Kick-off of Finland-China ICT Alliance Project - Finland-China ICT Alliance Conference held in Beijing Capital Hotel
International | 2009/4/23April 21st of 2009, Finland-China ICT Alliance Conference was held in Beijing Capital Hotel, on which Mr. Wan Gang, Minister of MOST; Mr. Matti Vanhanen, Prime Minister of Finland; Minister Mauri Pekkarinen of Ministry of Employment and the Economy made important addresses.
Finland-China ICT Alliance Conference was sponsored by China Ministry of Science and Technology, Finland Ministry of Employment and Economy, and Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, and organized by FuTURE FORUM, Finland Strategic Center for ICT Science Technology and Innovation, and Finpro, Finnish National Agency for Corporate Internationalization.
Officials from Chinese and Finland Government, and experts from famous communication enterprises, universities and research institutes, were invited to attend the conference communicating and discussing on the academic research and industrial cooperation in mobile communication field between China and Finland. Actually, certain early exchange was made through various methods before the Alliance Conference. In December of 2008, Mr. Cao Jianlin, Vice Minister of MOST, paid a visit to Finland, during which wide consensus were reached on the bilateral cooperation on ICT. Further progresses were made on the Alliance Conference with the purposes of discussing the model and key players of Finland-China ICT Alliance, strengthening both academic research and industrial cooperation, brainstorming about potential joint projects, seeking funding opportunities, and drafting the action plan and time schedule for the cooperation. The Alliance Conference held in Beijing is the opening of Finland-China activities on communication technologies, which will be followed by another technical seminar that will be held in Shanghai. The contents discussed on the Conference will be submitted to both governments in White Paper and the Alliance Advisory Committee will be set up as soon as possible to promote the further implementation of Finland-China strategic cooperation on communication technologies in the future.
The Alliance Conference was attached great importance by the both governments. Mr. Wan Gang, Minister of MOST, Mr. Matti Vanhanen, Prime Minister of Finland, and Minister Mauri Pekkarinen of Ministry of Employment and the Economy attended the conference and delivered opening speeches respectively.
Minister Wan Gang mentioned in his address that great successes have been achieved on technical cooperation since the inter-governmental technical cooperation agreement was signed in 1986, including a series of technical cooperation plans such as Finland–China NAMI cooperation. During recent years, MOST has gained important progresses in promoting the R&D and application of IPv6 and the next generation Internet technology, and the development and industrialization of the third generation mobile communication technologies. The largest IPv6 Internet was set up and TD-SCDMA network has been formally commercialized when the high-reliable network and 4G technology oriented national 863 plan was organized and implemented. Information communication was defined as one of the most significant projects in the National Long- and Medium-term Program of Sci-Tech Development Planning issued in 2006. Chinese government will invest more funds to support the R&D and industrial development of information communication technologies. Minister Wan Gang stressed that MOST had been attaching great importance to the communication and cooperation with Finland in ICT field, and hoped that the Alliance Conference will be able to further promote the bilateral communication and cooperation and jointly advance the development of ICT technologies of the both countries and even all over the world.
Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen stated that Finland, as one of the most important leading countries in terms of technical innovation, hopes to lead the global development of technical innovation and has been taken active part in various international cooperation projects. He considered Finland-China ICT Alliance Conference as an excellent example on how the two countries can continue to deepen the cooperation in the ICT sector. From the Finnish side, they see the ICT Alliance model as the most important tool to ensure an efficient and fruitful ICT cooperation between China and Finland. He appreciated that MOST of China has together with relative Finnish Ministry worked hard to create such a new platform for cooperation. Since Finland and China have already many excellent examples of very successful Sino-Finnish cooperation programs, he believes that more successful cooperation can be expected in Finland-China ICT cooperation.
The conference consists of a general plenary in the morning and three panel sessions in the afternoon. On the plenary, introductions on the ICT R&D of China and Finland were respectively made by the experts from China 863 Project Team and Finnish Tivit Oy. According to the Finnish introduction, Finland has been paying much attention to the cooperation with China. Tekes, Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, conducted broad communication and cooperation through various technical projects with MOST, local Sci-Tech units, reputed universities, technological parks and relative enterprises while Tekes has been increasing their investment in Finland-China projects yearly. From January to October of 2008, Tekes invested a total of 11.2 million euro to 33 Sion-Finnish cooperative projects and relative companies. As introduced by the Chinese experts, China has been maintaining very close relationship with many European countries and set up fairly good cooperation model while the technological cooperation between China and Europe has become one of the important parts of Sino-European Strategic Cooperation. And the current research situation and orientation of China’s ICT projects were also presented on the conference.
The three panel sessions in the afternoon covers three subjects, namely Internet Technology, Mobile Communication Technology and Service Development. Experts from Tsinghua University, China Mobile, Huawei, Datang, Ericsson, and Helsinki University of Technology made specialist lectures and discussions through which they hoped to find certain novel opportunities for development.
Internet Session, hosted by Mr. Pauli Kuosmanen, CTO of Tiviy Oy, and Mr. He Baohong from Chinese Academy of Telecom Research, focused on IPv6 transition, layer-2 routing and bridging, and information network replacing DNS. Mobile Communication Session, hosted by Mr. Reijo Paajanen, CEO of Tiviy Oy, and Prof. Wang Jing from Tsinghua University, covered energy-efficient mobile communication, 4G communication and future mobile communication technologies. Service Session, chaired by Prof. Matti Hamalanen from Helsinki University of Technology and Mr. Tang Jianfeng from China Mobile, mainly discussed flexible service platform, living labs, environment monitoring services, real-time economy learnings and best practices and 3G multiple media services.
Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen Minister Mauri Pekkarinen from Ministry of Employment and Economy of Finland Mr. Juho Rissanen, Counselor(Science and Technology) and Chief Representative of Tekes
