National Academies Press: OpenBook

Biotechnology in China (1989)

Chapter: Front Matter

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Academy of Sciences. 1989. Biotechnology in China. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/2074.
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Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

Biotechnology in China Dean H. Hamer National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute Laboratory of Biochemistry Bethesda, Maryland and Shain-dow Kung Center for Agricultural Biotechnology Maryland Biotechnology Institute Department of Botany University of Maryland College Park, Maryland Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China National Academy of Sciences National Academy Press Washington, DC 1989 i

NOTICE: The biotechnology program was established in 1986 as a collaborative project between the National Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to promote the exchange of information and expertise related to biotechnology research and techniques. The program was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. It was supported under Master Agreement number 86-18643 between the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences and Contract Number INT 85-06451 between the National Science Foundation and the Committee on Scholarly Communica- tion with the People's Republic of China (CSCPRC). Program activities in China were supported by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Founded in 1966, CSCPRC represents American scholars in the natural and engineering sci- ences as well as scholars in the social sciences and humanities. In addition to administering exchange programs, it advises individuals and institutions on means of communication with their Chinese colleagues on China's international activities, and on the state of China's scientific and scholarly pursuits. CSCPRC members are scholars from a broad range of fields, including China studies. Administrative offices of the CSCPRC are located in the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 89-63312 International Standard Book Number 0-309-04132-5 Additional copies of this report are available from: National Academy Press 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20418 S038 Printed in the United States of America ii

Preface During a regular bi-academy meeting in 1986 in Beijing, Lu Jiaxi, then president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and Frank Press, president of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), agreed upon the need and importance of a collaborative program on biotechnology. Program activities for this joint initiative were developed and finalized by members of the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China (CSCPRC) Subcommittee on Biotechnology in a meeting with representatives of CAS. They agreed to a 3-year program that would include biotechnology minicourses to be held in China under the instruction of teams of American scientists, a major joint symposium in Shanghai on gene expression and gene regulation, and an assessment of Chinese biotechnology. Four minicourses were designed to cover important current research areas: nematode molecular genetics, gene expression and amplification in yeast, immunotoxins and tumor markers, and plant molecular biology. Alexander Rich, chairman of the CSCPRC subcommittee, proposed a format which combined laboratory training with complementary, broader based lectures. Chinese students came from all parts of the country to learn the latest research methodologies and techniques, and the results were overwhelmingly successful. The symposium was scheduled to take place at the end of May 1989. It was postponed because of the growing instability resulting from prodemocracy demonstrations taking place in China at that time. Attendant with the substantial increase in Sino-American collaboration in the past 10 years is a need to extend American understanding of Chinese science goals, funding policies, and research infrastructure. For this reason, it was PREFACE iii

decided the biotechnology program should include an assessment of Chinese biotechnology. CSCPRC subcommittee member Dean H. Hamer, an innovative researcher and leader of one of the minicourse delegations, and Shain-dow Kung, a professor of botany and biotechnology researcher who is known and valued for his inside track among the Chinese hierarchies, took up this challenge. They reviewed post-minicourse reports made by each American minicourse instructor, conducted a survey of published biotechnology research, both in Chinese and English, and drew on their own personal communications and previous experiences in China. Furthermore, in the fall of 1988, they traveled to China in order to make a firsthand evaluation of current biotechnology research activities and funding. They met with high-level officials in charge of science and technology policies, and they visited research institutes and biotechnology bases. Biotechnology in China is the result of all of these efforts: a comprehensive, evaluative, and at times, provocative documentary of Chinese biotechnology research. It should be noted that Hamer and Kung completed their report prior to the prodemocracy demonstrations in the spring of 1989. The massacre in Tiananmen Square on June 3-4 and the government's subsequent repressive actions have inevitably altered the environment for scholarly communication with China. Regretfully, the pace of development and change in biotechnology in China and, at least in the short term, the extent and type of American participation have been significantly affected. Nonetheless, I feel strongly that the authors' findings and recommendations remain timely and noteworthy. The CSCPRC would like to express its appreciation to the authors for making this assessment available to the American scientific community. Also, CSCPRC is especially appreciative of Alexander Rich's leadership of the subcommittee and Eric Davidson's perceptive accounts of Chinese biotechnology research. In this vein, CSCPRC would like to acknowledge all members of the CSCPRC Subcommittee on Biotechnology: Alexander Rich (Chairman), Massachusetts Institute of Technology Michael Bjorn, NeoRx Corporation Eric Davidson, California Institute of Technology Dean Hamer, National Institutes of Health Robert Horvitz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ernest Jaworski, Monsanto Company Sidney Pestka, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Paul Williams, University of Wisconsin CSCPRC would also like to acknowledge the capable leaders of the minicourse delegations: Michael Bjorn, Dean Hamer, Robert Horvitz, and Thomas Osborn, University of Wisconsin, for their valuable contributions to this collaborative PREFACE iv

program. Finally, I personally would like to thank Terry Price for his indispensable assistance in managing these activities and Beryl Leach for her excellent editorial work on this report. JANE LIU JERNOW DIRECTOR, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMS CSCPRC PREFACE v

