The Motivation And Implement Mechanism Of Science And Technology Diplomacy

In the context of the globalization,China proposes the innovation-driven development strategy and promotes comprehensive innovation based on the development of science and technology.The science and technology diplomacy(hereinafter as S&T diplomacy)has played an increasingly important role in the country’s overall diplomacy.This paper selects the S&T cooperation between China and Costa Rica as a case to study,sorts out those important events in the bilateral scientific and technological cooperation,analyzes the process of the signing of bilateral scientific and technological cooperation agreement between the two countries and sum up the process of signing such an agreement,in order to find out the characters of China’s S&T diplomacy.China and Costa Rica formally established diplomatic relations in the year 2007.Science and technology diplomacy,as an important part of China’s overall diplomacy,also entered the central stage of diplomatic relations between the two countries.As a kind of Soft Power,the S&T Diplomacy plays an important role to provide a strong support for the strengthening of bilateral relations and serve the social and economical development.There are several stages for the two countries to establish the S&T Diplomacy.First of all,in the stage of Agenda Setting,in order to strengthen the relationship between the two countries and to serve the visit of the Minister of Science,Technology and Telecommunications of Costa Rica to China at the end of 2007,the Costa Rican side proposed to sign an agreement with the Chinese side in the field of science and technology.This proposal had been approved by the Chinese side.In the stage of Policy Formulation,under the framework of those international agreements,the two sides reached agpreement on the specific content,such as the form and the field of the cooperation.Then in the stage of the Policy Legalization,both parties have fulfilled the necessary internal procedures separately,such as consulting the text of the agreement to those relevant departments responsible for laws and regulations and policy formulation,and asking for the authorization of those high level officials,etc.Finally,in December 2007 the two parties signed the inter-ministerial cooperation agreement in Beijing.In the stage of Policy Implementation,the two sides carried out a series of fruitful cooperation through high-level mutual visits,holding sessions of joint committee for science and technology cooperation,enterprise cooperation and humanities exchanges.From the perspective of Policy Evaluation,since the signing of the cooperation agreement,China and Costa Rica have achieved a lot of achievements,not only successfully serving the relations between the two countries,but also promoting the exchanges and cooperation between the two countries in science and technology and provided effective support for the economic and social development of the two countries.However,due to the low legal effect of the inter-ministerial agreement,both parties need to find the possibility at an appropriate time to sign an inter-governmental agreement on scientific and technological cooperation.Finally,this paper comes to the conclusion that the establishment of S&T diplomacy is mainly driven by two motivations:serving the country’s overall diplomacy and major diplomatic events;serving the country’s scientific and technological development.The signing of the scientific and technological cooperation agreement is the most important event in the process of establishing the S&T relationship between two countries,which is a process consisted of negotiation on forms of cooperation,areas of cooperation and cooperation mechanisms between the two sides.