Cooperative Partners Seminar of the Chinese National Commission for UNESCO (the “National Commission”) was held online and offline on December 29, 2020, and attended by Qin Changwei, Secretary General, Cui Ying, Deputy Secretary General of the National Commission, representatives of the 15 UNESCO Category 2 Institutes and Centres, UNESCO Chairs and twining universities, creative city networks and relevant enterprises.

Secretary General Qin Changwei introduced the work of the National Commission in 2020, and pointed out that although work method was changed due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, remarkable achievements had been made, mainly reflected in the following: actively dealing with the impacts of the pandemic; conducting pragmatic cooperation with UNESCO; mitigating risks and safeguarding national interests; making long-term deployments and training talents for international organizations. He also analyzed current situations at home and abroad, emphasizing that the focus for the next period of time of the National Commission itself and all its partners is to implement the tasks proposed at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19^th CPC Central Commission, create a sound external environment for development, and contribute to the efforts to transform China into a “culture power”, “education power” and “science and technology power”. He thanked all partners for the pragmatic cooperation with UNESCO as well as the strong support to the work of the Commission in the previous year.

In her speech on behalf of the Centre, LIU Chang, Secretary General of the International Knowledge Centre for Engineering Sciences and Technology (IKCEST, a category-2 centre under the auspices of UNESCO), introduced IKCEST’s fruitful work in the previous year, especially in that: 1) the Covid-19 Prevention and Control Column was recognized by the UNESCO headquarters and promoted on its official website and WeChat official account to provide relevant information and knowledge services for member countries; 2) the International Big Data Competition was associated with medicine and themed on “Forecasting the future incidence of highly pathogenic contagious diseases” for the first time, and had attracted 5,000+ participants of 580 colleges and universities from 22 countries; 3) 21 engineering sciences and technology training workshops on various themes were held, providing training to nearly 7,000 participants from 110 countries and regions to help developing countries cultivate talents and enhance capacity building; 4) as an example of an “existing open science platform”, IKCEST was invited to attend the Open Science Regional Consultation Meeting for Asia and the Pacific during which it gave a briefing to the concept note and current practice of the platform. LIU Chang also expressed gratitude to the National Commission for its constant support and guidance, as well as desire to cooperate with more partners in data sharing and other aspects.