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Boosting China Cooperation

Nov 08 2013

China-Finland ICT Alliance October 2013 Update

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China-Finland ICT Alliance October 2013 Update 402.22 KB

Finland as “Country of Honour for 2013” in Pujiang Innovation Forum in Shanghai

Finland was nominated by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST) as the “Country of Honour for 2013” for Pujiang Innovation Forum 26-27 October 2013 in Shanghai. Pujiang Innovation Forum has been established in 2008 to highlight best practices in international innovation cooperation and to exchange views, knowledge and visions between industrial, governmental and academic partners. Pujiang Innovation Forum is one of the most important events in this field in China. The grand theme of this year’s forum was “Innovation-Driven Development and the Role of Enterprises”. The forum was a very good fit for China-Finland ICT Alliance as it is run by MOST (that established ICT Alliance in 2009 together with the Ministry of Employment and the Economy of Finland) and it involves long-term key partners in Shanghai, the City of Shanghai, Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, and Tongji University as its main organisers. Prior and after to Pujiang Innovation Forum there were meetings and workshops organised by ICT Alliance in Beijing and Shanghai as described below. ICT Alliance was a member in the preparation team of the forum programme from the Finnish side among other Team Finland actors, as well as a member of Finland’s official Pujiang business delegation.
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In his opening speech, Mr. Jan Vapaavuori, Minister of the Economy of Finlandhighlighted the current R&D&I efforts of the China-Finland ICT Alliance as an active joint platform in international innovation cooperation. The forum also had a number of other guest speakers and distinguished panellists, for example, Mr. Wan Gang, Minister of Science and Technology of China, Mr. Yang Xiong, Mayor of the City of Shanghai, Mr. Peter Vesterbacka, Chief Marketing Officer & Mighty Eagle, Rovio, Mr. Antti Pirinen, Vice President, Kone, and Mr. Pekka Soini, Director General, TEKES.
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Key topics that were discussed in the forum:

  • joint R&D projects are a concrete way to support and encourage international cooperation;
  • need for new models in value creation;
  • how to more effectively allocate investments into knowledge and create new financing models; and
  • investments into learning and capacity building are essential for boosting industrial sectors.
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The close cooperation between the City of Shanghai and City of Espoo and Chinese and Finnish high-tech innovation actors was highlighted by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Espoo City & China-Finland Golden Bridge Innovation Center and Shanghai Zhang Jiang High-Tech Park, by Ms.Tuula Antola, Director of Economic and Business Development of the Espoo City, and Mr. Lei Ding, Director of Zhang Jiang High Tech Park Administrative Committee.
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The recent launch of the new China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone and the Bund Financial Innovation Pilot Zone are signals of the open approach and interest in experimenting with new and innovative cooperation models. They highlight China’s position and aim at becoming key global node for trade, logistics and financial services. These developments are highly relevant to the ICT Alliance and they match Finland’s vision: working together with key international partners to establish an “Enabling hub for global digital business and innovation – where East meets West and South”. In the increasingly digital world Finland aims at providing open, trusted, transparent and reliable base for data and services. Combining highly available digital services and communication infrastructures with trusted and secure management of large scale transactional and personal data and identities would provide businesses and public actors a unique international hub for big data and cloud based services. And, fast growing digital business can also be fun, even in Finland, as illustrated by the well-known global games companies Rovio (Angry Birds), attending Pujiang Innovation Forum, and Supercell.
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Z-Park Enterprise Forum with ICT Alliance: Faster from R&D&I to Business

Zhongguancun Science Park is one of the most intensive R&D&I foundations in China. To boost cooperation with Finnish companies, it invited 30 most innovative companies from its community to join the forum on Finland-China business and R&D&I cooperation on 30 October 2013 in Beijing. The key objective was to identify and discuss partnership between Finnish companies and Zhongguancun Science Park in the field of ICT and digital solutions and applications. The forum was chaired by Mr. Zeng Xiaotao, Managing Director, International Operations, Administrative Committee of Zhongguancun Science Park, and hosted by Mr. Yang Nan, Vice General Manager, Beijing Zhongguancun Software Park Development Co., Ltd. Mr. Jani Kaarlejärvi and Mr. Matti Hämäläinen presented current and future business activities and joint business initiatives of DIGILE and China-Finland ICT Alliance with the special focus on how joint R&D&I projects create business value for SMEs and which way it is possible to fasten processes from R&D to market entry for new solutions, products and services.
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Following joint R&D&I interest areas were identified:

