China and the European Union are two of the biggest traders in the world, with the EU standing as China's largest trading partner.
In recent years, China has enjoyed rapid economic growth, and is nowadays a strategic partner with whom the EU engages on a wide range of policy issues.
In September 2015 joint declaration was signed between the EU and China on strategic collaboration on 5G networks; to increase the collaboration on the standardisation level while encouraging global consensus on the definition of 5G, developing common interests in research activities, harmonizing radio spectrum policy to ensure global interoperability and preparing global standards for 5G. Both agreed to work together to explore possibilities in cooperating and implementing joint research actions in the area of 5G and to facilitate bilateral participation of enterprises in 5G research projects in the EU and China. At the same time in 2015, the EU and China launched a joint initiative to support joint research and innovation projects between European and Chinese universities, research institutions and enterprises in strategic areas of common interest under the H2020 framework.
InDiCo will foster collaboration on standardisation of several technological areas already identified for collaboration at research level, including 5G, IoT, ITS and security issues. Some of these areas already bring together standardisation bodies in China and Europe, for example CCSA and ETSI in the global partnership projects 3GPP (5G mobile communications) and oneM2M (IoT Common Service Layer).
Furthermore, InDiCo will support the efforts by all parties to enhance European players' access to Chinese ICT standardisation activities. It is especially important as access to standardisation work enables a fair and level playing field for industry players
