The Early Days of Chinese Biotech

Chinese biotechnology has a longer history than one might imagine. Emphasis on biotechnology dates back to 1983, when the government created the China National Center for Biotechnology Development. The organization, based in Beijing, had a variety of tasks, including the management and distribution of monies for research in agricultural biotechnology, food processing and pharmaceutical manufacture. It also served as a consultant for the country’s small but growing number of commercial biotechnology companies.

A series of new programs encouraged the growth of the burgeoning biotechnology business. Probably the most important was 1986’s National High Technology Research and Development Program. It was designed to reduce the achievement gap between China and developed countries in seven specific technologies, one of which was biotechnology. Two years later, the Chinese government established the Torch Program to commercialize technologies under development. In the same year, the Spark Program set out to apply biotechnology, among other sciences, to rural areas of China that had benefited less from technical advances than more urban regions. And in March 1997, the National Basic Sciences Initiative added extra funding for biotechnology and other research arenas, with particular focus on early-stage research.

In its effort to make up lost ground in its development of biotechnology, the Chinese government sought out collaborations with Western organizations. Between 1986 and 1989, for example, the Chinese Academy of Sciences cooperated with the U.S. National Academy of Sciences on a study of the state of the country’s biotechnology sector. The conclusion: While the field was improving, it remained far behind biotechnology in developed nations. Pessimistic as it was, that report was among the stimuli that persuaded the Chinese government to invest more funds in the field, and hence set the scene for the present promise of Chinese biotechnology.