The S&T cooperation agreement concluded in 1974 between CAS and the Max Planck Society (MPS) pioneered China’s efforts to open to the outside world.
In 1974, Prof. Reimar Lüst, then President of MPS made his first visit to the People’s Republic of China, hence opening the door to the scientific cooperation between MPS and CAS. In 1978, an official S&T delegation from China visited the former Federal Republic of Germany.
With support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation four years later, CAS sent its first batch of visiting scholars to Germany since the beginning of the reform and opening-up of China. Soon in 1985, the two sides decided to establish a Sino-German guest laboratory on cell biology at the CAS Institute of Cell Biology (now part of the Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology under the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, CAS), representing a novel approach of open and exchange in scientific partnership.
In the 1990s, in a bid to promote China’s science reform and to foster young outstanding scholars, CAS established nine MPS/CAS Independent Junior Research Groups and 15 MPS/CAS Partner Groups by using the experience of the MPS Junior Groups. The researchers with these groups are all promising young scientists recruited internationally. The first Junior Research group was headed by Prof. PEI Gang, who was later appointed the Director of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, CAS, and elected a CAS Member in 2001. The first Partner Group also outstood itself in the field of nano-material research with its pioneering work, and its head, Prof. LU Ke, was elected a CAS Member in 2003, the youngest one at that time.
A new type of science institution, the Shanghai Institute for Advanced Studies made its debut in March 2002, aimed at promoting domestic and international multi-disciplinary collaboration and networking, and building up the creative thinking and capacity of young talents. The year 2005 later witnessed the launching of another novel fruit of the bilateral cooperation, the CAS-MPS Partner Institute for Computational Biology in Shanghai.
In May 2004, at the occasion of the 30th anniversary of CAS-MPS partnership, President of the People’s Republic of China, Mr. Hu Jintao and then President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Mr. Johannes Rau both highly praised the great achievements scored by the cooperation. President Hu described the partnership as “one of the world’s most successful models of such cooperation” and President Rau commented that the joint initiatives and research projects by the two sides “have set standards for international scientific cooperation.”
