On Feb.4, 2010, USITO led a delegation with reps from ITI, SIIA and SIA to meet with officials from the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) in Beijing to raise concerns with the Indigenous Innovation Policy and the November Circular. Director-General and Director level officials from the Law and Reg Dept., Planning Dept., and Int'l Dept. of MOST met the USITO delegation. During the meeting USITO requested that MOST refrain from publishing the results of the 2009 applications, and voiced concerns that the 2009 catalogue directive is flawed and doesn't work for foreign companies investing in China. MOST expressed their willingness and openness for the dialogue, and responded that the 2009 catalogue work has been completed, the 2010 catalogue will address concerns from the international community and may reflect due changes. Both parties agree to continue dialogue about this issue.

USITO has stayed on top of this policy issue since November 2009 when the issue emerged. In the past months we have had several dialogues with the Chinese and U.S. stakeholders and policy makers, and provided several reports and events to read out the issue. For this 2/4/2010 USITO-MOST meeting, we have sent the meeting minutes to USITO members. Please contact Wenjie Gu, VP Policy of USITO at wenjie@usito.org or Jing Lin, Manager of Policy Cooridation of USITO at JingL@usito.org if you want more details.