After around ten years and with the end of its current BMBF funding phase, the BMBF project office "Clean Water" in Shanghai will close its doors on March 31, 2022.

Since mid-2012 the "Clean Water" project office has supported fifteen German-Chinese research projects and six initiating projects in the field of research for sustainable development. Most of these were water research projects. Activities of the project office included informing and advising the projects and the BMBF with regard to demands, priorities and developments in China as well as supporting communication between the project partners and the dissemination of research results and developed technologies. During this time, the project office also supported the preparation and implementation of numerous high-level BMBF delegations to China and the exchange between the BMBF and relevant Chinese ministries (MoST, MEE, MoHURD, MWR, MoF) and accompanied their discussions.

The team of the BMBF project office "Clean Water" would like to thank the BMBF for the ten-year project funding which has enabled to establish and expand a large and trusting German-Chinese network in the environmental sector. Special thanks go to Tongji University without whose support the work on site would not have been possible. We also thank the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for the administrative implementation of the project over the past five years, which was a big support. "Last but not least" we would like to thank the BMBF, the relevant Chinese ministries (especially MoST) and all German and Chinese project partners for the past years of good and trusting cooperation.

With best wishes for the Chinese New Year of the tiger under the sign of water, and thus standing for optimism and new beginnings, we say goodbye. We hope that the German and Chinese partners will continue to tackle the existing challenges in the areas of resource management and protection together and find good ways of cooperation and communication in order to develop joint solutions and utilize the existing potential for both countries.

Nicole Umlauf (office head) & DING Jia (assistant)