On the afternoon of July 15, Vice President Wu Zhiqiang received Reinhold Ollig, Head of Division “Earth System” of the Ministry of Education and Research and his delegation, which included the experts and professors in the fields of environmental conservation and sustainable development from several important German research institutes such as Technical University of Darmstadt, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, German Center of Aviation and Astronautics (DLR) German Research Center in Juelich and so on.

During the meeting, Mr. Ollig introduced the recent developments of the Chinese-German Research and Innovation Program “Clean Water”. He said that the research cooperation was running smoothly and hoped that demonstration areas could be established in Shanghai and at the Qingdao International Horticultural Exposition 2014 in order to show the research findings. Vice President Wu said that Tongji University had a traditional cooperation relationship with Germany since a long time. Now the university was gathering and integrating its existent resources in the area of sustainable development, environmental protection and water treatment to support the program. In addition, Vice President Wu suggested that both sides should contact the relevant institutions in Yangpu-District of Shanghai and in Qingdao to prepare for the establishment of the demonstration areas.

During the visit of Premier Wen Jiabao in Germany at the end of June, Prof. Wan Gang, Minister of Science and Technology, and Thomas Rachel, Parliamentary State Secretary of Ministry of Education and Research signed a joint declaration about the Chinese-German Research and Innovation Program “Clean Water”. The leading units of both sides are Tongji University and Technical University of Darmstadt. It is reported that Minister Wan Gang and Minister of Education and Research of Germany will attend the official launching ceremony at Tongji University by the end of this year.