May 12, Prof. Li Jiayang, Vice Minister of Agriculture and President of CAAS met Prof. Kym Anderson, IFPRI Board Chair and Dr. Fan Shenggen, Director General of IFPRI at CAAS. The two sides exchanged views on further strengthening collaboration.
Prof. Li took the meeting opportunity to express his congratulation to the delegation for the IFPRI’s 40 years anniversary. He started by acknowledging the cooperation achievements met by both sides over the past three decades. Li pointed out that, rapid population growth, resources shortage and decrease in arable land are still major constraints to the agriculture growth and are the threat to the food safety efforts. He suggested that to increase the agriculture productivity and realize the sustainable agriculture development, both sides should be committed to boost technology innovation in agriculture.
Prof. Li continued by saying, IFPRI has strength in expertise and has important influence in the global food policy and poverty alleviation, whilst China is still in the process of urbanization and transition of rural population stabilization. He suggested that, both sides need to dedicate effort to formulate long-term strategies to ensure the collaboration on rural policy, urbanization research, poverty alleviation, and food safety are well strengthened, so as not only to contribute to the global sustainable agricultural development but also to alleviate poverty while minimizing the negative effects on environment. Read more >>

Professor Jiayang Li, Vice Minister of Agriculture of China and CAAS President was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society of UK on May 1st, 2015, due to his seminal contributions to establishing forward genetics approaches in rice and his demonstration that the fundamental knowledge can contribute to the development of improved rice varieties through marker assisted breeding.
Professor Li’s membership to the Royal Society has come in a proper time while China’s contribution to the science and technology has been recognised worldwide. This was evidenced by Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society when he presented welcome note by saying, “the scientists elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society this year are leaders in their fields and have contributed much to the scientific endeavour. We are delighted to welcome them alongside the likes of great British scientist such as Newton, Boyle and Darwin”.
Professor Li is the fourth outstanding scientist from mainland China to be elected as foreign member of the Royal Society. Prior to this, professor Li has been the academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences (since 2001), the fellow of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (since 2004), the foreign associate of US National Academy of Sciences (since 2011), member of the German Academy of Sciences (since 2012), the associate member of European Molecular Biology Organization (since 2013), the academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences (since 2014).
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