NINGBO, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- China and Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC) unveiled a vision for innovation cooperation through 2030 on Wednesday, alongside a report reviewing a decade of collaboration in the field.
The announcements were made at the 2026 China-CEEC Conference on Innovation Cooperation, which opened in Ningbo, east China's Zhejiang Province. The three-day event is co-hosted by China's Ministry of Science and Technology and Slovakia's Ministry of Economy.
Around 450 government officials, diplomats, researchers, academics, entrepreneurs and young science and technology professionals from China and CEEC are attending the conference, which runs in both Ningbo and Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, under the theme "A Decade of Innovation, Building the Future Together."
The conference features a ministerial meeting on science and technology innovation, as well as forums on artificial intelligence and robotics, biotechnology and green energy.
At the opening ceremony, organizers released a 10-year report on China-CEEC innovation cooperation and a 2026 index measuring open innovation cooperation between Chinese cities and CEEC. Eleven agreements on industry-university-research collaboration and joint development of innovation platforms were signed, and the second China-CEEC Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition was launched.
At a ministerial meeting later Wednesday, senior representatives discussed cooperation opportunities in key fields and proposed the China-CEEC innovation cooperation 2030 vision.
Representatives from countries including Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia attended the conference. Experts called for stronger cooperation among young researchers, more joint laboratories and concrete channels for collaborative research.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the conference. Since its launch in 2016, the event has been held five times in China, Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia, promoting policy dialogue, joint research, personnel exchanges and technology cooperation. ■
