Newton in China, two years on

This week, two years ago, when UK Prime Minister met Chinese Premier Premier Li Keqiang, the UK-China Research and Innovation Fund was announced. With a combined value of £200m over 5 years, both sides committed equally. The UK funding comes from the Newton Fund, which aims to promote economic development and social welfare in partner countries.

Newton in China is all about forming partnerships to tackle global challenges and improving the lives of those that are most vulnerable. So far, nearly £90million of UK funding, all matched by China, has been announced across 34 programmes and funding initiatives. Newton is accelerating UK-China collaborations, bringing the best minds together.

The list of collaborations is extensive and covers many key challenges. We have research programmes, led by Research Councils UK (RCUK) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. These cover diverse topics such as remote sensing for agritech, air pollution, reducing fertiliser usage, rice research, urban transformations, stem cells, antimicrobial resistance and others.

We are supporting the best collaborations at an early career stage through mobility schemes from the Royal Society, Academy of Medical Sciences, British Academy, Royal Academy of Engineering, and their Chinese partners. The British Council run a PhD Placement scheme, alongside programmes to develop researcher links and communication skills.

Just launched between RCUK, Innovate UK and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology is the Research and Innovation Bridges programme. This aims to bring together business and academia to translate excellent science into commercial outcomes that tackle several key global challenges for UK and China.

There are many excellent collaborations and partnerships being formed under Newton, including those on a changing climate I wrote about previously. Newton in China is unprecedented in scale and ambition and is already having a demonstrable effect on the relationship between China and UK, at a government level but also an individual level. As the experts begin to work together, we will see many exciting developments that will have an effect on the important issues of the day. I look forward to sharing these developments over the coming months and years.

The UK-China Research and Innovation Partnership Fund, worth £200 million over 5 years, is led by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills in the UK and the Ministry of Science and Technology in China. This forms part of the global Newton Fund that, through mutual science and innovation partnerships, promotes sustainable economic development and social welfare in partner countries. The Newton Fund is delivered through 15 delivery partners in collaboration with 15 partnering countries. For more information visit: www.newtonfund.ac.uk