  • e-banking and e-commerce;
  • gaming;
  • data analytics;
  • 5G technology;
  • cloud security ; and
  • future media technologies and platforms.
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Zhongguancun became the first high-tech park in China in 1988 when the State Council approved the establishment of the Beijing New Technology Industrial Development Trial Zone (predecessor of the Zhongguancun Science and Technology Park). During the past two decades, Zhongguancun has gathered nearly 20,000 high and new-tech enterprises, including such as Lenovo and Baidu. Zhongguancun enterprises have formulated 86 important international standards like TD-SCDMA, McWill and IGRS, and about 800 national, local and industrial standards. Its technology transaction values exceed a third of the country’s total, including 80 percent of project products and services exported outside Beijing. In 2010, the gross income of enterprises in Zhongguancun achieved 1.59 trillion yuan, an increase of 22.6 percent, taking up about one seventh of all high and new-tech zones in China and contributing 23.5 percent to Beijing’s economic growth. Zhongguancun is home to 10 parks, namely, Haidian, Fengtai, Changping, Electronics City, Yizhuang, Desheng, Yonghe, Shijingshan and Tongzhou Parks as well as the Daxing Biomedicine Industrial Base. Zhongguancun’s venture capital cases and investment amount every year account for about a third of the country’s total. For example, Zhongguancun Software Park opened up an office in Otaniemi, Espoo, in 2012. Zhongguancun Software Park Development Co, Ltd is specialised in high tech park development and its establishment was granted by Beijing Municipal Government. Its three shareholder companies are Beijing Technology Park Construction Group, Beijing Capital Steel, and Beijing Haidian Technology Park. Zhongguncun Software Park Development Co, Ltd was founded on 7 August 2000 with initial capital of 500 million RMB ($62.5 million USD).
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Companies that participated in the Enterprise Forum included, for example:

  • Qihoo 360 Technology Co Ltd (NYSE: QIHU) is a leading Chinese supplier of Internet products and services and mobile safety;
  • iSoftStone (NYSE: ISS) is a leading China-based IT services provider, serving both Greater China and Global clients.
  • UFIDA Software Co Ltd is the largest local management software provider in China and the Asia-Pacific region;
  • Beyondsoft Corporation offers end-to-end development and testing cloud computing solution and in 2013 was awarded “TOP 50 Service Outsourcing Players in China”;
  • Senscape Technologies is China’s first mobile augmented reality platform dedicated to developing high-tech company, augmented reality technology is the intelligence and wisdom of the city’s major tourist supporting technology;
  • Beijing GEO Technologies develops big data technologies to apply in the advertising industry, and its patent DataQuateTM technology platform processes 4TB real time internet audience profile data/day, coming from operator broadband and internet, and has managed advertising resources for blue chip clients including Citi-Bank, Pepsi, Peugeot, Johnson and Johnson, Suning.com etc.;
  • Anplat Co., Ltd. Is an industry-focused BI (Business Intelligence) standardized software solutions company;
  • Kingsoft Corporation Limited, as one of best-known software companies, is a leading software developer and Internet service provider in China, and on October 9th, 2007, Kingsoft was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange;
  • ChinaCache (NASDAQ: CCIH) is one of the world’s leading providers of content delivery network and cloud services; and
  • Beijing Venus Information Security Technology Co., Ltd, listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, has a perfect professional security product line. In the government and the army it has 80% market share of the world’s five hundred 60% of Chinese enterprises to provide safe products and services; in the financial sector, it has on policy banks, state-owned commercial banks, national joint-stock commercial banks to achieve 90% coverage. In the field of telecommunications, it offer the three operators, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, security products, security services and solutions.

 

Workshop on Creating New Solutions for Boosting Innovation and Entrepreneurship – Preparing China-Finland R&D&I Initiatives for Global Impact

DIGILE/China-Finland ICT Alliance, Sino-Finnish Centre and Tongji University in cooperation with eBEREA network partners organised a workshop on Creating New Solutions for Boosting Innovation and Entrepreneurship on 28 October 2013 in Shanghai – right after the Pujiang Innovation Forum. The main objective of this invitational brainstorming workshop was to discuss and prepare such new China-Finland initiatives in digital services and business that have potential for global impact. In additional to digital industries, e-commerce and Internet financing the potential of digital services and “big data” in environment, energy and urban environment were also on the agenda. These areas were represented byCLEEN (Finnish Strategic Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation in Energy and the Environment) and RYM (Finnish Strategic Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation in Built Environment Innovations) and INSIGMA from the Chinese side.

