With a tentative offer to the Chinese, Professor Reimar Lust, then president of the Max Planck Society (MPS) for the Advancement of Science of Germany, diffidently toured the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 1974, when the world's most populous country was still in torrential social turmoil.  

His verbal offer to provide two to four guest researcher posts to outstanding Chinese scientists was accepted by the top research academy garnering China's best scientists.

Professor Lust constructed a bridge between the Chinese and the MPS which is one of the world's most prestigious academies that is home to over a dozen Nobel laureates in Germany.

The bridge is still there 30 years later.

In the early years of the 30-year scientific cooperation, the CAS benefited most. With trust being built up and research partnership being expanded, German scientists are getting more and more from the Chinese side.

"We are greatly impressed with the excellence of Chinese scientists," said Wolf-Dieter Dudenhausen, state secretary of Education and Research of the Federal Government of Germany.

"Furthermore," he said, "mutual trust is always a prerequisite for cooperative scientific research and partnership in other areas."

Guo Huadong, vice CAS secretary-general in charge of international cooperation, said, "the joint programs with the MPS are vitally important for us."

"We luckily set a good example for scientific cooperation between a developed country and a developing one," he said.

As a natural extension of three decades' concerted efforts, the two science bodies are planning to co-sponsor a research institute on scientific frontiers. Computational biology might be a focus even though neither side ruled out other choices of advanced studies.

Other priorities of sharing research would also include behavioral studies, bionics, elementary particles research, and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau studies.

"Chinese and German researchers carefully set up fields of mutual interest, fostered them and broadened them one step at a time," said Peter Gruss, incumbent MPS president.

"As a result of these efforts we now have a considerable harvest," he said.

The scientific cooperation began with the exchange of researchers. After the phases of joint research and junior research group sponsorship, the two sides are discussing the establishment of a joint research institute to train promising young researchers.

"We are aimed at building a long strategic partnership with the Max Planck Society," Guo said.

One of their best experiences was the decision to set up junior research groups. Six research groups have encouraged young Chinese researchers to bring their creativity into full play.

The young scientists recruited by those groups can have a period, at most five years, for their innovative and pioneering work.

The focus of each group was carefully selected. All of them were related to life sciences, in which exciting breakthroughs might show up in the limited time span of five years, Guo said.

Pei Gang and Hu Gengxi were chosen as leading scientists for two CAS-MPS junior research groups in 1995.

"When I read the advertisement in Science in 1995," Pei, who is now a CAS academician and principal investigator at the Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences (SIBS), said, "I hardly believed my eyes."

He got a position enabling him to fulfill his both wishes: to return to the motherland and really do something in China.

Hu also made a success after completing his leading job in the junior research group. While being principal investigator at the SIBS Disease Genomics Laboratory, he assumed the post of chief executive officer of a Shanghai bio-chip company.

CAS-MPS junior research posts significantly have encouraged young researchers to get leadership ability, which has brought profits to both Chinese and German sides.

"Only when they bear the responsibility of promoting young talents, developing a new generation of researchers," Berthold Neizert, head of the MPS International Relations Division, said, "can universities and research organizations worldwide safeguard the future of research."

(Xinhua News Agency May 26, 2004)