On November 15, 2005, XU Guanhua, Chinese Minister of Science and Technology and Lord Sainsbury, Minister of Science and Innovation jointly signed two memorandums of understanding to support the cooperative efforts between the two nations in S&T information and network technology, and in energy research and development.

    The MOU for S&T information and network technology is made to establish a cooperative tie between the high performance computer and core software project under the National 863 Program and the core components of the British e-science program. The collaboration will mainly focus on exchanges of researches and personnel in the field of grid midware, and will possibly extend to other application fields in the future. In the past few years, scientists from the two nations have conducted extensive exchanges in the field, which laid a fine ground for future cooperation.

    The MOU on energy development includes cooperation in a number of related fields, including fossil fuel energy, renewable energy, hydrogen energy, fuel battery technology, management and environmental issues concerning wastes, terminal utilization of energy and the associated technologies and techniques, and energy technologies, systems, services and policies related studies. The cooperation will be materialized through information and personnel exchanges, cooperative projects and programs, and joint workshops.