The workshop focused on some of the key themes of Pujiang Innovation Forum looking to identify concrete topics and models for industry, academia and public sector cooperation. “Innovation needs Capital” was one of the main themes of the forum, as well as the need to boost SMEs and start-ups and organise new kinds of industry clusters and networks with established players. In China-Finland cooperation the aim is to build the “2-way gateway” and also link other partners and markets in the Nordics, Baltics, the European Union as well as other regions, including the emerging economies.

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Invited Chinese participants represented rapidly growing industrial sectors and especially those that are focal in China-Finland/EU R&D&I cooperation in the field of e-business and services, with Big Data as one common denominator:

  • e-service and e-payment;
  • e-logistics and supply chain finance;
  • P2P lending and micro financing research;
  • e-payment risk management;
  • text mining and sentiment analysis;
  • IT innovation and industry chain applications; and
  • solutions for clean technologies and smart buildings.

Chinese side participants include, among other, Prof. Zhangxi Lin (co-chair), Director, Sichuan Key Lab of Financial Intelligence and Financial Engineering, SWUFE and TTU, Mr. Li Defeng, Director, Research Division of Database, Huawei, Ms. Cao Heng, Director, IBM Shanghai Research Institute, Mr. Xie Shan, VP, Strategic Planning, Senior Researcher, Allinpay, Mr. Li Lele, CTO, Smart Logistics, Ms. Wang Xia, President, NoyaXe Technologies, Mr. Zheng Xianrong, Vice Director, Beijing Research Institute, INSIGMA, Prof. Xiaofeng Ma, Tongji University, Prof. Qiang Ye,

Associate Dean, Harbin Institute of Technology, Mr. Xiaolin Zheng, Deputy Director, eService Research Center, Zhejiang University.

Finnish side participants include, Mrs. Merja Hiltunen, Director (Steering and networks), TEKES, Mrs. Ulla Hiekkanen–Mäkelä, Executive Director (Marketing and communications) TEKES, Mr. Teemu Varonen, Programme Director, Senior Adviser (Finland–China collaboration in ICT), TEKES, Mr. Jarmo E. Heinonen, Consul (Science and Technology), Consulate General of Finland, Shanghai, Head of Tekes Shanghai, Ms. Karoliina Peippo, Communications Manager, CLEEN (Finnish Strategic Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation in Energy and the environment); and Mr. Vesa Ijäs, Head of Account Management, Lahti Development Company LADEC Ltd. (Vice Board Member & Representative of RYM (Finnish Strategic Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation in Built environment innovations). The Finland side organisers were represented by Mr. Matti Hämäläinen (co-chair), Director (China cooperation), DIGILE and Professor at Aalto, Mr. Jani Kaarlejärvi, Director (International Coordination), DIGILE, and Matti M. Hämäläinen, Director (Operations), Sino-Finnish Centre.

 

Workshop on Elderly Care Services Research in Beijing

ICT Alliance joined a workshop on International Research Center for Service Innovation for Elderly People (IRCSI) at Beijing Academy of Science and Technology (BJAST) in Beijing on 23 October 2013. The workshop involved participants from BJAST, Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (Fraunhofer IAO), Aalto University, DIGILE and Active Life Village Ltd. It was organised to review progress in 2013 and plan joint activities for spring 2014,with milestones based on a pilot in Yangfangdian Community and key elderly care industry events in China during the planning period. IRCSIwasestablished in December 2012 as a China-German-Finnish cooperation platform by Beijing Research Center of Urban System Engineering (BRCUSE) of BJAST, and by Fraunhofer IAO with Aalto University as key University partner.
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DIGILE and Active Life Village were present in the founding event and in 2013 the cooperation was formalised by the MoU signed during Ms. Paula Risikko’s, Minister of Social Affairs and Health, visit to Beijing on 25 September 2013. Services in the ageing society is a focus area in China-Finland R&D&I cooperation and BJAST and IRCSI are important entities in that work. During 2013 cooperation has been active between the Finnish, Chinese and German partners based on bilateral projects and several visits have taken place to China and Finland. While this cooperation continues in 2014 also multilateral research projects are considered including forthcoming China-EU calls under Horizon 2020. Experiences gained from the pilots in Finland and China and relationships established provide a basis for business-oriented research and development. With the support of BJAST President Mr. Ding and other key people of BJAST, cooperation has also opened up opportunities to meet with local and municipal decision-makers in Beijing to help pursue the systemic changes in the way elderly care is provided. In addition to technology, the work involves studying policymaking, financing, regulatory issues as well as concrete provision of training in the emerging field of digitally supported elderly services and assisted living.
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Workshop on Espoo-Shanghai cooperation, Sino-Finnish Centre (Aalto-Tongji Design Factory)

