00:00Is there more of an openness now within with Western scholars to work with
00:06Chinese scholars would you say? If you're talking about the academic fraternity
00:10yes most of my colleagues that I know not just in the universities that I've
00:15worked in but across the UK and across Europe they admire the Chinese
00:19academics and vice versa I think the respect is mutual in both ways.
00:24Are there any particular areas that we might see coming out of that
00:29collaboration in the near term? Yes I mean the developing turbines for
00:34example and much more efficient turbines are going to be developed by are being
00:40developed based on collaborative activities we're now looking at
00:45improving the representation of things like foetal bacteria there are many
00:50people working on flooding around the world what I realized from a study in
00:53the UK that flooding could be made much worse if something like a car went into
00:58the river and then blocked a bridge I started working on that problem I then
01:03started introducing the problem to my Chinese friends this is a big project in
01:07China so they have developed with in partnership with my university Cardiff
01:12University formulations for how cars move in floods and so forth and I
01:17believe this has been hugely beneficial in China and now it's starting to come
01:21in here with some companies interested in applying this year so I think it's
01:25been a two-way partnership and now working with Hohai University and the
01:30Yangtze Institute at Hohai University and here we're looking at following
01:35something that China is doing already which is building coastal reservoirs to
01:40provide water for major megacities like Shanghai they have the Qingkou
01:44Shao Reservoir in the estuary of the mouth of the Yangtze and I can see this
01:49approach being adopted much more in the West in the future to supply water
01:53during particularly during periods of drought in terms of China as a country
01:58what sort of feelings do you have towards it what sort of emotions what
02:01do you think of I think that the Chinese people have always treated me as a
02:05friend and I think they want to be friendly with people all around the
02:11world and I think given that opportunity we've benefited enormously together why
02:17does it upset you the lovely people I don't think people have been there they
02:27may say or they visited but that's not the same as working with people to
02:32address some of the big challenges in the world no country is trying harder to
02:38to address the problems of climate change in my experience than China it
02:42may have a lot further to go than many other countries but they are they doing
02:50their best professor Falkner thank you so much for your time
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