UK and China Launch £5m Knowledge Transfer Scheme
21 November 2007
The Chinese Ambassador and UK Science Minister have launched Innovation China UK (ICUK) – the first UK-China joint innovation and knowledge transfer partnership.
ICUK is a collaboration involving five British and over twenty Chinese higher education institutions. Led by Queen Mary, University of London, ICUK is the first collaborative research and knowledge transfer partnership between the two countries. It supports academic and business partners in forging collaborations, funding proof-of-concept research, and commercialising joint intellectual property across the UK and China. Its activities will enhance the profile and visibility of UK science and technology, and the international reputation of UK universities. The other ICUK British partners are King’s College London, the University of Nottingham, the Royal Veterinary College, and the University of Southampton.
The project has been awarded £5 million in funding by the UK Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF), which supports knowledge transfer and increased business engagement in universities. China is providing complementary funding through its Ministry of Science Technology (MoST).
Jin Xiao Ming, Director General of International co-operation in MoST said: “Science and innovation is high on the agenda in Sino-British relations. The recent opening of Research Councils’ China Office signals a new era of bilateral science and innovation cooperation. Several major initiatives are unfolding and ICUK is among them. It is high time we tap into the enormously rich resources of joint research projects between our research institutions and bring them into the orbit of practical application and wealth creation. I firmly believe that ICUK will achieve success and expand to involve additional world-renowned UK universities in the future.”
Madam Fu Ying, Ambassador to United Kingdom of the People’s Republic of China, said: “In China we believed that our ancestors were great inventors – Chinese inventors developed paper, gunpowder, printing and other initiatives. But we have been left behind lately. When I came to the UK, when I presented my credentials to the Queen, I gave her Majesty a box with a book of drawings of churches. This was a gift, one of 500 originally presented to China by King George III, in the late 18th century. The Emperor kept this gift but sent a letter back to King George saying China didn’t need trade or a British ambassador!
“It’s only in the past 30 years that China has come back to a dialogue of industrialisation, which should have started 200 years ago, and that’s what my gift symbolised with the Queen.
“China has a target to double its GDP per capita by 2020, to similar levels in Japan, currently. We need to introduce more science and technology developments in production to achieve this objective. We have a slogan ‘Growth with speed and quality’, but now the Party chairman has reversed this to be ‘Growth with quality and speed’, re-emphasising quality. We also want to make improvements in the environmental status, as well as reducing emissions. So to achieve that science and technology is given very strong emphasis.
She added: “A Barbie doll currently manufactured in China retails in the US for $9.95, yet only $0.35 of this is returned to China for processing profits. China would need to produce over 800 million shirts to buy one Boeing airplane. This type of growth is unsustainable. To upgrade the production level, science and technology input is key.”
China now has the biggest Research and Development (R&D) workforce, and the third biggest R&D investment in the world. UK has recognised the importance of collaborating with China to benefit from globalisation and to win ‘the race to top’ of innovation. ICUK supports collaborative research in areas such as energy; climate change and sustainable environment; infectious diseases; biomedicine and drug discovery including traditional Chinese medicine; nanotechnology and material science; and space technology.
Ian Pearson MP, Minister of State for Science and Innovation commented: “I particularly welcome the launch of Innovation China UK (ICUK) because of its emphasis on helping to bring ground breaking research to the commercial market. It is also a further sign of co-operation between the UK and China.
“Such existing research partnerships mark a potentially significant step in the capability of both countries to boost knowledge transfer. With greater knowledge transfer comes a greater ability to innovate.
“Both the UK and China are at the forefront of cutting edge science. Together we can benefit from a strong research base that works effectively with business”.
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