By Staff Reporters

By the end of 2021, China had established sci -tech cooperative relationships with 84 countries along the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), supporting 1,118 joint research projects. There are also 53 joint laboratory projects in agriculture, new energy and health care.

In terms of cooperation in agriculture, an international joint laboratory of water saving irrigation was established by China's Ningxia University and Egypt's Ain Shams University in 2019. The two countries built two test sites for a smart water saving irrigation system using wind solar hybrid power in two farms in Egypt, covering 320 mu.

All tunnels were buried underground, and the irrigation system can cover 50 mu farmland an hour, operated from a smart phone. In cooperation with local enterprises, the system is set in farmland of more than 30,000 mu, benefiting the agricultural industry in the desert areas.

There is also cooperation in other sci-tech fields. Last December, the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Foundation for Science and Technology Portugal (FCT) established a joint laboratory STARLab, aiming to cooperate further in sea and space sciences. Before that, China and Portugal had already started cooperation and the latter is the first country from the European Union to establish a "blue partnership" with China.

Apart from joint laboratories and research projects, there have been more than 30 bilateral or multilateral technology transfer centers built between China and countries which joined BRI. Since 2016, around 180,000 sci-tech personnel have come to China for exchange and training, and more than 14,000 young scientists for short-term sci-tech research work.

Industrial parks were also built. In the suburb of Minsk, capital of Belarus, the Great Stone Industrial Park jointly built by China and Belarus has attracted more than 80 enterprises from 15 countries. Vehicle -mounted supercapacitors produced in the park have been installed in local buses as batteries, offering green commuting services to local residents.