Ties That Bind - Bay Area Council Economic Institute

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Ties That Bind
� $1 million each from Intel chairman Craig Barrett and from Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing Co. CEO Morris Chang, toward the newly renovated Stanford Nanocharacterization
Laboratory, a nanotech research facility enabling researchers to view
and work with structures as small as two-tenths of billionth of a meter in the development
of new generation semiconductors, fuel cells and materials.
UC Davis’ academic emphases in agricultural, veterinary, public health and environmental sciences
have lured significant numbers of foreign-born Chinese students. Many are enrolled, with
Chinese government support, to study crop yields, resource management, agricultural economics,
treatment of infestations and animal diseases, nutrition, public health and other fields. Davis has
cooperative agreements with seven Chinese and two Taiwanese universities in agronomy, forestry,
range science, biology and agricultural engineering.
Visiting scholar Yanfeng Chen, general manager of Southern China poultry producer Fujian
Sunner Group Co., is part of the management team of the California Institute for Food & Agricultural
Research (CIFAR) on the Davis campus. Fuzhou University in Fujian, and Zhejiang
University in Hangzhou, are CIFAR international affiliates. CIFAR also partners with the Chinese
Institute of Food Science and Technology (China IFT) and several Chinese universities to
organize China’s International Conference of Food Science and Technology (ICFST), last held in
Guangzhou in November 2005, and the China Food Summit, next scheduled for Xiamen in the
fall of 2006. CIFAR executive director Dr. Sharon Shoemaker, a biochemical engineer, serves on
the scientific organizing committees for the ICFST. She is also an advisory board member for
Shanghai's Jiaotong University’s Bor S. Luh Food Safety Center, and for the Fuzhou Biotechnology
Consultancy Group.
Part of the agenda during the November 2005 China visit of a Bay Area delegation led by San
Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom included signing of a faculty exchange/collaborative research
agreement between UC’s California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3)
and Peking University’s Center for Theoretical Biology. QB3 is an interdisciplinary effort that
leverages the strengths of engineering and physical sciences at UC Berkeley, engineering and
mathematical sciences at UC Santa Cruz, and the medical sciences at UC San Francisco, as
well as strong biology programs at the three campuses and support from private industry. Peking
University brings to the agreement strengths in theoretical biology and computational modeling
of biological behavior. The Center of Excellence created by the two institutions aims to enhance
the rate at which complex biological phenomena can be quantitatively predicted. Programs will
include the exchange of students and faculty and joint symposia. The Center is aligned with a
broader effort to strengthen UC-China relations called the “10+10 Alliance”, that brings together
the ten University of California Campuses with ten partner universities in China. ICSF
currently has 224 visiting scholars and students from China.
Special academic ties exist between China and Jesuit educational institutions. Jesuit missionaries
first landed in Macao during the 16th century, studied Chinese language and customs, and eventually
reached Beijing. They served as consultants to the Imperial Court in astronomy, chemistry,
physics, music and art, and even ran the Imperial observatory. In the late 19th and early 20th
century, Jesuits taught English to Chinese immigrants and welcomed Chinese children in their