NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY VOLUME 26 NUMBER 2 FEBRUARY 2008 243

Can China’s supply of scientific talent keep up with demand?Grace Wong

Opportunities for scientists abound as China sets its sights on joining the global biotech sector.

Grace Wong is president and chief scientific officer at ActoKine Therapeutics, 12 Middlesex Road, #411, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467, USA. e-mail: grace@actokine.com

For decades, China has been a center of low-cost manufacturing because of a

huge work force, lower costs and less stringent regulation. However, in recent years, China’s government has promoted the growth of new industry—particularly in the high-technol-ogy sector, which includes biotechnology. Through tax incentives and the development of new facilities, China is hoping to encourage the growth of new biotech-related companies and attract foreign investment to improve and expand the national healthcare sector (Wong, G., Nat. Biotechnol. 24, 221–222; 2006). As such, the entrepreneurial environment for biotech start-ups is rich with opportunities to build stand-alone companies or to develop companies designed to support China’s phar-maceutical industry.

Although multinational pharma compa-nies have had manufacturing activities in China for many years, they are now add-ing R&D facilities as well. Roche, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Wyeth, Eli Lilly & Co., Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Novo Nordisk, Amgen, Biogen Idec and Genzyme, for example, have recently expanded their presence in China. The country’s large patient base, increas-ing percentage of senior citizens due to restrictions in birth rates, and the fact that approximately 200 million Chinese have Western-style health insurance, makes it a vast potential market for pharmaceuticals. But one of the most important reasons for the expansion may be that overall, the cost of per-forming biomedical R&D in China is about one-eighth of that in the United States.

Opportunities for Chinese scientistsThe expansion of biotech and pharma R&D in China has considerable implications for Chinese scientists. Historically, many Chinese students have gone to the West for advanced studies and in many cases stayed because of better oppor-tunities for trained scientists. This is rapidly changing. Increasing visa restrictions in the West (particularly the United States) and better career opportunities in China are keeping more of the growing number of university graduates and postgraduates (particularly in biology, chem-istry and biochemistry) at home and encour-aging some Western-trained Chinese, known as hai gui or ‘sea turtles’, to return—many as high-level executives at start-up companies or as institute directors.

Zemin Zhang, a scientist at Genentech, says that these returnees are harder to recruit since they tend to do very well in the West. Edmund Tsuei of Roche Australia adds, “There are many highly skilled, highly experienced and very successful scientists of Chinese origin working in North America and Western Europe wanting to return to their motherland to share their knowledge and experience and develop the next genera-tion of scientists in their disciplines. With opportunities and incentives provided by both the government and private sectors, this is now possible.”

The advantages of performing biomedical R&D in China also include the ease of setting up drug safety testing trials on animals there compared with in the United States or Europe, where animal rights activists are more plenti-ful. China is also a fairly nonreligious society, so there is little societal resistance to research in areas like stem cells that are controversial in the West. India, as it has begun developing a high-tech research and development industry, has tended to emphasize information technol-ogy-related fields, whereas Chinese scien-tific expertise has been, and remains, largely directed toward biomedicine.

Although cultural differences are some-times seen as problems to be overcome, in some ways they work to the advantage of the returning Chinese scientist. Chinese people have a great respect for education, and a high-level degree and/or experience working with Western institutions and companies provides a great advantage to returning scientists. At a recent Pauling Biotechnology Symposium entitled “Cultural barriers to the development of biotechnology in China,” Mao Mao, a scien-tist at Merck & Co. stated that “to be a scholar is to be at the top of the society; businessmen are always treated as the second class in China. At the central government level, the national

Guangzhou Science City, the core of the Guangzhou Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone in Guangzhou, south China, supports companies in the computer and software, biotechnology and pharmaceutical, photoelectron and environmental equipment industries.

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244 VOLUME 26 NUMBER 2 FEBRUARY 2008 NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY

biotechnology program is led by academics. The advisory board of the biotechnology development agency consists of Nobel laure-ates and professors.” However, Zemin Zhang of Genentech added, “The negative attitude toward businessmen was indeed prevalent in China decades ago, but the sentiment has rapidly changed in this business-friendly era. It is true that academic scholars are highly respected in China, but so are successful businessmen and entrepreneurs these days.”

Western-trained Chinese scientists also tend to be bilingual in English and Mandarin, and being able to communicate with Chinese scientists who do not speak English, as well as being able to understand aspects of Chinese culture, makes them more valuable to industry. Scientists can move from a rela-tively run-of-the-mill position in the United States to a prestigious post such as institute director, department head or even head of a biotech or pharma company in China. And if

an industry scientist or director working in a US or European facility transfers to a subsid-iary in China, he will often keep his Western salary, which is worth vastly more in China. But even at a lower salary, a scientist from the West can often have a higher standard of living in China because of the much lower cost of living. On the other hand, the overall quality of life in China might not be consid-ered as high as in the West. Environmental standards, government services and other quality-of-life issues might not meet the expectations of the Westernized person.

ConclusionsChina’s need for a well-trained workforce is acute as the country joins the global bio-medical sector. The environment is changing quickly, and there are new opportunities for both Western scientists and Western-trained Chinese scientists. The government is, for the moment, extremely supportive of developing

the biotech industry—perhaps even more so than the US government—and has had great success in attracting Chinese expatriates back home. These innovative leaders will help train and develop a biotech workforce to meet the demand in China. Says Tom Bliss, director of licensing at Amgen, “Although China’s cur-rent life sciences capacity is really very small, its potential is enormous. The value placed on education in China has translated to the production of an increasingly capable work force able to take China into the knowledge industries.” A forthcoming article will survey opportunities for local Chinese students and scientists in this growing sector.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSI would like to thank Mao Mao (Merck), Ed Tsuei (Roche), Tom Bliss (Amgen), Zemin Zhang (Genentech), Steven Liu (Fudan University), Lance Han (Cyagen), Xian-Ping Lu (Chipscreen), Ying Lu (Shanghai Genomics), Yaozhou Shi (BioChip) and Albert Yu (Hai Kang Life) for their excellent comments and suggestions.

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