The workshop on 25 October was organised to plan actions based on the agreement signed during the visit of Mr. Yang Xiong, Mayor of the City of Shanghai, in Espoo in August 2013 and the MoU to be signed at Pujiang Innovation Forum between the City of Espoo and Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park on 27 October 2013. It was agreed in the workshop that the goals of this cooperation need to be ambitious as there is commitment from both sides (Finland and China) and a special Sister City relationship. Espoo and Shanghai together can represent key “Innovation Hubs” in Finland and China. In the next cooperation phase, the focus will be on areas where Finland and China can combine their complementary capabilities to address some of the priorities in China for creating globally relevant models and solutions and in particular to focus on topics where the City of Shanghai and the City of Espoo can make a different not only regionally but internationally. The areas have already been identified and the meeting focused on prioritising, action planning and agreeing on how various actors can best work together in the ”Team Finland” spirit.
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The areas include education and training, and also vocational education and training. In addition to primary, secondary and higher education, there is potential for training business in the cooperation and also this is needed as we together move in new areas where education and training policy guidelines and regulations need to be developed. An illustrative example is rapidly booming “industry” of elderly services which is almost a “greenfield situation” in China and solutions can only be developed by working closely together. Other emerging priority areas include environment, energy, citizen centric urban planning and public services, among others. Espoo (and the Helsinki metropolitan region in general) and Shanghai are also actively developing tourism and have very complementary assets and approaches, and the opportunities for both areas are unique.

 

ICT Alliance & National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) Meeting in Beijing

ICT Alliance had a meeting on 5G cooperation with National Natural Science Foundation of China on 30 October in Beijing, and the initiative received a positive response from NSFC. Key experts from the NSFC side were Mr. Zhaotian Zang, Deputy Director, Information Science, Ms. YingJie Fan, Deputy Director of International Cooperation and Ms. Xiong Xiaoyun, Deputy Director of Electronics and Information Systems. Prof. Xiaohu Ge, Department of Electronics and Information Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) joined as an expert representing substance expertise and research outline that has been drafted together with WiCO and the Finnish key research partners: University of Oulu, Aalto University, Tampere University of Technology, VTT, and HUST on behalf of the Chinese network research partners of the China-Finland ICT Alliance. All key Finnish partners are involved. The Finnish side was represented by Mr. Matti Hämäläinen and Mr. Jani Kaarlejärvi as well as Mr. Mika Tirronen, Counsellor for Science and Education, Embassy of Finland in Beijing, who represents in China the Ministry of Education and Culture and the Academy of Finland. In the meeting it was agreed that the topic of advanced 5G research will be taken on the agenda when new international activities are planned between China and Finland and the EU. This will involve preparatory joint China-Finland-EU workshop in Q1/2014 in Beijing with the support of NSFC, and initiating a concrete dialogue on ICT and advanced networking to be included in forthcoming joint call. Possibilities for multilateral programmes were also discussed.
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More Information on China-Finland ICT Alliance and DIGILE

For more information, please visit the China-Finland ICT Alliance website www.ictalliance.org, DIGILE website www.digile.fi or contact Mr. Matti Hämäläinen and Mr. Jani Kaarlejärvi (firstname.lastname(at)digile.fi).

TIVIT visits Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing

Apr 20 2013

TIVIT’s China representatives will visit Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing on 20 – 28 April, 2013, to meet with WiCo, the China side coordinator of the ICT Alliance, and with representatives from universities, companies and government entities to discuss the next steps in ICT Alliance development. The aim is to prepare for new joint activities and this work will be done in close cooperation with Tekes and other key public R&D actors. The aim is also to involve both industry driven as well as public sector driven initiatives, and, for example, in areas such as aging society services, demand responsive solutions, energy monitoring and environmental monitoring, cities play the key role.

The next ICT Alliance Workshop will also be planned during the trip. The meeting will be held in China. The tentative time frame is 10-15 June 2013 and the event is suggested to take place in Beijing with meetings organized also in Shanghai to follow the official Workshop. The workshop will present the results of the first phase of projects and act as a kick-off for the new joint projects that are funded by the recent Tekes China cooperation call . The aim is also to present the new jointly identified areas of interest where joint R&D&I activities will be prepared.

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