The UK has scaled back areas of scientific and technological collaboration with China over heightened security risks, even as a senior minister heaped praise on the “strong scientific nation,” reports the Financial Times. Lord Patrick Vallance, the science and technology minister, said the UK and China had agreed to work together in the “uncontroversial” areas of health, climate, planetary sciences and agriculture.
His comments followed a meeting on Tuesday with Chen Jiachang, China’s vice-minister for science and technology, in Beijing, where the two countries later signed an updated bilateral agreement on areas of collaboration in science and technology.
But a previous agreement, signed in 2017 by then universities minister Jo Johnson, had pledged collaboration in fields including satellites, remote sensing technology and robotics. Those sectors were absent from the latest accord.