BEIJING, September 25 (People’s Daily Online) "China became the No.2 country with regard to the R&D collaboration which we have, second only to the U.S. With China, we have seen huge success," said Israeli Chief Scientist Avi Hasson at a press conference held in Beijing on September 22, 2014.

His words echo the remarks made by the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to China in 2013. "China is a global economic power and Israel is a global center of R&D, and I think we can complement each other to secure the market of tomorrow. This is a perfect partnership," said Netanyahu.

China and Israel have made great strides with economic and trade cooperation since the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1992, with bilateral trade surging to more than 10 billion U.S. dollars from 50 million dollars recorded in 1992.

Recent years have witnessed increasingly closer exchanges in various fields between the two countries, with deepening bilateral cooperation in the industrial research and development projects.

The Chinese government and the government of Israel have signed a bilateral agreement on 2010 to form China–Israel cooperation program for Industrial R&D aiming at supporting joint industrial R&D projects.

In addition to the agreement mentioned earlier, China and Israel also signed agreements on provincial level. On 2014, two more MOUs were signed with Zhejiang province and they will be implemented most likely during 2015.

These agreements have pushed forward the R&D collaboration between China and Israel. In recent years, more than 150 requests for support have been received for industrial R&D programs and over 65 projects have been approved for joint Israeli-Chinese support. Moreover, about 20 million dollars has been granted to Chinese-Israeli projects.

"Even though we have initial success story, a lot of innovations need to be done on both sides", said Hasson.