The China EU Information Technology Standards
Research Partnership
The China-EU-Standards project is promoting research collaboration
on Information Technology standardisation between China and
Europe. The People’s Republic of China has become increasingly
active in information technology standards. This activity
raises important issues for China about standardisation processes
and technology promotion policy, with significant consequences
for the European economy and global ICT market. These issues
are of particular interest to the FP7 Information Society
Technologies programme.
This project brings together leading European and Chinese
centres researching ICT Interoperability Standards to undertake
a comparative examination of ICT standardisation processes
and policies between EU and China. It is developing a network
of top researchers in the field in Europe, China and beyond.
It is examining the new ICT standardisation activity emerging
in China and comparing these emerging standardisation processes
with the more established European ones.
Three strategic studies are addressing areas identified
by IST as critical for European technology and industrial
strategy. They are examining the standardisation approach
adopted; the strategies of public policy, technical and industrial
players; the likely implementation/ uptake of standards and
their consequences for innovation and markets. In particular:
will the outcomes be open standards and alignment between
regional economies, or competing standards, potentially leading
to so-called ‘standards wars’ and the fragmentation
of global markets.
The ‘China EU Information Technology Standards Research
Partnership’ is co-funded by the EU under Grant agreement
no. 217457. It is a Support Action under FP7’s ‘Socio-economic
sciences and the Humanities’ programme, Objective ICT-2007.9.1,
‘International Co-operation’. Among others, an
expected target outcome of this Objective is the “Identification
and promotion of co-operation opportunities, support to policy
dialogues”. The China-EU-Standards project will specifically
target the latter. Project work started in March 2008, and
will continue for 24 months. The project is co-ordinated by
the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
The forthcoming two final workshops will present findings
from the China EU IT Standards
Research Partnership and discuss their implications for technology
policy and industrial
strategy. The first will take place in Beijing on 8th December
2009 (Beijing Friendship). A further event will be in Brussels
in February 2010 (date to be confirmed).
The Consortium
Contact
For further information please contact the project co-ordinator,
Professor Robin Williams. |
