Information technology, biotechnology and nanotechnology will beat the forefront of future scientific co-operation between China and the European Union (EU).

The plan was announced on Friday in a joint declaration, in which the two sides agreed to follow through on their strategic partnership by deepening co-operation in research and technological development.

Dubbing the agreement a "knowledge-based" strategic partnership, China's Minister of Science and Technology Xu Guanhua and EU Commissioner for Science and Technology Janez Potocnik announced the declaration at the conclusion of a two-day forum on science and technology strategy. The meeting was part of joint China-EU celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of diplomatic ties.

In the declaration, specific objectives included increasing public and private investment in co-operation projects, promoting a scientific culture and ensuring protection of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR).

The two sides agreed that further co-operation will be based on the guiding principle of ensuring mutual interest and overall balance between China and Europe.

"In a world that is global, the best way to increase innovation is for China and Europe to actively and collaboratively engage with each other," the declaration stated.

Along with the declaration, the two sides also made public a further paper, identifying joint social development difficulties China and the EU face in the coming years.

To ensure sustainable development, both are interested in technologies concerned with environmental protection, information and communication, food and agriculture, transportation, urbanization and health.

"We share many joint development and research priorities and that's the basis for deeper co-operation," said Xu.

At the forum, research circles and business representatives agreed that China and the EU share great potential for the development of third generation (3G) wireless communication technology.

Wu Hequan, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the China has placed a high priority on research into 3G wireless communications.

He said partnership between EU and China research organizations and companies had already been set up.

"We want to see a wider range of international co-operation in this area," Wu added.

Meanwhile, Chinese and European scientists have joined hands in observing outer space via a hexahedral network of research satellites, which is primarily aimed at depicting space magnetic storms and ensuring manned space exploration.

The leading scientist of the Double Star Program, Liu Zhenxing, said Friday at the forum that his program coordinated well with Cluster II, a four-satellite space observation program sponsored by the European Space Agency (ESA) that has gathered a huge amount of new data.

In the Double Star Program, one satellite orbits the Earth passing over both poles while the other flies over the equator. One orbiter reaches more than 60,000 kilometers from the Earth, unprecedented for Chinese satellites.

The Cluster mission is currently investigating the small-scale structure of the Earth's plasma environment, such as those involved in the interaction between solar wind and magnetospheric plasma, global magnetotail dynamics, cross-tail currents, and the formation and dynamics of the neutral line and of plasmoids.

The Double Star Program covers the space area close to Earth, which is hard to detect by the four Cluster satellites.

Chinese and European scientists jointly made the 16 research instruments loaded on the two Chinese satellites.

"Both of us benefit from the cooperation in developing research facilities and exploring space," said Liu, who is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The CAS Center for Space Science and Application Research and the ESA organized a joint research team, which is led by Liu and another two co-chairs, one Chinese and one European.

The Chinese and European scientists have agreed to share all data collected by the four Cluster satellites and China's double stars.

"We also have full access to scientific data gathered by 30 ground observation stations, which are affiliated to Cluster II," Liu said. "Those data help Chinese space scientists do what they were not able to do in the past."

(China Daily, Xinhua News Agency May 14, 2005)