On November 12th of 2007, Vice Minister SHANG Yong met with the delegation of Nordic Council of Ministers (NCM) headed by Mr. Jan Vapaavuori. Ambassadors of Finland and Norway to China were present at the meeting.

The Vice Minister reviewed the cooperation in S&T between China and the Nordic countries, and gave a detailed introduction on China’s efforts to build an innovative country so as to meet the objective set by the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

In terms of deepening the cooperation with the Nordic region, SHANG pledged efforts to promote both bilateral and multilateral interactions which included the R&D and commercialization in the filed of environment protection, clean energy, ICT, biology, nanotechnology, etc. He hoped both sides would value the role of joint research in fostering economic and trade cooperation. The participation of enterprises should be encouraged, and a sound policy and legal environment should be created for the commercialization of cooperation achievements. Moreover, the cooperation in basic and frontier research should be strengthened in mutually complementary fields.