Brazil and China sign agreements on IT and space

Treaties provide for the installation of Chinese R&D centers in Brazil

 
During the visit of Chinese president Xi Jinping to the country, the minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Clelio Campolina Diniz, and the president of the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB/MCTI), José Raimundo Coelho, signed three agreements with companies and the government of China, at the signing ceremony of 32 acts of cooperation between the two countries, held on July 17 at Planalto Palace.
 
Two agreements define the installation of global research and development (R&D) centers by Chinese companies Baidu and Huawei in Brazil. “These partnerships will increase the activities of these companies here and also the exchange of researchers”, explains the secretary of Information Technology Policy at MCTI, Virgilio Almeida. "China is already the country's biggest trade partner and now we are looking to expand intellectual cooperation in advanced areas of science and technology, and these are two concrete examples of this."
 
Search tool
 
Campolina and Baidu's CEO, Robin Li, signed a memorandum of understanding on technical and scientific cooperation between MCTI and the company responsible for the largest internet search service in the Asian country. Then, the two governments launched the tool for the Brazilian market, with the typing of the words “Brazil” and “China”, in Portuguese.
 
The partnership aims to promote the development of internet services and technology in the country and, in Virgilio Almeida's opinion, it can help to diversify the offer of search tools to the national public. “As Google has complete market dominance, the arrival of Baidu is important to attract competition,” he says. "From now on, the Chinese search engine will offer an interface in Portuguese, develop products and have more of the 'face' of Brazil."
 
From 2014 to 2017, Baidu plans to invest around R$ 120 million in the implementation of an R&D center, to be started with the company's seventh advanced internet laboratory in the world. Currently, the company has three units in China, one in Silicon Valley, USA, one in Singapore and another in Japan. In Brazil, activities should focus on data mining, machine learning and personalization of products and services.
 
“They chose relevant and advanced areas of internet technologies”, observes the secretary. “Data mining, or 'data mining', means discovering relationships within a very large universe of data; machine learning, or 'machine learning', is a treatment of this data to find patterns of interest; the third area includes technologies in order to customize Baidu's products and services for Brazilian culture and the Portuguese language”.
 
digital data
 
With the memorandum of understanding signed by Campolina and the president of Huawei in South America, Li Ke, the Chinese network and telecommunications equipment company commits to contribute R$ 200 million in three years to the creation of an R&D center, with investments in areas such as cloud computing, big data, cybersecurity and mobile applications.
 
For big data technologies – a set of solutions capable of handling digital data in large volume, variety and speed – and cloud computing, according to Virgilio Almeida, Huawei would be interested in applications for the healthcare area, mainly, in addition to education and e-government.
 
The agreement aims to carry out research, development and innovation of software and information technology (IT) services, increase competitiveness and improve Brazil's international position in IT, promote entrepreneurship in the national market and make it viable of the sector as one of the pillars of the country's economic and social development.
 
Earth observation
 
Signed by the president of the AEB and by the Chinese deputy minister of Industry and Information Technology, Xu Dazhe, the memorandum of understanding in the space area proposes cooperation in remote sensing by satellite, with the exchange of Earth observation elements, training of specialists and reception , treatment, distribution and application of data.
 
In an audience with Campolina and Dazhe, José Raimundo Coelho highlighted the possibility of developing a set of applications to use data from Sino-Brazilian satellites of terrestrial resources. “There are specific demands from both countries. For this, we are going to set up working groups and seek these users to develop applications aimed at meeting their needs, commented the president of the AEB.
 
By the memorandum, Brazil and China commit to reciprocally provide data from remote sensing satellites, based on the security and capacity of their equipment. The National Institute for Space Research (Inpe/MCTI) and the Chinese Center for Data and Applications of Earth Resources Satellites (Cresda) are expected to be executing agencies.