UK Signs Scaled-Back Scientific Collaboration With China (ft.com)
(Tuesday November 11, 2025 @11:42AM (msmash)
from the scaled-back-relationships dept.)
- Reference: 0180046514
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/11/11/1355205/uk-signs-scaled-back-scientific-collaboration-with-china
- Source link: https://www.ft.com/content/edc0bcc1-6a8d-421e-addf-d6762d61c97c
The UK and China today [1]signed a new bilateral agreement on scientific collaboration
The previous agreement from 2017 had included satellites, remote sensing technology and robotics. Those fields are absent from the new accord. The countries announced no new funding for joint research. Vallance said the UK had "deliberately gone for areas which we think are not carrying such a security risk."
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/edc0bcc1-6a8d-421e-addf-d6762d61c97c
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-advance-targeted-science-cooperation-with-china
[2]non-paywalled source
, narrowing the scope of their partnership to exclude sensitive technologies. Lord Patrick Vallance, Britain's science and technology minister, met his Chinese counterpart Chen Jiachang in Beijing and agreed to focus cooperation on health, climate, planetary sciences, and agriculture.The previous agreement from 2017 had included satellites, remote sensing technology and robotics. Those fields are absent from the new accord. The countries announced no new funding for joint research. Vallance said the UK had "deliberately gone for areas which we think are not carrying such a security risk."
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/edc0bcc1-6a8d-421e-addf-d6762d61c97c
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-advance-targeted-science-cooperation-with-china
Re: (Score:1)
by Tablizer ( 95088 )
"Mongrel" is a code word indicating you are a flaming bigot, whose tribalistic instincts are easily triggered.
Lord Patrick Vallance should be in jail (Score:1)
by helmy ( 182039 )
The disinformation powerpoints, the lockdown, the midazolam protocols, the masks, the vaccine, the extension to kids.
And that was just a couple of years of his career. God knows what else someone of his morals got up to.
But ever upwards he goes.
Good and bad (Score:2)
I see the wisdom in this, but also the glaring stupidity. At this point, China is better at (say) robotics than we are, so they're really not going to be getting much from us that they don't already know. I don't imagine we got all that much before, and we're going to get even less now, which is a shame for us really.
We should probably have signed this deal back in 2017, and the 2017 deal today. But I suppose it's better we're doing *something* than nothing.
Re: (Score:2)
Is there any area of science where we are ahead of China? Certainly not satellites.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure about that - SSTL does some pretty clever stuff (and is linked to the Uni of Surrey). Not sure if 'better', but doubtless doing things others would like to know about.