Bright outlook lies ahead of China-Italy innovation cooperation

In his address to the Fifth Italy-China Innovation Forum held at the Milan Polytechnic, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said that through concerted efforts, innovation cooperation between China and Italy will make greater contribution to the economic and social development of the two great civilizations.[Special coverage]

Rector of the Milan Polytechnic Giovanni Azzone expressed great appreciation for the Chinese premier's cognizance and thinking.

Both Italy and China need innovation, Azzone said in an interview with Xinhua. Italy through technical innovations can tackle the problem of very high labor costs, while China by enhancing its innovation capacity can boost competitive strength at the international level, he explained.

Azzone went on saying that China has strong technological capacity, while Italy has a predisposition for creativity. These two modalities of innovation, he highlighted, are complementary and have bright prospects for the future.

The more than 150-year-old Milan Polytechnic is one of the most outstanding universities in Europe as to engineering, architecture and industrial design.

In 2011 the Milan Polytechnic established the Chinese Territorial Pole, designed to strengthen academic exchanges with Chinese top universities. After that, a platform for systemic dialogue and a center for technology transfer were created to start a real path of bilateral cooperation in scientific and technological innovation.

In this process, Tongji University in Shanghai was the first to tie up bilateral relations on university education by inaugurating a China-Italy institute in 2006.

Over the past eight years, nearly 1,000 students have graduated from the China-Italy institute at Tongji University, gradually building and exploiting an efficient system of collaboration between the two countries in the fields of innovation and sustainable development.

The Chinese and Italian governments have also played a very active role in promoting innovation collaboration. In 2011, China and Italy jointly launched a China-Italy technology transfer center, a China-Italy design and innovation center, and other platforms related to innovation collaboration.

In 2013, the Chinese ministry of science and technology and the Italian ministry of foreign affairs selected 10 projects for the exchange of researchers as well as 21 bilateral research projects, part of a program of scientific and technological cooperation for the years 2013-2015.

The projects were about nanotechnologies and new materials, energy environment, biomedicine, information and communication technology, applied science and fundamental research as well as other sectors.

The industrial world is another protagonist of innovation cooperation, and the number of involved companies tells the level of concreteness of collaboration. "When many companies participate, then we can entrust to innovation collaboration a more robust market vitality," Scientific and Technological Attache of the Chinese Embassy in Rome Yin Jun noted.

During Li's visit to Italy, several Chinese and Italian scientific research institutions and companies signed collaboration agreements, marking a shift from scientific research to products and services.

In fact China-Italy innovation collaboration holds in store dynamic force and bright outlook. Italian Minister of Education, University and Research Stefania Giannini stressed in her opening address to the Fifth Italy-China Innovation Forum that scientific and technological innovation has played a fundamental role in China's conspicuous development.

She added that Italy's government has the desire to further strengthen bilateral innovation collaboration, especially by promoting the exchanges of young scientists and innovative entrepreneurs. The reciprocity and potentials coming from this kind of collaboration are huge and will be a strategic driver of development for the two countries.