Think of China, and what comes to mind? Cheap land, cheap labor, and low manufacturing costs. One does not imagine that high-tech industries such as biotechnology and nanotechnology would be a priority for a government still struggling to feed its population. Yet, since 1993 the Chinese government has provided substantial backing to develop a national expertise in biotech and life sciences, thanks to early support from then vice premier Zhu Rongji.
Shanghai is at the head of this initiative. The city has set up a high-tech industrial park at Zhangjiang, in the fast-growing Pudong New Area east of the city of Shanghai, to nurture startups and foreign-invested ventures in biotech, pharmaceuticals, and life sciences. And just down the road in WuXi is the home of one of the country's top-performing biotech firms: WuXi PharmaTech. The Fast 500 Asia, a ranking of the fastest-growing technology companies in the Asia Pacific region, ...
