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South China Morning Post
28 minutes ago
- South China Morning Post
China's biotech hub Suzhou is thriving. Can it become the next Boston?
Could a city best known for its classical gardens and ancient canals emerge as China's answer to Boston – the global epicentre of biotechnology innovation? Advertisement Five years ago, the eastern city of Suzhou set forth a bold vision: to transform itself into the 'Pharma Valley of China' by 2030, benchmarking its ambitions directly against Greater Boston's world-leading life sciences ecosystem. The city in Jiangsu province, steeped in history and famous for its ancient water towns and picturesque gardens, hosts the China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park – a hub for electronic information, mechanical manufacturing, artificial intelligence (AI) , nanotechnology and biomedicine. With 3,800 biopharmaceutical companies already in town, the vision is to attract more top local and international pharmaceutical firms to set up their regional headquarters there by offering each company a subsidy of up to 60 million yuan (US$8.3 million). By 2030, Suzhou aims to establish itself as a major biopharmaceutical innovation hub, hosting more than 10,000 companies and generating an output value exceeding 1 trillion yuan (US$139 billion). Advertisement At the 2020 Suzhou Biomedical Industry Development Conference, the city's then Communist Party chief Lan Shaomin declared: 'We are the first in China to benchmark ourselves against the global biotechnology hub of Boston … aiming to establish biomedicine as a lasting industrial landmark in Suzhou.' To train drug innovation leaders of the future, Suzhou's Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) co-founded its Academy of Pharmacy with the Suzhou Industrial Park government in 2020 'to help Suzhou transform into a world-class biopharmaceutical and healthcare capital'.


South China Morning Post
an hour ago
- South China Morning Post
US names 5 more Chinese industries for enforcement under Uygur labour law
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on Tuesday it is designating five new Chinese industry sectors, including copper, lithium and steel, for 'high priority' enforcement under a human rights law restricting imports from China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Advertisement Tuesday's updated list also names caustic soda – a chemical used in textiles and detergents – and red dates, bringing the total number of high-priority sectors targeted under the law to 12. The Uygur Forced Labour Prevention Act, which went into effect in 2022 , creates a 'rebuttable presumption' that all goods partially or wholly produced in Xinjiang are tainted by forced labour and therefore barred from being imported. It was expected to have far-reaching effects on global supply chains given Xinjiang's status as a manufacturing hub for goods ranging from agricultural staples such as cotton and tomatoes to sought-after materials like viscose and polysilicon 'America has a moral, economic and national security duty to eradicate threats that endanger our nation's prosperity, including unfair trade practices that disadvantage the American people and stifle our economic growth,' Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement. Advertisement 'The use of slave labour is repulsive and we will hold Chinese companies accountable for abuses and eliminate threats its forced labour practices pose to our prosperity,' she added.


South China Morning Post
3 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
US names five more Chinese industries for enforcement under Uygur labour law
The US Department of Homeland Security announced on Tuesday it is designating five new Chinese industry sectors, including copper, lithium and steel, for 'high priority' enforcement under a human rights law restricting imports from China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Advertisement Tuesday's updated list also names caustic soda – a chemical used in textiles and detergents – and red dates, bringing the total number of high-priority sectors targeted under the law to 12. 'America has a moral, economic and national security duty to eradicate threats that endanger our nation's prosperity, including unfair trade practices that disadvantage the American people and stifle our economic growth,' Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement. 'The use of slave labour is repulsive and we will hold Chinese companies accountable for abuses and eliminate threats its forced labour practices pose to our prosperity,' she added. Advertisement Beijing has repeatedly denied all allegations of forced labour in Xinjiang, lumping them together with US accusations of 'genocide' in the region as 'lies of the century'.