China and CERN look to strengthen co-operation in high-energy physics
Over the past 30 years, the Chinese high-energy particle-physics community has become an important participant in CERN's experimental physics programme, with formal co-operation agreements signed in the 1990s between CERN and the Chinese government, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). Since the signature of a renewed co-operation agreement between the Chinese government and CERN early in 2004, contacts have intensified at the highest level, for example with the visit of the president of CAS, Yongxiang Lu, to CERN, and a meeting between China's premier, Jiabao Wen, and CERN's director general Robert Aymar.
To establish closer ties in high-energy physics, as well as in the associated computing and accelerator technologies, it was agreed to organize a China-CERN workshop in China. Its aim was that all Chinese scientific institutions with a potential interest in either high-energy physics or accelerator technology could meet with representatives from CERN to review the scope of the CERN-China collaboration and explore opportunities to strengthen further, and possibly also enlarge, the partnership on a longer term.
Organized by the Institute for High-Energy Physics (IHEP), at the request of China's Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), the China-CERN workshop took place in Beijing on 14-15 May 2005. It was attended by more than 70 scientists from 16 different scientific institutions in China, as well as high-level representatives of MOST, the Ministry of Education (MOE), the NSFC and CAS. The CERN delegation, led by Robert Aymar, included CERN's chief scientific officer Jos Engelen, the advisor on relations with non-member states, the spokespersons of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb), a representative for LHC Grid Computing, and the leaders of the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) and Superconducting Proton Linac (SPL) studies.
Following the opening by Jie Zhang, the director of CAS's Bureau of Basic Sciences, the vice-minister of science and technology, Jinpei Cheng, reviewed co-operation between CERN and China since its beginnings in the early 1970s. He acknowledged the mutual benefits arising from a strengthened co-operation to both China and the scientific community working at CERN, and pledged a sustained effort by the Chinese government to support this endeavour. Aymar responded by acknowledging the participation of Chinese scientists in activities at CERN and invited China to deepen and extend this co-operation.
The director of IHEP, Hesheng Chen, then presented an outline of particle-physics research in China, and summarized China's participation in international research programmes, recognizing CERN as one of China's most significant partners. Aymar and Engelen followed with an overview of the ongoing and future research programmes at CERN, pointing out where Chinese physicists already participate, and presented the opportunities to extend or deepen China's participation.
The workshop heard more detailed reports on the status and future plans for the LHC experiments and for LHC Grid Computing from the spokespersons and leaders of the teams participating from China. The first part of the workshop then concluded with presentations on accelerator projects and studies, including the SPL study at CERN, China's Spallation Neutron Source project, the Beijing Electron-Position Collider (BEPC), studies on CLIC at CERN, and China's involvement in the International Linear Collider.
Further discussions took place in six parallel sessions dedicated to the four LHC experiments, to LHC Grid Computing, and to accelerator studies and projects. The conclusions were finally presented in a plenary session. The workshop ended with a closed session between CERN's management and representatives of Chinese funding agencies (MOST, MOE, CAS and NSFC).
The China-CERN workshop was useful for providing CERN and its Chinese colleagues, as well as the Chinese government and funding agencies, with a comprehensive overview of the current status of co-operation between CERN and China, and it helped to identify areas where this co-operation could grow. It was an opportunity for CERN's management to meet with the relevant Chinese officials, but it was also an opportunity for scientists to establish new contacts and exchange new ideas, as the necessary condition for the future growth of scientific co-operation between China, CERN and the international science community, collaborating through CERN.
• Diether Blechschmidt, CERN, and Sijin Qian, Peking University