Scientific revolution in Asia

China continues to promote policies for entertainment of talents; India accelerates with research and development (R&D) plans and Singapore is at the top of Asia in biotechnology. The whole scene, an intense atmosphere of investment in the knowledge economy is booming across Asia.

In Asia's knowledge-based economy, Time Weekly (Asian edition October 30, 2006) asked questions (as a way of answering): Can Asia be the place to witness the event? The next revolution of science or not when this place was the first place to invent paper, compass, gunpowder and many other things.

Being lagged behind centuries by the West, Asia is now speeding up. With the red carpet inviting 200,000 repatriates in the last few years, China has doubled its GDP rate for R&D from 1995 to 1.3%; while Korea raised R&D budget from 9.8 billion USD in 1994 to 19.4 billion USD in 2004 (while in the US, the proportion of GDP for R&D in the field of physics and mechanics has decreased for the past 30 years, to less than 0.05% in 2003).

Singapore's Biopolis Center (Photo: TTO)

As a result, the market share of high-tech products exported from Asia increased from 7% in 1980 to 25% in 2001; while US market share decreased from 31% to 18% - according to the US National Science Organization. At the same time, the rate of publication of Asian scientific research increased from 16% in 1990 to 25% in 2004. By 2010, 90% of scientists with doctoral degrees will live in Asia - according to forecasts. of Nobel laureate Richard Smalley (died in 2005).

At the moment, 78% of doctoral scientists are earning a living outside the United States and a third of the PhDs are earned by a doctorate in the United States that is not a US citizen. Most of today's hottest research areas are Asian. In 2004, China became the second country in the world to have a percentage of articles on micro technology (nano). In Singapore, in 2000 the government began to spend 200 hectares of land for the One North science park.

For three years, the modern laboratory scientist Biopolis in One North has been awarded 54 patents for a variety of fields, from drug-coated contact lenses, to artificial bone implant techniques to diagnostic devices. SARS. Singapore is also open to invite leading scientists such as Sydney Brenner (US, Nobel laureate) or Edison Liu (former director of clinical science at the National Cancer Institute of America).

After several years of molecular pharmacology research at the Memorial Sloan - Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, Wang Zhugang decided to return to his hometown with an invitation from Shanghai, where he was ready to spend tens of millions of dollars in Project of establishing a world-class laboratory.In 2001, Wang founded the Shanghai Biological Research Center, where in the past five years, more than 100 different genetically modified mice have been cultivated, helping to decipher many secrets of cancer from diabetes to diabetes.In 2007, Wang will move to a new laboratory worth $ 25 million.'My colleague in the United States is still in the laboratory, while I have the opportunity to manage a whole research center ' - 45-year-old biologist Wang said .

Giant pharmaceutical companies like Novartis and Eli Lilly also set up R&D centers at Biopolis. 'Scientists are lining up to work in Singapore' - comments by David Lane, a cancer specialist at Dundee University (UK), who was invited to Singapore in 2004 to oversee the Institute of Cell Biology and molecule at Biopolis .

On Asia Times (January 19, 2006), George Zhibin Gu (author of Global Global Reach: markets, multinationals and globalization) says that China not only calls for the return of its national scientists overseas but also also spread the invitation to talents from many world countries (including the US) with the policy of sergeants, creating favorable conditions for them to live and work for a long time. In February 2006, Beijing announced it would nearly double the current R&D budget of $ 29.4 billion per year by 2010.

In 2004, China had more than 30,000 graduate students with a doctorate. Over the past five years, the number of repatriated scientists has helped China to bypass the US and Japan to become the first to decipher the rice genome, silkworms, chickens and pigs. Biologist Sheng Huizhen, who worked for 11 years at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), returned to China in 1999 and carried out stem cell research that she could not conduct in the United States by strict regulation. poor Bush administration.

With a US $ 875,000 laboratory supported by the Shanghai government, in 2003 Sheng withdrew stem cells from hybrid rabbit-human embryos, created from human skin cells and eggs in female rabbits (early 2006, the research team in the UK said they tried to repeat Sheng's experiment.

Almost 750 multinational R&D centers in China (up from 200 in 2002) are now under the management of repatriated scientists, with many contributions, from technical support for Internet search to Microsoft. business card capture for Motorola (inventions from these R&D centers are so much that the US National Science Foundation has to set up a branch in Beijing to monitor!).

In order to visualize the resurgence of Asian science, try a few typical Chinese faces:

In 1998, molecular biologist Peng Zhaohui left San Diego (where he worked for many years) to return to China and devoted to the newly inaugurated science park in Shenzhen. Five years and $ 6.25 million from the government, the company founded by Peng - Shenzhen SiBiono GeneTech Co - has become the first place in the world to be granted a license for a gene therapy. Called Gendicine, this method can cure some cancers by injecting a virus carrying a gene that suppresses the tumor into the human body.

By the end of 2005, more than 3,500 Chinese and foreign people had been treated for 43 different types of cancer with Gendicine (each cost $ 1,700 in at least six doses of treatment). Peng said that combining radiation and chemotherapy with Gendicine would be three times more effective than conventional cancer treatment. Gendicine's success was partly due to government policy (American Biologist Introgen successfully studied the same technique but is still awaiting approval with a clinical test that may take a decade!). .

The second character to mention is Lu Ke, 41, director of the Metal Research Institute, a master of nanotechnology. Since 2000, Lu Ke has succeeded in processing copper atomic structures to create extremely flexible but strong copper wire like steel and, of course, can conduct electricity well. The Beijing government's strong investment in nanotechnology has enabled people like Lu Ke to develop opportunities (in early 2006, Lu Ke became the first mainland Chinese invited to edit the scientific journal. Science title in Washington DC) .

Another notable character is Shi Jianlin , the inventor of the ' car ' of 200 nanometers (equivalent to one thousandth of a hair width) to carry medicine into the human body. Not only running into the body, Shi's tiny ceramic car also accurately attacked the target and released the medicine at the right time! 43 years old, Shi Jianlin is currently a leading researcher at Shanghai Ceramic Institute.

Considering the success factor for Asian science (especially in emerging countries like China, South Korea and India), it can be seen that policy issues are playing a key role. Try A-STAR in Singapore, where Sri Lankan embryologist Ariff Bongso became the first person in the world to isolate human embryonic stem cells (hESC) when he worked for the National University of Singapore since 1985 (up to now). A * STAR is currently the workplace of scientists in 50 countries.

That is why it is understandable why a country of only 4.4 million people like Singapore but is now almost the world leader in stem cell research and genetics (many US scientists have joined Singapore) due to more open working environment).

KIM NGUYEN

Increase investment while countries level off

If the trend of increasing technology investment continues, Asia will challenge the dominance of the US and Europe in science and technology.

UA (According to Time, from NSF, OECD, NAS and US Brand Office