MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 17th February, 2020) A high level of political relations between Moscow and Beijing corresponds to the high quality of scientific ties between the countries, Vladislav Panchenko, a physicist and the chairman of the board of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR), told Sputnik in an interview.
"Today, the level of political relations between the two countries is unprecedentedly high, it is an indicator of the strategic partnership. It is matched by the level of scientific ties, including through RFBR and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) science foundations," Panchenko said.
He described the NSFC as his foundation's oldest and most important foreign partner. Every year the two organizations sponsor over 100 research projects by Russian and Chinese scientists, with the financing of joint projects increasing 2.5 times in the last five years.
The RFBR also cooperates with the Chinese academy of Social Sciences, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, and the Chinese Science and Technology Ministry.
"The Russia-China ground-breaking scientific research covers projects in most diverse areas. It is megascience [experiments conducted on an unprecedented scale], digital, additive, and other cutting edge technologies. Their application areas include biomedicine, space, nanotechnology," Panchenko said.
He added that in recent years China has turned into a first-rate scientific power, having done well in the areas of laser physics, neurosurgery, as swell as nanotechnology and supercomputers.
"We highly value the achievements of Chinese scientists in the aforementioned areas. The level of their research works has increased dramatically, I am not talking about specific projects, but as we know, the successes of Chinese scientists are simply gargantuan," Panchenko stated.
In this light, cooperation with Chinese scientists becomes of particular value, he concluded.
