Shanghai Branch puts international cooperation high on its agenda and has been developing a comprehensive, multi-tiered and high-quality network of international exchange. It has established friendly cooperative relations with more than 430 institutions from over 20 countries and regions through jointly developing cooperation platforms, signing cooperation agreements, hosting academic conferences and other forms of exchange. The number of guests received and that of its employees dispatched to foreign countries both exceed 2,000 a year, which effectively helps improve its indigenous innovative capacity and its international profile.

Jointly developing cooperation platform such as Institut Pasteur of Shanghai, CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology have become the important institutes in Shanghai. Meanwhile, Shanghai Branch signed agreements with Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Nedo of Japan and the Department of Energy of United States.

The Exploratory Round Table Conferences (ERTC) co-sponsored by CAS and MPG has been held for 5 successive years , with themes on synthetic biology, quantum information science and space, electrochemistry, individualized  medical and so on. Such high level academic exchange activities create new platforms for scientists from China, Germany and other countries, promoting strategic research between Chinese and German science communities.