Since China’s first commercial cloning company was
established in September 2014 in the eastern Shandong Province with the birth of three
pure-blooded Tibetan mastiff puppies (prior to this,
cloning in China had been limited to scientific research), more and more
companies have shown interest in investing in the technology for commercial
use, especially animal husbandry. China has made rapid and
tremendous progress in fields like genome sequencing and cloning field.
At the end of 2015, Chinese scientists signed a deal to establish a
commercial animal cloning center in the Tianjin Economic and Technological Development Area
(TEDA), edging the controversial science closer to mainstream
acceptance.
China has great hopes in biotechnology industry, but also doubts to the same
degree. Some participants are worried that biotechnology will become the next
one after the Internet
bubble since it probably
will be another popular investment spot right after the Internet. However,
biotechnology industry was born with doubts and cautions which is different
from the advent of the Internet. Hence, it leads us to believe that the focus
on biotechnology is unlikely to result in “irrational prosperity”. Meanwhile,
the emerging biotechnology is demonstrating a diverse commercial ecosystem from
the Internet industry.
In my opinion, biotechnology is of great importance for developing
countries to solve many urgent problems such as human healthcare, food
supply, agriculture and environmental protection. China, as an emerging market, lacks of commercial
experience as well as original innovations, and the suitable and effective ways
to transform the science and technology achievements into products. However,
given the momentum underway, the sheer scale of the effort expended and its immense
market size, China will ultimately create a healthy and prosperous commercial
ecosystem for the development of biotechnology industry.
