At the invitation of WEF Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab, Minister Wang Zhigang accompanied Premier Li Keqiang to attend the WEF Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2019 (Summer Davos Forum) in Dalian on July 1-2. Themed as “Leadership 4.0: Succeeding in a New Era of Globalization”, the forum was attended by more than 1,900 representatives from governments, businesses, academies and media of over 100 countries. Premier Li Keqiang addressed the opening ceremony.

Before the opening ceremony, Minister Wang met with Professor Schwab to exchange views on such topics as enhancing the dynamic role of STI in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, benefiting the mankind through science and technology development and China‘s opening up policy. Minister Wang introduced China’s latest progress and achievements in STI, emphasizing that China will open itself wider to the outside world. He said that taking into consideration of the new global circumstances, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology is willing to strengthen multilateral innovation with WEF and enhance interactions between WEF and China’s S&T community, including technology based SEMs. Professor Schwab briefed Minister Wang on this year’s Summer Davos Forum and expressed his wish to further cooperation with the China.

Minister Wang also visited Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences together with Vice Governor Lu Ke of Liaoning Province, Party Secretary Ji Lanzhu of Shenyang Branch of CAS, Vice Mayor Zhang Zhihong of Dalian city. Minister Wang and the delegation listened to the introduction speech by Director Liu Zhongmin of DICP and visited the divisions of fuel cells, energy storage and low carbon catalysis and engineering of the Institute. Minister Wang fully acknowledged the achievements accomplished by DCIP over the years. He listened to the opinions and suggestions of the Institute for the Ministry of Science and Technology and S&T development, and set out requirements for future work. The Minister stressed that based on the features of China‘s energy endowment, robust efforts are needed to promote clean and efficient use of coal so as to find solutions to the strategic problems in energy in China. He called for more efforts to explore new approaches for integrating basic research with technology innovation to address current problems, and espressed his with that DCIP could play a bigger role in mapping out national energy strategy.

Director General Ye Dongbai of the Department of International Cooperation and Director General Xu Jing of the Department of Strategy and Planning, and President Hu Zhijian of Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development also attended the events.