Could China be the next biotech trailblazer?

Massive investments in research and development, coupled with innovative approaches, have boosted China's biotechnology industry. Photo: Filepic

Years of pouring money into its laboratories, wooing scientists home from overseas and urging researchers to publish and patent is starting to give China a competitive edge in biotechnology, a strategic field it sees as ripe for "indigenous innovation."

The vast resources China can throw at research and development – overall funding more than quadrupled to US$191bil (RM714.4bil) in 2005-13 and the Thousand Talents Program has repatriated scientists – allow China to jump quickly on promising new technologies, often first developed elsewhere.