Chinese Minister of Science and Technology visits Catalonia

From http://www.ara.cat/politica/Artur_Mas-Xina-govern_xines-Mare_Nostrum-universitats_0_925707669.html (in Catalan)

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="399"] Catalan President Artur Mas with Wan Gang, Chinese Minister of Science and Technology (picture from the website of Ara.cat)[/caption]

The President of Catalan government, Artur Mas, and the Chinese Minister of Science and Technology, Wan Gang (万钢), have recently met in Barcelona. The main interests of Wan Gang's visit were to know first hand the ALBA Synchrotron, the first one of its kind and located in Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona province), as well as the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, also considered as a reference centre not only in Spain but also in Europe. President Artur Mas was sided by Roger Albinyana, Secretary of Foreign Affairs and European Union, and by Antoni Castellà, Secretary for Universities and Research.

Thanks to the agreements with the Spanish Secretary of State for R+D, Carmen Vela, the scientific collaboration between these two countries is expected to tighten in fields such as biotechnology, health and life sciences and environment. It is expected that Spanish researchers would be able to work in facilities like the Shanghai particle accelerator (上海光源) whereas the Chinese ones would be able to do it in the ALBA Synchrotron.

Another subject that has been dealt during Wan Gang's visit is the exchange of students between the Catalan and Chinese universities. In the next academic term the Catalan government will open an office to specifically advise the students coming from China, something that both the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra already have in China. Nowadays, 3% of the foreign students in Catalonia come from China and the goal is to double this percentage in the next few years.

Between March 11th and 14th, 2013, representatives of the Catalan government and of the main universities of Catalonia travelled to Hong Kong to attend for the first time the annual conference of the Asia Pacific Association for International Education, APAIE, the most important university fair in Asia and one of the most prominent in the world. The goal of this mission was to promote the internationalization of the Catalan university and research systems under the brand Study in Catalonia.