Science links integral to strong ties

"China excels at AI-related applications and has a massive market, while France is very good at creating original work in basic algorithms and theories thanks to its strong proficiency in mathematics," Tao said.

"By working together, China can improve its innovation capability in AI-related basic research, and France can gain insights on the Chinese market and see how AI technologies will perform in real life," he added.

Building on the foundation of Sino-French cooperation, LIAMA has also expanded its collaborations to include other science heavyweights, including Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and others, Tao said.

"China has seen tremendous development in its science and technology sectors in the last few decades," Tao said. "China is now even leading in certain fields, but it is still not strong at creating original breakthroughs, so collaborating with other countries is very important," he added.

Biomedicine is another field that benefited greatly from and contributed to Sino-French cooperation. In March, the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, announced that a new vaccine against four serotypes of norovirus, a common pathogen that causes vomiting and diarrhea, is currently awaiting final approval for clinical trial in China.

The institute was established in 2004 by a Sino-French agreement to cooperate on prevention and control of emerging and reemerging diseases, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai municipality and Institut Pasteur as co-founders.

Institut Pasteur is a French non-profit private foundation and one of the world's leading research institutions for studying infectious diseases, pathogens and vaccine developments.

In 2017, the lnstitut Pasteur of Shanghai was also the first in Asia to successfully develop a vaccine against the Zika virus, a mosquito-borne virus that can cause abnormalbrain development of the fetus. By the end of this year, the vaccine would likely enter clinical trials in Africa, said Tang Hong, director general of the institute.

"China and France have a long and fruitful history of cooperation in research for outbreak preparedness, a cornerstone for safeguarding public health globally," Tang said.

"In the globalization era, cross-border transmission of diseases is a major public health challenge. Effective prevention and control of endemic diseases require coordinated international cooperation," he added.

For the past 15 years, the institute has utilized the extensive global network of Institut Pasteur to provide much-needed expertise and resources in tackling health challenges, including in Southeast Asian and African countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative, Tang said.

In 2014, the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai helped Cambodia diagnose that the EV71 virus was responsible for an outbreak of hand-mouth-foot disease, which mainly affects young children. The institute also is working on new medicine to treat malaria patients who are resistant to the common artemisinin drug.

"These diseases are rampant in the tropical areas and developing countries in Southeast Asia and Africa," Tang said. "It is our mission to provide solutions to bolster the global defense against epidemics."

Fernando Arenzana, foreign director of the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai, said Sino-French scientific cooperation in biomedicine and public health have been very fruitful, with extensive collaboration between top government agencies, institutions and companies.

"We have made brilliant, transformative contributions together," he said.

The keys to successful collaboration are effective communication and the ability to identify common problems, and conduct well-designed projects to work together in solving these problems, he added.