(father of the famous artist M.C. Escher) helped to canalise the Huangpu River with the aim of improving access to the harbour at Shanghai. Dutch engineers returned to China in the 1930s, when Francois Bourdrez worked on rebuilding the dikes along the Yangtze (1931–1939) and Niek van den Heuvel helped to establish the Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute, which is still one of the leading institutes in its field. As the interview with Professor Dick Swaab shows (page 44), there were also early contacts with China in the neurosciences. Programmatic collaboration between Chinese and Dutch researchers began more than thirty years ago in the late 1970s, a few years after the two countries entered into relations at ambassadorial level. That collaboration became possible because funding was made available by the Dutch Ministry of Education, and because the Chinese also felt the time was ripe for cross-border science. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping introduced the open-door policy, thus facilitating international contacts. The “Four Modernizations” were promoted, aimed at strengthening Chinese agriculture, industry, defence, and science and technology. The fact that not only China and the Netherlands, but also the universities and research institutes signed agreements and memoranda of understanding – including an overarching cultural agreement and a scientific and technological agreement – led to structural, successful collaboration. KNAW and NWO: natural partners Funding for scientific collaboration and exchange programmes with China comes from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, and implementation is dealt with by KNAW and NWO. KNAW monitored the quality of the research programmes from the moment the governments of China and the Netherlands
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1999 Scientific and Technological Agreement between the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the People’s Republic of China (acting as an umbrella for Memorandums of Understanding with the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Chinese Academy of Science) 15