China could become a world leader in the field ofbiotechnology
Chinese Biotechnology: Where do we go from here? Why do we live in China? What do we want to see from our research? How do we get there?
Chinese seed will take off with new types, if I’m allowed to speculate. As for the biomedical sphere, my predictions would be gene therapy, neurodegenerative diseases, metabolic diseases and cancer, helped by artificial intelligence (AI) and Chinese omics databanks.
The number of PhDs obtained is low in the same layer of leadership. The president and vice-presidents all have PhDs from Chinese universities. Yet China is trying hard to get the best scientists, especially those with doctorates from top international universities.
In plant biology, China is now ahead of the United States, according to the Nature Index, again because of funding levels — in this case, much larger in China. The nation has long been worried about food security and has invested more in plant-related research than any other country has.
Research Collaborations with China are Threatened by Hostile Actors: The Manchester Report on the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States
He’s also famously outspoken. In protest against policies brought in by former president George W. Bush after the 2001 terror attacks, Rao gave up his US passport. Rao criticized US policies during the COVID-19 pandemic after his uncle died in New York, and vehemently rejected the lab-leak theory. He is an advocate for the talent-recruitment schemes in China.
Rao Yi is a leading reformer of science and education in China. He began his career in the US in the 1980s. After he returned to China, he introduced practices that have revitalized life- sciences research in the country, including the use of tenure and of peer review. He is based at Beijing’s Peking University and runs a leading brain- research laboratory.
Countries in Europe are more hesitant amid concerns that “international research collaboration is threatened by hostile actors”, states a report from social scientists at the University of Manchester, UK (see go.nature.com/4jukvdk). The United Kingdom came second in the survey, behind the United States, for institutions in seven countries: the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. Collaborations with China researchers are increasing slowly. On the whole, however, it seems that European policymakers still view research collaborations with China as having security threats, similar to how these countries perceive Iran and Russia. The concerns include that research collaborations could be benefiting foreign governments, for example by helping them develop military technologies, or technologies that could give them an economic edge.
It is crucial that countries take steps to maximize the benefits of international collaboration while minimizing risks. The Manchester report has some ideas on how to improve it. Common standards for assessing risks in international research collaborations have been created. Achieving this would require better information sharing between governments and some agreed definitions for terms such as ‘research security’, for which the report notes that there is considerable variation. It also outlines an agenda for future research, including a focus on using quantitative measures, for example to study the perception and the behaviour of individual researchers.