PREFACE vi

Acknowledgments We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China and the National Science Foundation. We especially thank Jane Jernow and Terry Price, whose encouragement and efforts helped make our evaluation trip and report possible, and Beryl Leach, who was responsible for the editing and production of this publication. We also thank the many scientists who donated their time and effort to participate in the Chinese biotechnology literature survey: Alex Rich, James Leung, Jim Shi, Esther Cheng, Cao Xu, Lin Seyu, Bruce Paterson, and Eric Davidson (who also kindly provided Appendix D). Many of the articles reviewed in the survey were given to us by Chinese colleagues during our trip. We thank them for making these reprints available. Our evaluation of Chinese biotechnology funding would not have been possible without the valuable information provided by Cai Dalie (State Planning Commission), Xu Chengman (China National Center for Biotechnology Development), Hu Zhaosen (National Natural Science Foundation of China), and Li Zhensheng (Chinese Academy of Sciences). We thank the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Beijing Office of CSCPRC for making arrangements in China and the many Chinese scientists who took the time to meet with us. For these many valuable contributions, we are appreciative, but we retain full responsibility for the contents of and views expressed in the following pages. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS viii

Note on Spelling of Chinese Names At various times and places, several different systems have been used to romanize Chinese names. In the text, we use China's official Pinyin system, which includes retaining the Chinese order of last name first. For example, Mao Zedong's last name is Mao. We have made exceptions in the few cases where scientists are well known in the United States by the initials of their first names followed by their last names. In the references, names are rendered as they appeared in the research publications. NOTE ON SPELLING OF CHINESE NAMES ix

NOTE ON SPELLING OF CHINESE NAMES x

Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. China's Long History of Biotechnology 3 3. Research Priorities and Funding Mechanisms 6 High Technology Program and the China National Center for Biotechnology Development 8 Seventh 5-Year Plan (1986-1990) 9 National Natural Science Foundation of China 9 Evolution and Consequences of the New Funding Mechanisms 12 4. New Research Centers 15 Biotechnology Bases 15 Key Laboratories 16 5. Infrastructure 18 Instrumentation 18 Procurement System and Supplies 19 Intellectual Property Rights 20 6. Biotechnology Literature Survey 22 Sources 22 Geographical Distribution 24 Techniques 24 CONTENTS xi

Experimental Organisms 26 Research Topics and Goals 26 Evaluation of Research 29 7. Research Highlights 32 X-Ray Crystallography 32 Control of Plant Viruses 33 Toward a Hepatitis B Virus Vaccine 35 Plant Cell and Tissue Culture 38 8. Current Research at Selected Institutes 40 Beijing 40 Beijing Agricultural University 40 Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences 41 Institute of Biophysics (CAS) 42 Institute of Developmental Biology (CAS) 43 Institute of Genetics (CAS) 47 Institute of Microbiology (CAS) 48 Institute of Virology (CAPM) 49 Institute of Zoology (CAS) 51 Peking University 51 Shanghai 53 Fudan University 53 Institute of Biochemistry (CAS) 57 Institute of Cell Biology (CAS) 60 Institute of Materia Medica (CAS) 60 Institute of Plant Physiology (CAS) 61 Guangzhou 63 Guangdong Agricultural Academy of Sciences 63 South China Agricultural University 64 South China Institute of Botany (CAS) 64 Zhongshan (Sun Yatsen) University 65 Tianjin 66 Nankai University 66 9. Cooperation with the United States 68 Government-Supported Programs 68 Private Foundations and Academic Institutions 70 Students Abroad: How Many Will Return? 71 Commercial Enterprises 74 10. Conclusions and Recommendations 75 CONTENTS xii

Appendixes A Abbreviations 83 B Contacts—Scientific Administration 84 C Contacts—Research Institutes and Universities 86 D An Analysis of Niu Menchang's Research on Transformation by RNA Eric H. Davidson 92 E Statement by Dr. Niu 93 CONTENTS xiii

CONTENTS xiv

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