China and Germany have been working together in environmental technology and ecology for more than 30 years, in the frame of the scientific and technical cooperation (WTZ) between the two countries. Since then, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) have been funding joint water research projects.

With the BMBF research projects, the BMBF addresses the central topics of chinese water research and thereby promotes demand-oriented research with the objective of implementing and disseminating the developed technologies and management solutions. Thereby, the research cooperation contributes to China´s sustainable development and at the same time strengthens German companies´ activities on the Chinese market.

In order to support the CLIENT research projects and communication between the two ministries, the BMBF project office "Clean Water," Shanghai was established at Tongji University in mid-2012. Since then, it has supported the ongoing projects and the BMBF, for example in identifying relevant problems, needs and developments in the Chinese water sector, identifying local needs and potential partners in the focus areas, and in information exchange between German and Chinese decision makers, to name just a few examples.

China´s CLIENT projects mainly focus on water research, with currently five projects. Other projects get funded in the areas of climate change/energy efficiency, adaptation to climate change and land management, which are closely linked to water and have mutual interaction with each other. Sustainable development is only possible taking into account all four areas.

Current CLIENT research projects in China are:

• SIGN II (Drinking Water)
• KEYS (Sponge City)
• PIRAT systems (Municipal Wastewater Treatment)
• IntenKS (Sewage Sludge Treatment)
• PEPcat (Municipal Wastewater Treatment)
• Lin4Future (Forestry)
• Sinothrough (Energy Systems)