Biotechnology to account for 5% of China's GDP in 2020
A leading Chinese life scientist estimated that the output of China's biotechnology industry will hit two trillion yuan (250 billion U.S. dollars), or 5 percent of GDP, in 2020.
China would enter the top five countries in the world in terms of biotechnology industry scale, ZHANG Yaping, a CAS member, in a speech at the ongoing Nobel Laureates Beijing Forum 2006.
Zhang, also director of the CAS Kunming Institute of Zoology, said China had made significant progress in life sciences and biotechnology.
Biotechnology industry has listed as one of the key areas for China's science and technology development in the next 15 years, according to the guidelines on national medium and long-term programs for science and technology development (2006-2020), issued by the State Council earlier this year.
By 2020, China is set to develop it own frontier technologies, such pharmaceutical elements, genetic operations and protein engineering, dry cell-based human tissue engineering, and new-generation industrial biotechnology.
China has established five large biotechnology research and development centers in Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Tianjin and Nanjing, and has successfully developed more than 200 kinds of bio-chip products. (Source: Xinhua)
