China’s Pursuit of a Domestic Life Science Sector – Health Intel Asia
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Benjamin Shobert, Founder and Managing Director of Rubicon Strategy Group, writes:
As readers may know, for the past year I have been working with the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) on the research topic of China’s pursuit of a domestic life science sector. As conceived, the project is designed to evaluate China’s policies from a number of vantage points, ranging from how these policies will impact global R&D spending by pharmaceutical companies, whether China’s model fundamentally deviates from what Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have done during similar unsuccessful pursuits, whether current WTO protocols are adequate given the unique needs of the life science community, and how this all will impact US-China policies.
The original question that intrigued me – which was admittedly rough in how I conceptualized it – asked whether China’s approach to clean-tech might offer anything to the life science community and policy makers as lessons on how China thinks and acts once it sets about achieving one of its goals. During my own research on the question, one book I have found useful as a foundation to this question is Kelly Sims Gallagher’s book, The Globalization of Clean Energy Technology: Lessons from China.
Right out of the gate, Gallagher makes an important point about China’s clean tech policies, one that is relevant to the life science community. She writes about her response to seeing the new clean-tech factories being built in China, “I was surprised to see how few people were working in the factory; aside from the ingot production area, the factory was sparkling clean, white, sparse, and almost fully automated. Where was the so-called labor cost advantage in China?” This very quick quashes one of the canards about the current status of China’s economic development model; specifically, that China always pursues policies designed to absorb lots of the low-cost labor the country has in seemingly never-ending supply…
Read more – Health Intel Asia