A Place to Stand

Nanotechnology and nano-bio-info-cogno converging technologies are becoming more and more the decisive factor of the race between regions and nations to win the future markets and society's wealth and political stability. The development shows that five nations are leading the competition today. China, as one of these five nations, has its unique advantage of high flexibilty, low labour costs, no barriers for new technologies, young and vibrant society, large amount of foreign venture capital, underestimated currency (today about 25 percent undervalue compared with the US Dollar), low taxes, goverment support and a home market with more than 1.3 billion people for applications.

China has a lot of comparative advantages in nanotechnology research:
Early starting in nanotechnology, China is among one of the few countries who has begun to explore nanotechnology since 1990s; a large and highly competent research team, with scientists trained in US, Europe and Japan, Some of which are leaders in their fields worldwide; a research and development network of three national centers and over 20 university institutes in nanotechnology; rich of several important mineral and biological resources which are important for developing nanomaterials; very competent, even leading, in the fields of nanomaterial research and application, tunnel microscopes, single atom operation etc; a huge domestic market, ideal for the growth of enterprises.

GM & Nanothechnology are closely related fields. GM is altering already existing reproducing molecules (ie DNA) while nanotech is starting from scratch.

Although millions of acres have been planted with GM crops & hundreds of millions of people eaten it there is no evidence whatsoever of anybody having suffering medical harm. However the Precautionary Principle which basically asserts that nothing new should ever be done, is strangling any progress here.

"Better 50 years of Europe," trumpeted Lord Tennyson, "than a cycle of Cathay." but that was then.