Edoardo Bonatti
11 dicembre 2018
On the 6 December, the Italy-China Week of Science, Technology & Innovation came to a close. Earlier in the same week, this ninth edition of the event was inaugurated to record numbers, (1,470 Chinese and Italian delegates, 755 organizations, 200 B2B meetings, 224 cooperation projects presented, 19 agreements signed) showing how the relations between the countries are increasingly tied to technological research and innovation. For the first time in its history, the Week touched four Italian regions in one edition. After the Milan opening, the week continued with events in Rome and Cagliari to end in Naples with the Sino-Italian Exchange Event – SIEE, now in its 12th edition.
The central moment of the first day of the Forum on Innovation was the third edition of the Italy-China Best Start-up Showcase – Entrepreneurship Competition. Born from the merger of two initiatives launched three years ago, this year’s event took on a new role to become a real support platform in their respective markets for innovative companies deemed to have the highest market potential. Forty-eight start-ups selected for the Milanese appointment, thirty-six Italian and twelve Chinese, chosen from six specific innovative sectors (Digital Economy, Artificial Intelligence & Big Data, Smart Instruments and Devices, Advanced Production, Health and Medicine, Sustainable Development). All thirty-six selected Italian start-ups will benefit from increasing benefits and economic incentives in the Chinese ecosystem in preparation of the Beijing final in 2019. Other fifty-four innovative companies (both start-ups and SMEs) during the Italy-China Best Startup Showcase – Entrepreneurship Competition, open until February 2019.
Among the nineteen agreements signed, we can find collaboration deals ranging from the development of artificial intelligence applied to robotics to aerospace research led by the Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute of Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China and the Centro Italiano Ricerche Aerospaziali. An important agreement between universities creates the “Matteo Ricci Network” involving twenty Chinese universities (Tsinghua, Peking, Jiao Tong, Fudan, Tongji, Wuhan, South China University of Technology, Beijing Normal University), and Italians (Naples Parthenope, Bologna, Turin, Venice Ca ‘Foscari, Genoa, Macerata, Sassari, Federico II, L’Orientale). The network will help in promoting interdisciplinary projects in collaboration with partners from the financial and the industrial world.
“For the cultural, economic and political future of our country I consider indispensable – said Minister Marco Bussetti – to promote and enhance an increasingly profitable bilateral relationship between Italy and China. The interchange between these two countries celebrated during the Week that we inaugurate today, represents a bridge of considerable importance that connects the West and the East”.
Investorvisa.it recently broadcasted a web conference to explain to Chinese, and Asian at large, investors the benefit of the Italian investor visa available to non-EU entrepreneurs willing to make investments for at least 500,000 euros (for start-ups) or one million (for other companies).
Source: AISE
