The China EU Information Technology Standards
Research Partnership
The China-EU-Standards project promoted 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 brought 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 developed a network
of top researchers in the field in Europe, China and beyond.
It examined the new ICT standardisation activity emerging
in China and compared these emerging standardisation processes
with the more established European ones.
Three strategic studies addressd areas identified by IST
as critical for European technology and industrial strategy.
They examinined 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’ was co-funded by the EU under Grant agreement
no. 217457. It was 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 specifically
targeted the latter. Project work started in March 2008, and
continued for 24 months. The project was co-ordinated by the
University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
The Consortium
Contact
For further information please contact the project co-ordinator,
Professor Robin Williams. |
