Embracing a new era of global research collaboration

You'll Never Walk Alone.

This song, originally a show tune from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel, has become synonymous with showing support and solidarity, or seeking support to achieve higher common goals. The song, however, was made famous by British band Gerry and the Pacemakers in the early 1960s.

It echoes a Chinese saying inherited from ancient times: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

Supportive partners needed in all walks of life

In many areas of life and world affairs, too, one needs supportive partners to walk difficult paths together to achieve success together and to celebrate it.

Research drives development, including that of world affairs. Without research, there can be no systematic development, no innovation. Without research, progress can only come about by chance. Research today is gaining power thanks to the rapid development in electronics engineering, and information and communications technology, with innovation cycles around the world becoming shorter and more and more new technologies emerging.

On the other hand, global challenges are becoming ever more serious. The global population is growing, but as a result of digitalization and the internet, communication channels have become shorter and distance is no longer a major barrier.

Achieving sustainability remains a big global challenge. Yet major global problems need to be overcome quickly in order to ensure future generations lead a higher quality of life.

These challenges demand that countries work closely together to intensify research in different fields. The song, You'll Never Walk Alone, applies to research, too, because joint research can produce useful results for humankind, much faster than isolated, individualized research can. Incidentally, global research and global cooperation in research have also become easier thanks to tools such as digitalization and new media.

In China, "expanding international scientific and technological exchanges and cooperation" will likely become a new trend as mentioned in the resolution of the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. In this regard, perhaps China and Germany should contemplate expanding collaboration on research.

Essentially, research can be divided into two general groups: fundamental (basic) research and applied research. Alternatively, research collaboration can be categorized as parallel research, complementary research, bilateral research cooperation, and multilateral research cooperation.

After all, basic research is the cornerstone of "organized fundamental research", as highlighted in the resolution of the third plenum. Basic research means working scientifically on a specific topic and going to the depth of the topic. The result of basic research may not necessarily be useful for practice.

In the case of global collaboration in basic research, countries can divide the task among themselves according to "work blocks" and each side can work on its own work block. At the end, the results of the different work blocks can be discussed and summarized in order to produce a result for a large research package.

Indeed, research is both craft and art. By collecting and analyzing data, one can arrive at findings, but that might not help us to see the holistic picture, especially in today's increasingly globalized world. Hence, the division of research among different countries and regions can help us understand the advantages of basic research from several cultural and geographical perspectives.

Applied research needs more global cooperation

Applied research, usually carried out to solve a problem in industry or to facilitate innovation, creates better, higher value. Even the education system in Germany favors applied research, which means applied research is central to vocational education and training in Germany where students learn through practice in centers jointly established by industry and academia.

In Germany, young people's education consists of both theory and practice. What is learnt in the classroom is then put into practice in laboratories under industrial conditions. Applied research, especially those involving interdisciplinary studies, offers great opportunities for global cooperation. For example, a research project can be aimed at helping solve a practical industrial problem. In such a case, institutes could ask companies with similar needs based in their home country to conduct research to solve the industrial problem.

In order to attain synergy, the project partners could exchange their results through bilateral or multilateral discussions, thus learning from each other and achieving mutual benefit from the project.

This type of cooperation can be realized through academia-industry collaboration, which can be realized through an institutionalized research platform or network, and that is exactly what Chinese Education Minister Huai Jinpeng has advocated for.

The formation of a research platform can help divide the task into several "work packages" and distribute among specialised research institutes, whose job would involve identifying industries/users for which the research results could be of use. Although this type of cooperation is time- and resource-consuming, it can be beneficial to larger industrial sectors and can thus be put into practice.

Such cooperation can also be expanded to a global scale. But for that, researchers should also have language skills, knowledge of and respect for other cultures and political systems. In this regard, the resolution of the third plenum has generated good news. The resolution calls for setting up international science and technology organizations in China, so as to optimize global professional exchanges and cooperation management mechanisms of higher education institutions, research institutes, and science and technology associations.

Another advantage of international research collaboration is complementarity, that is, to build research partnerships based on the strengths and research capability of each side. If we look at Germany and China from this perspective, the following form of cooperation is conceivable.

Germany is very strong in traditional industries, including mechanical engineering, the automotive and electrical industries, and chemical and environmental technologies. These are industries that have grown in Germany and rely on the skills of the people.

China has advanced as a digital economy

China, on the other hand, is very strong in digital-based industries, including ICT and artificial intelligence. Overall, China has advanced more than most countries as a digital economy.

As for future-oriented research projects for the benefit of industries, they can be divided into work packages based on the strengths of each country. For example, in a bilateral project between Germany and China, the mechanical engineering-oriented work packages could be undertaken by a German research institute and German companies. Similarly, the digital-orientated work packages could be taken up by Chinese research institutes and companies. In this way, the strengths and talents of the countries involved can be used to achieve promising results.

The collaboration between German car manufacturers and Chinese IT companies has already set an example of how China and Germany should approach such projects.

In addition to the cooperation opportunities described above, there are also global platforms where scientific exchanges can be realized and potential collaborations evaluated. In addition, there is the "International Academy for Production Engineering", where many production engineering professors from all over the world hold regular meetings and present their works in production engineering. Through open, friendly discussions in these committees, cross-border research projects can be initiated.

The new era of international research will create more opportunities for China and other countries, with the new policy helping build an enabling environment for global cooperation in research. In the new era, we will succeed only if we walk together. You'll Never Walk Alone.

Ömer Sahin Ganiyusufoglu, a member of the German National Academy for Science and Engineering and the International Academy for Production Engineering, is an honorary professor at Nanjing University for Aeronautics and Astronautics and advisory professor at Tongji University. And Wang Yan is an associate research fellow at the Academy of Regional and Global Governance, Beijing Foreign Studies University.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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