UAE ambassador to China looks forward to greater collaboration between the two nations

The breadth and depth bilateral of collaborations between the United Arab Emirates and China in science and technology have been rising over the years and there is great potential to expand this relationship even further, UAE ambassador to China Ali Obaid Al Dhaheri told China Daily in an exclusive interview on Wednesday in Shanghai.

Dhaheri pointed out that some of the fields in which the UAE is looking to further collaborations with China include renewable energy, biosafety, food security, life sciences and medicine, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing.

"China is becoming a leader in the science and technology fields. It has a strong manufacturing ability and abundant innovation resources, as well as a huge domestic market for technology commercialization," he said.

"China's success in responding to the COVID-19 outbreak and its speed of vaccine research and development have also played a demonstrative role for other countries. All of these make China attractive to global partners, including the UAE."

The UAE has long been committed to energy transition and is currently focused on developing its hydrogen energy industry, said Dhaheri. Renewable energy will account for around 30 percent of the country's total electricity generation by 2030, according to UAE National Industrial Strategy.

He also noted that the rapid development of technology in China has produced tangible outcomes, and he is most fascinated by China's AI technology in terms of autonomous driving, robotics, AI vision technologies, and AI speech technologies.

"The UAE is also committed to developing AI technology and has made substantial efforts to do so. We released the world's first national strategy on AI in 2017, and we built the world's first university dedicated to teaching AI at the Mohammed Bin Zayed University for AI," said Dhaheri, adding that the institute has hired many Chinese AI scholars as teachers and for key management positions.

The two nations have cooperated in various fields with science and technology being a key focus since they established diplomatic relations in 1984.

For example, Chinese tech giant Huawei has since 2013 been involved in constructing the communications system for the UAE Federal Railways.

Two years ago, the UAE and Huawei signed a cooperation agreement on 5G construction. In May, the two sides signed a Memorandum of Understanding to expand and deepen their cooperation.

In the healthcare sector, China's Sinopharm Group and the UAE's G42 Group cooperated in the clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines last year.

"We're able to produce the Chinese vaccines in the UAE and the production will reach up to 200 million doses a year. This is not only for the UAE or China. Instead, this will be an effort to support many parts of the world to fight against the COVID-19 pandemic," said Dhaheri.

He added that the UAE and China can also work together to tackle global challenges, such as climate change, desertification, environmental deterioration and the pandemic.

Jin Xinyi contributed to this story.