China will strengthen innovative technological cooperation with foreign countries for mutual benefit, Vice-Minister of Science and Technology Li Xueyong said yesterday.

Addressing the China-US Innovation Conference in Beijing, Li said: "We hope to provide more policies and standards to encourage innovative technology that conform to international rules."

An efficient international innovation cooperation platform needs to be set up since China is trying to shift the base of its economic development mode from investment to technology, he said.

"China will cooperate more actively with other countries to share the fruits of technological advancement and protect intellectual property rights (IPR)."

IPR protection and setting international standards are among the key issues in building an innovative society, US Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez said. "The cooperation between China and the US is quite important because 40 percent of the world's economic growth comes from the two countries."

"We can benefit greatly from international collaboration and global standards - a common language for innovation."

The weeklong conference's aim is to help share innovation experiences, and promote technological cooperation between the two countries' governments, enterprises and research institutes.

That China has a good innovation and development environment is borne out by Microsoft's decision to choose it as its R&D center in the Asia-Pacific region.

Asserting the fact, Microsoft Vice-President and Microsoft Asia Research Director Ya-Qin Zhang said: "Bill Gates visited a number of countries and universities. And he was quite impressed with the quality and talents of the students and the enthusiasm and passion of the people here."

China is the largest investment market for Microsoft after the US, he said. The company spends $100 million a year in China-related R&D activities, and plans to increase the amount in the next three to five years.

"We have established innovative collaboration with more than a dozen universities in China and formed close partnerships with several Chinese IT companies, such as Digital China and Inspur (the country's leading computing solutions provider)," Zhang said.

Inspur Group expects to see greater cooperation with the world's leading IT firms, company CEO Sun Pishu said.

"We consider technology innovation as the core power for achieving high speed and sustainable development," he said.

(China Daily, December 11, 2007)