China constitutes an important partner for Europe in facing its future development challenges. The country provides a highly developed ICT research environment being a research and technology leader in various fields and thus offers significant opportunities for cooperation. In China, ICT is used to tackle different social and environmental problems, such as demographic change, rapidly increased urbanization, and greenhouse‐gas emissions control. Better cooperation flows between Europe and China allow scientific partners from both sides to more easily research pressing issues and challenges for mutual benefit for the two regions. The OpenChinaICT project consortium has been created in this purpose, to encourage the development of an international Cooperation Plan for the EU-China ICT reseach.

Launched in January 2012 for a period of 2 years, the OpenChinaICT project main objective is to significantly and measurably contribute to the facilitation of ICT‐related research cooperation between Europe and China. This will be ensured by detailing current and emerging priorities for international cooperation and advising both the European Commission and the Chinese government on how to design effective and mutually beneficial international research cooperation programs.

More precisely, the OpenChinaICT project will:
• Conduct country specific surveys on ICT research environment
• Interview experts to identify current and emerging research topics and priorities as well as the main research actors in Europe and China
• Organise one major dialogue conference in Beijing and three workshops (two Chinese and one European)
• Develop and maintain a portal website and promotional material so as to communicate on the project’s goals, objectives and results to stakeholders.