China’s Tsinghua University Science Park is to build research facilities at the Skolkovo Technopark, while the Moscow-based innovation center will be represented at the Beijing institute, Skolkovo Foundation president Viktor Vekselberg was quoted as saying this week.
The deal to ramp up technology cooperation between the two giants was struck at last month’s Open Innovations Forum in Moscow, and Vekselberg revealed details agreed upon in the Chinese capital this week.
“A research center, laboratories and representative offices of Chinese companies that are interested in investment cooperation will be built at the [Skolkovo] Technopark,” Vekselberg was quoted as saying at the APEC summit by the TASS news agency.
The signatories of the deal at the Open Innovations Forum were the Skolkovo Foundation, the Shaanxi government, the Russian Direct Investment Fund and the Russian-Chinese Investment Fund. The forum was designed specifically to boost Russian-Chinese economic cooperation.
The Skolkovo Innovation Center is a 400 hectare site west of Moscow that is due to house hundreds of resident companies in state-of-the-art research facilities, a university and residential and entertainment zones.
Its purpose is to stimulate economic activity that develops the neglected high-tech sector and cultivate a new environment of entrepreneurship.
In Beijing, Vekselberg added that Skolkovo and the Chinese investment fund Cybernaut will explore potential joint investment projects in the future, perhaps even creating an entirely new joint fund.
“Private business in China is not disconnected from the development of innovation processes,” he said. “The founders of this fund have unique experience in creating innovative products and launching them on the Chinese market,” he said, adding the fund’s major areas of investment were robotics, space and superconductivity technology.
“They have also expressed an interest in opening offices at the Skolkovo Innovation Center,” Vekselberg said.
More broadly, Vekselberg praised the Chinese for their constructive approach to cooperation with Russia.
“I would like to underline the remarkable interest from the Chinese side in the Russian innovation sector,” he said. “It’s linked with that fact that the Chinese recognize and respect Russian academic sciences despite the significant influence of European and American firms,” he told TASS.