Innovation key to China's overall development: Chinese vice premier

As China's economic growth has entered a "new normal", the Chinese government attaches great importance to innovation and is eager to deepen and broaden innovation cooperation with Britain, Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong said here Friday. Liu said this at the UK-China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum held in Cardiff University, where she delivered a keynote speech. She was accompanied by British First Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones. Liu said the Chinese people are good at innovation and that over the past 66 years since the founding of new China, especially during the past 37 years since China's reform and opening-up, China has learned from the advanced experiences of countries like Britain and vigorously pursued the strategy of rejuvenating China through science, education and talent cultivation. The country's innovative ability has been greatly enhanced, sustained China's rapid economic growth for more than 30 years, and has thus made significant contribution to global economic development. "We can say that China's reform and opening-up in itself is an unprecedented large-scale innovative event. We have finished in only a few decades a development journey which took the advanced countries hundreds of years to traverse," said Liu. Liu said innovation and development are crucial to China's modernization drive and the realization of the Chinese dream to rejuvenate the nation. She also said innovation cooperation is an important part of the comprehensive strategic partnership between China and Britain and China-UK people-to-people exchanges. She hoped that both China and Britain could promote mutual-learning of innovative ideas, treat each other equally, deepen cooperation and researches in some important fields such as health, environmental technology, water and food, urbanization, energy and education. China and Britain should also strengthen joint training of innovative talents, share innovation resources, encourage and support their universities and institutions to build laboratories together, and improve coordination mechanism in innovation cooperation to implement important cooperation projects. She believes that Chinese President Xi Jinping's historic state visit to Britain next month will certainly further boost bilateral innovation cooperation.