Following up on last year‘s StartmeupHK venture programme, the Hong Kong government is again looking for worldwide entrepreneurial applicants to participate in the 2014 edition. The StartmeupHK Venture Programme is a global competition for high-impact, innovative and scalable startups who aim to expand their businesses globally from Hong Kong. The programme includes the global competition ‘The 2014 StartmeupHK Grand Awards, …

That is the promising title of a new report published today by the Netherlands Office for Science & Technology in China. The study, conducted at the Netherlands Consulate-General in Hong Kong, extensively maps R&D opportunities for Dutch enterprises and knowledge institutes. A large number of Dutch companies and entrepreneurs are already conducting business in Hong Kong, or use Hong Kong …

Yesterday the Financial Times reported concerns that the EU is lagging behind in terms of R&D spending: “Overall EU R&D spending has remained at about 2 per cent of GDP in the last decade, a long way off the 3 per cent target the EU wants to achieve by 2020. (…) Furthermore, the European Commission estimates that China could overtake …

Southwest Jiaotong University, a university in Chengdu, Sichuan province, has revealed images of China’s first manned megathermal superconducting maglev (magnetic levitation) loop. The tests are conducted at the university’s Applied Superconductivity Laboratory. Last year in March the lab already completed the first high-temperature superconducting maglev ring test, but now the enclosed tube has been added, allowing researches to lower the …

One of the most pressing issues of China today is water. The country is faced with severe shortages of water, water pollution and disasters. The need for new solutions to tackle these problems is high and the technology gap in comparison with first world countries is still considerable. The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) therefore systematically analyzed the basic characteristics …

On April 22nd, a consortium of leading Dutch aerospace companies and institutes signed a collaboration agreement aimed at building up and strengthening the position of the Dutch consortium on the Chinese commercial aerospace market. Partners in the consortium are ADSE, DNW German-Dutch Wind Tunnels, Fokker Technologies, National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR), TU Delft and Royal TenCate. The Netherlands Aerospace Group, the …

On 15 April, Madam Pauline van der Meer Mohr, president of the Erasmus University Rotterdam formalized the cooperation with Tsinghua University. After a pleasant meeting with Tsinghua vice president Yuan Si, both university leaders signed a Memorandum of Understanding for educational and research cooperation. The signing ceremony was witnessed by Deputy Ambassador André Driessen and Science Attaché David Pho from …

Poorly managed croplands induce soil erosion, diminish biodiversity and jeopardize the availability of natural resources. The resulting drought during dry seasons and floods during raining seasons are costly downsides of excessive farming, which itself becomes furthermore unprofitable by its own consequences. Since 1999, the central Chinese government has imposed a program to reverse deforestation for farming purposes. This program, the …

The Center for Thorium Molten Salt Reactor System, Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics has been told by the Chinese government that the deadline to develop an industrial reactor using thorium molten salt technology has been brought forward by 15 years. They no longer have 25 years to develop this reactor, but only 10. A team of 430 scientists and engineers, …

The European Commission just released a new major programme ‘EU-CHINA RESEARCH AND INNOVATION PARTNERSHIP (ECRIP)’ to fund specifically mobility of European researchers to China. The objective of this programme is to create, strengthen and intensify the EU-China Research & Innovation (RI) partnerships by supporting the mobility of EU researchers to China and strengthening people-to-people contacts, from both the public and …