Summit serves as platform for new opportunity

The B2B room was abuzz during the fourth US China Innovation and Investment Summit (UCIA) held in Houston last Thursday and Friday. A steady stream of people from American companies, looking for opportunities, came to talk to more than a dozen companies — most of them from Changsha, China.

Close to 300 people from about 150 companies from the US and China gathered to discuss how to work together in sharing markets, knowledge, innovation and capital.

Industries involved ranged from healthcare, environmental technology, energy and pharmaceuticals to information, communication, materials and advanced manufacturing.

The summit, hosted by the China Science and Technology Exchange Center and US China Innovation Alliance, included an InnoStars Competition at which American companies pitched their latest innovations for a chance to present their technologies to potential partners and investors in China.

Changsha was the highlighted city this year. Zhu Jian, deputy party secretary of CPC Changsha Municipal Committee, led a delegation of more than 40 strong, to look for concrete cooperation opportunities.

Prior to coming to Houston, the Changsha delegation also visited Atlanta and Austin. Austin and Changsha signed an MOU to work together to facilitate innovation and investment traffic between the two cities. In Houston, Changsha and UCIA signed a similar agreement.

"I am impressed to see that American cities, universities, companies and entrepreneurs are motivated and eager to work with China in innovation," said Zhu. "I think this is the most precious people-to-people foundation for our future cooperation. More Chinese should come to the US."

Zhu said Changsha and Houston already have plans to take six months to accomplish three major goals:

"First is to build financial channels for both American and Chinese companies to better invest and enter each other's markets. The second is to build a platform to lump innovation incubators from both cities together with the help of UCIA. The third goal is to build cooperation in healthcare."

Zhu said if tangible progress could be made down the road, a more systematic mechanism can be built later between Changsha and Houston.

During the summit, Changsha Sunward Intelligent Equipment Group signed a purchase agreement with RECS to use its patented bayonet-breaker technology in its excavator manufacturing.

Consul General of China in Houston Li Qiangmin praised the summit and said UCIA has built a platform to help a lot of small businesses in the US overcome barriers and find opportunities to prosper in China.

"Since its inception, the platform has connected more than 100 Chinese and American innovation centers together and helped more than 300 projects to find partners or potential partners," Li said.

The program is also popular in China. "More than 10 Chinese cities applied to be highlighted at the summit. There is a long waiting list," Li said.

Both Li and Chen Futao, minister counsellor of science and technology at the Chinese embassy in Washington, noted that there existed great challenges for China and US to work together on innovation.

Chen said that the challenge comes from US policy barriers that stem from ideology and zero-sum thinking. However, he said that the US and China should work together for the betterment of the world.

David Firestein, founding executive director at China Public Policy Center of University of Texas at Austin, shared a similar view.

"Many Americans feel that with respect to the US-China relationship, the government in many ways is the problem. The federal government in the US has taken actions in many ways that hurt Americans," Firestein asserted.