Nobel Prize winner Tomas Lindahl made the keynote speech as London hosted the China-UK Technology Summit, held against a backdrop of calls for more UK government investment in start-up businesses.

The event, which took place at the prestigious Royal Geographical Society, explored future trends in urban development, life sciences, artificial intelligence (AI) and entrepreneurship, with the theme of 'Reimagining the Impossibles'.

Lindahl, a Swedish-British scientist specializing in cancer research, encouraged young researchers to maintain good relationships with their mentors and to remain curious and passionate about their work. He stressed the significance of international exchange in research, fostering collaboration between Chinese and Western scientists.

Speaking about the climate crisis, the 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry award winner, said: "I think the great significance is that it improves international exchange or research. So with the interaction of Chinese scientists with people in the west, it is important to improve that as much as possible and both sides will gain from this."

One of the key panels focused on health science, featuring academics, scientists and consultants. Dina Du, a senior Chinese scientist at AstraZeneca, highlighted the challenges in the medical sector. She emphasized that the hurdles primarily revolve around collaborative clinical testing due to variations in drug regulations between Europe, the United States and China. Du stressed the importance of co-operation between governments and regulatory agencies to streamline these processes.

Zihan Wang – a graduate student at Imperial College London – is a digital artist and web designer and highlighted the challenges of her own start-up journey, such as finding partners and navigating local laws and regulations. Cultural differences and variations in British and Chinese laws pose unique challenges for Chinese companies. Wang highlighted the time-consuming nature of understanding and complying with these differences.

Businesses owned by Chinese nationals make an increasingly large contribution to the UK economy. With a combined turnover of more than $70 billion, these businesses now support more than 60,000 jobs across all industries. 

Azmat Hussein, of Extend Robotics whose Reading-based firm works on intuitive human-robotic interfaces, with close relations to China, said: "We are here because we want to show our technology across the world and China is a big industry and I think our technology could be useful for a lot of Chinese companies out there and we want to build and help contribute to the collaboration world for the UK."

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UK-China bilateral trade has been growing at 20 per cent per annum over the past five years while mutual investments have more than doubled, that despite the challenges posed by issues such as the pandemic.

Zihan pointed out the challenges of acquiring funding as a start-up, which should get more grant support from the government, especially under the current cost-of-living conditions. She hopes that the British government will provide low-interest loans, subsidies or tax breaks for non-UK residents to help start-up companies survive the early stage of capital shortage and provide free or low-cost training and consultation for local corporate law and regulations, provide more low-cost shared offices, build incubators and promote exchanges and co-operation among entrepreneurs.

George Ye, co-founder and managing director at UBIPOS, a world-leading geospatial science applications and solutions company, also pointed out the importance of funding support from the government in the early stages. "Government should lead on early-stage investment," he said. "This can attract more people come to UK for start-up."

Sai Gu is a Chinese national who has been working in the United Kingdom since 2015. He is currently deputy pro-vice chancellor, China at the University of Warwick. He encouraged young scholar and students get out of comfort zone and embrace opportunity in the UK. 

"There are many challenges now. At present, many people believe that co-operation with China is impossible and requires smart ideas, dialogue and exchanges. Young generation should be more involved in the conversation process," he said.

"There are many opportunities for entrepreneurial students abroad in the UK and Chinese students and scholars should make full use of this opportunity. It turns out many scholars are mostly in the academic section. I hope that the new generation of scholars and young people will have more ideas.

"Britain has good technology and education. There is a good innate environment for starting a business in the UK. There is also a big market in China."

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