On May 18, Ms. Shang Yuying, deputy secretary general of the Shanghai Municipal Government, met with Mr. Ivica Šušak, state secretary of the Croatian Ministry of Science and Education, and his delegation. Mr. Luo Dajin, Chairman of the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (STCSM), attended the meeting.

On behalf of the Shanghai Municipal Government, Ms. Shang Yuying welcomed State Secretary Šušak and his delegation to Shanghai. She introduced Shanghai’s economic and social development and briefed him on the progress in building Shanghai into an S&T innovation center. 

She said, while striving to become a globally influential center of S&T innovation, Shanghai has carried out multilevel and multichannel international S&T exchanges and cooperation in various fields,strengthened opening-up and coordination, and taken the initiative to merge into the global innovation network, putting itself in an advantageous position as a global innovation hub. 

Furthermore, she expressed the hope that Mr. Šušak’s visit could advance the establishment of a regular cooperation mechanism in S&T innovation between the two sides.This would facilitate their collaboration in joint scientific research, enterprise innovation, and people-to-people exchanges.

Mr. Ivica Šušak outlined S&T innovation in Croatia. He said that in its ongoing National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), “education, science and research” is one of the six major fields, and more efforts will be made to promote S&T innovation in the coming years. 

He said the visit to Shanghai enabled him to learn more about Shanghai’s strengths in S&T development. Furthermore, he also learned about the history of S&T collaboration between the two sides. He wished that a Shanghai-Croatia S&T innovation cooperation mechanism could be established under the framework of the Sino-Croatian Agreement on Scientific and Technological Cooperation to carry out more projects.

During its visit to China, the Croatian delegation will attend the tenth session of the China-Croatia Scientific and Technological Cooperation Committee. It has already visited institutions such as the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica (SIMM) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shanghai Aowei Technology Development Co., Ltd., and Shanghai University of International Business and Economics (SUIBE) while staying in Shanghai.