On October 15, 2019, the Eleventh Meeting of the China-Cuba Joint Committee on Intergovernmental Cooperation in Science and Technology was held in Beijing. Lu Ming, a member of the Party Group of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, and Armando Rodriguez Batista, Vice Minister of Science, Technology and Environment of Cuba, co-chaired the meeting. Miguel Ángel Ramírez, Cuban Ambassador to China, attended and addressed the meeting. Representatives from the government, research institutes and enterprises of the two countries attended the meeting.
Lu Ming said that China and Cuba are good brothers for mutually beneficial cooperation and that leaders of both countries have reached agreement on strengthening cooperation in key fields like energy, agriculture and biopharmaceutics, as well as the people-to-people exchange field. He noted that the meeting was to follow up on relevant agreement. Lu Ming pointed out that China has gradually increased research investment in recent years and significantly improved its science, technology and innovation capabilities, accomplishing a series of achievements including manned spaceflight, manned deep-sea submersible, supercomputing, and high-speed rail. Lu Ming remarked that China-Cuba cooperation in the fields of biomedicine, digital TV and brain neuroscience has achieved fruitful results, and he hoped that the two sides would innovate science and technology cooperation mechanisms under the framework of the Belt and Road Science, Technology and Innovation Action Plan proposed by President Xi Jinping, create a favorable research ecosystem, consolidate the fruits of mutually beneficial cooperation, and strengthen people-to-people exchanges in science and technology and contribute to the economic and social development and peoples’ well-being of the two countries.
Armando Rodriguez Batista said that the friendship between China and Cuba has a long history and that cooperation in science, technology and innovation (STI) is an important foundation for promoting bilateral relations. He noted that the Cuban government attaches growing importance to the role of STI in national development and is willing to raise the level of science and technology development in Cuba by learning from China‘s advanced experience. He hoped that the meeting would become a new starting point for the STI cooperation between China and Cuba and guide government, industrial, academic and research institutions of both sides to strengthen cooperation in science park, joint research and other areas so as to jointly address challenges in the fields of health, climate change, food safety and so on.
Participants from both sides reviewed their cooperation achievements in biomedicine, brain science and other fields, conducted in-depth exchanges on topics such as science park cooperation, personnel exchanges, and support for joint research, reached broad consensus on future cooperation fields, and agreed to promote practical cooperation in such fields as biotechnology, biomedicine, nanotechnology, climate change, natural resources and environment, and agricultural science and technology.

After the meeting, the two sides signed the Minutes of the Eleventh Meeting of the Joint Committee of the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Government of the Republic of Cuba on Cooperation in Science and Technology.