On 14 April 2005, an agreement was signed in Beijing by Daniel Egret, President of the Observatoire de Paris, and Ai Guoxiang, Head of the NAOC, represented by Professor Xue Suijian, Director for scientific planning and funding at NAOC, an organization under the control of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and comprising all Chinese observatories. This general agreement will be the basis for new cooperation projects, in fields such as solar physics, astrometry and reference systems, galaxies, and stellar physics. More developments are expected, in optical interferometry and millimetric radio-astronomy, for instance. This agreement should favor the arrival in France of Chinese students (summer schools, scholarships, PhD training) and promote visits of our researchers to teach in China, as well as the organization of colloquia and workshops. Joint working sessions are been organized in order to determine possible subjects. At the beginning of July, “China Forum”, at the Meudon site, will be the occasion to discuss within the institution potential collaborations and the expectations of our research teams and their Chinese partners.

A CNRS (NATIONAL CENTER FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH) INTERNATIONAL PROGRAM OF SCIENTIFIC COOPERATION (PICS) between France and China got underway for the period 2005-2008, formalizing and continuing existing collaborations in observational cosmology. Following a first colloquium, in March 2004 in France, attended by 24 astronomers from both countries, a new scientific meeting took place in Beijing from 17 to 24 April 2005. Some thirty French astronomers participated in this event, which revealed a number of complementary interests.