Dragon — Sustaining Technology and Research (EU-China Collaboration)

People’s Republic of China, has the largest population in the world and occupies a position of geo-strategic importance in the Asian continent as well as in the Pacific sphere. The Chinese S&T and innovation system is developing extremely fast and dynamically and China has become a major new actor in the global system for the production of knowledge, while the total amount of Chinas R&D expenditure in 2009 was 58,021m, (a record high in history). The EC-China S&T Cooperation Agreement was first signed in 1998 and today, the Sino-European cooperation shows growing dynamism as is demonstrated, for instance, by the growing numbers of participations of Chinese partners in cooperative research projects funded by FP5, FP6 & FP7.

However, there is still work to be done in terms of the reciprocity in the bilateral cooperation, in dealing with specific societal challenges and by establishing broader research collaboration beyond the framework programs. Taking into account the global significance of China in the financial world and its rapidly increasing role in the global research environment, Dragon-STAR will support the Sino-European collaboration at 4 levels:

• Enhancing the quality of the Chinese participation in the Framework Programs and especially reinforcing participation from less developed areas.
• Supporting the reciprocity originating from the signed EU-China Scientific Cooperation Agreement.
• Supporting the bilateral cooperation in the broader field of innovation and especially the technological cooperation between industrial players.
• Supporting the ongoing bilateral Scientific Cooperation dialogue with studies and reports.
• Support the research cooperation and dialogue on key priority areas (SFIC).