Speaker urges Russia, China scientists to launch joint projects

BEIJING, October 19 (Itar-Tass) - The speaker of the Russian
Federation Council upper house of parliament, Sergei Mironov, offers
Russian and Chinese scientists to launch joint projects instead of just
exchanging experience.
"Transition from the exchange of experience and ready projects to
joint developments, including within the framework of common
organisational elements, is a major condition for a further expansion of
scientific and technological cooperation," the speaker said at Chinese
Academy of Engineering on Tuesday.
Mironov stressed that Russia has embarked on the road of innovation
development, and this opens vast prospects for Russian-Chinese cooperation
not only in the energy and raw material sectors, but also in the sphere of
high technologies.
He reminded the audience that Russia considers five directions of
modernisation as priority ones. They include the development of energy
efficient economy, information technologies, nuclear technologies, space
as well as medical equipment and diagnostics. "I believe that these
directions as well as biotechnologies, and particularly gene engineering,
are also of priority importance for China," the speaker said.
He marked major achievements of the two countries in space sciences
and technology. Mironov expressed an opinion that the possibilities for
cooperation between the two countries in that sphere were not exhausted.
He said real conditions existed for developing a concrete program of
Russian-Chinese cooperation on each of these directions.
According to Mironov, joint study of environmental problems and
ecological security are also an important sphere, all the more because
cooperation in that direction has already yielded practical result. He
said he referred to the joint Russian-Chinese regional observatory of
ecological security in the Khabarovsk region.
Mironov also noted that the issue of industrial ecology creates a vast
field for cooperation. "We could consider setting up a Russian-Chinese
centre for industrial ecology," he said. "The Siberian branch of the
Russian Academy of Sciences is ready to be initiator in that issue," the
speaker stressed.
Mironov, who ends an official visit to China on Tuesday, also told the audience about the Skolkovo high-tech research hub. He mentioned plans to open in the future offices of the Skolkovo centre at major innovation centres of the world. "I am confident that in the future such an office will be certainly opened in China," he said.