First BRST Draws Attendees from Over 80 Countries to Boost Science and Tech Collaboration

CHONGQING, China, Nov. 7, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — A news report from iChongqing – The first Belt and Road Conference on Science and Technology Exchange (BRST) opened in Southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality on November 6 under the theme “Together for Innovation, Development for All.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter to the first BRST. In his letter, he noted that the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation was successfully held, ushering in a new stage of high-quality development for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), of which sci-tech cooperation is an important part, according to Xinhua.

Over 300 international guests from over 80 countries participated in the conference, including Nobel Prize winners, foreign academicians, experts, scholars, and presidents of well-known foreign universities. Together with 500 domestic experts, scholars, and business leaders, the event brought 800 attendees.

The conference released the International Science and Technology Cooperation Initiative, advocating and practicing the concept of international science and technology cooperation that is open, fair, just and non-discriminatory, and working together to build a global science and technology community.

Also, the construction of the Belt and Road Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone in the Chengdu–Chongqing region was launched, with the Belt and Road Science and Technology Innovation Special Cooperation Plan and the Innovative Silk Road Development Report released.

At the keynote speech of the first BRST, Carsten Fink, Chief Economist of the World Intellectual Property Organization, released the Global Innovation Index 2023 Top 100 Science and Technology Clusters. Several Chinese cities were named among the top 10, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Suzhou, showing their level and impact of innovation globally.

Konstantin Novoselov, 2010 Nobel Laureate in Physics, said that, working with the National University of Singapore (NUS) (Chongqing) Research Institute, his team is delving into the domain with a keen focus on scaling up graphene production. He foresees a future where robots specialized in data acquisition will create vast datasets for machine learning, significantly advancing material science.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of BRI. In the past decade, the mechanism of scientific and tech cooperation has been deepened, exchanges of researchers have been more frequent, and the achievements of scientific and technological cooperation have been increasingly fruitful, Zhang Guangjun, Vice Minister of Science and Technology, said on October 30.

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