Background, Essence and Development Tendency of China-Israel Innovation Cooperation

Abstract

On March 21st, 2017, China and Israel announced the establishment of "Innovative Comprehensive Partnership", which is a new milestone in the development of bilateral relations between the two countries since the establishment of China and Israel in 1992. In the field of scientific and technological innovation, China and Israel have complementary advantages. China's advantages mainly lie in infrastructure and creative output (such as the technology output), while Israel's advantages lie in system, human capital and research, market maturity and commercial maturity. China-Israel scientific and technological innovation cooperation is mainly reflected in two aspects: the mechanism of innovate cooperation and the level of innovation project. (1) The mechanism of innovate cooperation is led by the China-Israel Joint Committee on Innovation Cooperation, and local governments, enterprises and universities actively cooperate to build an Industry-University-Research's innovative ecologically chain; (2) Innovation projects mainly focus on the establishment of international innovation parks and private innovation and venture capital activities. In the future, the two countries should strengthen the mechanism and improve the evaluation in terms of innovation. (1) For the former, the two countries should try their best to attract larger enterprises and scientific research institutes in the province to carry out scientific and technological innovation cooperation with innovative enterprises, scientific research institutes and innovation incubators in Israel. (2) For the latter, for the innovation projects of China and Israel at the government level, an authoritative evaluation and supervision team should be set up on the basis of the China-Israel Innovation Cooperation Joint Committee to conduct a comprehensive investigation and study on the large-scale projects currently cooperating between China and Israel, so as to obtain relevant investigation reports. Although China and Israel have made achievements in the process of building a comprehensive partnership for innovation, they should also be aware of some shortcomings and challenges they are currently facing. (1) The main shortcomings include that there is no scientific and comprehensive evaluation mechanism for innovative enterprises of both sides, and high expense and high risks of the cooperation; (2) The homogenization of Israeli innovative enterprises introduced by local provinces and cities in China is serious, and there is a possibility that different provinces and cities compete for high-quality enterprises to enter the park, resulting in higher introduction costs. Local provinces and cities should be encouraged to discuss and cooperate to reduce the introduction costs; the main challenges are the cultural differences between Chinese and Israeli enterprises and the insufficient protection of intellectual property rights, which leads to the reluctance of some high-quality innovative enterprises to cooperate. Generally speaking, the establishment of an "innovative and comprehensive partnership" between China and Israel has a positive effect on the development of China-Israel relations, conforms to the common interests of both countries, and can effectively promote the exchanges among the governments, enterprises, universities and the public of the two countries, and promote the further development of bilateral relations.