses were getting more and more sophisticated and began to develop their own IPR. So he did not regard IPR a much obstacle to the bilateral tech trading and cooperation.

As Mr. Yin put it, the cooperation on science and technology makes sense far beyond the sci-tech field. It strengthens links between the peoples, boosts the cooperation on economy and trade, and promotes the mutual understanding. It is, he stressed, an integral part of China's diplomatic strategy.

China's cooperation with EU member nations would be proceeded both under the framework of EU and bilateral mechanism, said Yin. The fields of common interests are increasing. The cooperation is expanding and deepening. The participation of industries is growing. And all of this, Yin declared, took place under an excellent political environment. He believes a closer ties on technology will help to make breakthroughs in exchanges on "sensitive fields". "The so-called sensitive fields", he asserted, "is a result of the lack of mutual understanding."

As Yin mentioned, the cooperation on science and technology between China and UK lags behind that between China and some other EU countries such as Germany. But as the two sides have realized this and seem to be trying to catch up, the prospect of the advent of a new era of the bilateral cooperation on science and technology is quite expectable.

By People's Daily Online