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Home > Resources > Laboratory News
China Expands Science Globalization Trends March 10, 2010
Science globalization is in vogue, pooling together scientists and researchers of various races and with different backgrounds and Chinese scientists "go global" as well.
Back in 2004, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Pasteur Institute joined forces in forming a Pasteur Institute of Shanghai to facilitate such studies as virology, immunology and vaccinology in China.
The Shanghai institute was formed under the auspices of the local municipal government.
Both authorities and academicians in China have been attaching increasing importance to scientific and technological cooperation with scientists and researchers in other countries.
Alice Dautry, director-general of the Pasteur Institute, expressed appreciation for the Chinese approach toward internationalizing the country's scientific research work, when looking back on more than two decades of cooperation between Pasteur and its Chinese counterparts.
Thanks to the close cooperation, the Pasteur Institute of Shanghai has developed very fast and will be boasting of 400 researchers by 2012, Dautry says.
By the end of 2008, China had already entered into scientific and technological cooperation with 152 countries and regions and signed 103 inter-governmental accords with 97 of them.
Increased cooperation with top-class research teams and labs in the world has resulted in broadened visions for Chinese scientists and researchers who have benefited from the advanced research projects.
Zhou Qi, a research fellow from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, speaks highly of the significance of scientific and technological cooperation: "I have proposed cooperation with the French Institute for Agronomy Research in setting up a joint laboratory in China. Now the institute is sending its researchers to China and we also take French international students for advanced studies."
Zhou now leads one of the two Chinese research teams which have grown living, breeding mice from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.
The Nature journal hails in its July 2009 issue Zhou's success as a breakthrough in the global research on stem cells.
Zhou and Dautry share the view that international cooperation leads not only to breakthroughs in research results but also to breakthroughs in fostering research talent.
Zhou, director of the China National Stem Cell Bank, says it was through international cooperation and through bringing in talented people from abroad to form a research base in China that his team has finally made the breakthrough in stem cell research.
Zhou also says that making the most of overseas resources should play a major role in efforts toward leading the trend in China's scientific and technological research in the future.
Dautry says the Pasteur Institute of Shanghai has brought to the fore quite a number of Chinese talents in the country's research circle, especially in the public health sector.
The Shanghai institute has created an atmosphere by mingling research concepts and techniques.
Ian Leslie, vice chancellor of Cambridge Univ., has says that the world is facing an assortment of challenges which need wisdoms from various origins to tackle and Chinese wisdom can help the world to tackle such knotty issues as low-carbon energy.
China initiated in 2004 and is now leading the study of the Human Liver Proteome Project under the Human Proteome Project, or HPP.
HPP is another full-length international research project after the 13-year Human Genome Project (HGP) which was completed in 2003.
This is the very first time for Chinese scientists and researchers to lead the implementation of major projects of international technological cooperation.
China is cooperating with the rest of the world not only in research studies, but also in the application of research results.
Brazil and China have been cooperating since 1988 in building three Earth Resources Satellites, two of which are still in orbit," says Thirso Vilela, director of the satellite and applications and development of the Brazilian Space Agency who is on the China-Brazil Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS) project.
The images and data sent back by these satellites serve not only Brazil and China but other countries as well, with information concerning agriculture, the environment, territory and disaster management.
These satellites have played an important role in monitoring the deforestation in the Amazon and the earthquake rescue and relief efforts in China.
Vilela says the two countries have also been offering free information services to African countries.
The CBERS cooperation project has set an example to the world that the developing countries can accomplish a high-tech project through cooperation, which is providing useful information to human society, Vilela says.
Source: Chinese Academy of Sciences
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