Research follows factories to China

[n2doc]

Well, will the last person with a job please turn out the lights?


Research follows factories to China
Engineers and scientists are returning as the country's economy diversifies beyond manufacturing.
By Don Lee, Times Staff Writer
January 14, 2007

SHANGHAI — En Li left China in 1986, convinced that was the best way to become a world-class biologist.

The alternative was getting trained at poorly equipped Chinese labs or universities hollowed by the Cultural Revolution.

So the graduate of Peking University went to Boston and obtained a doctorate in biology from MIT. He joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School, teaching and doing cutting-edge research in genetics. Three years ago, Li was recruited by drug maker Novartis for its global lab in Cambridge, Mass.

But this spring, Li will move back here to head Novartis' newest research venture — a $100-million center that will eventually employ 400 scientists to pursue cures for infectious diseases and other ailments common among the Chinese.

"I want to do something significant for the people in China," said Li, 45, a soft-spoken man with streaks of gray through his hair. "It's exciting."

Li and other Chinese-born scientists working overseas are at the forefront of a new wave of foreign investment in China. After two decades of pouring billions of dollars into factories, a growing number of multinational companies like Novartis are establishing research beachheads in the Asian nation.

Eager to develop products for China's vast market and tap the nation's growing pool of engineers and scientists, dozens of corporations, including Hewlett-Packard Co., Siemens, Google Inc. and Johnson & Johnson, announced in recent months the opening of Chinese research and development facilities, mostly here and in Beijing.

By the time China's Ministry of Commerce compiles the statistics for 2006, it expects to see well over 800 research centers with foreign investors in the country, up from an estimated 100 six years earlier.

The ramp-up signals a new stage of economic development for the rising power, as it moves beyond its role as the global leader in the production of cheap toys, textiles and fur. Increasingly, Chinese exports are electronics, appliances and ships.

"The time that any foreign company can build factories and easily enjoy tax breaks is gone," said Mei Xinyu, a research analyst at the Ministry of Commerce. "Now China is making a choice among all these foreign investments, and those blood-and-sweat factories will not be welcomed anymore."

China's overall spending on research in 2006 has been estimated at $136 billion, up 20% from the previous year, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. About 16% of that is foreign-affiliated research spending, says Mario Cervantes, a senior economist at the Paris-based group.

The organization estimates R&D spending in the United States last year at $307 billion. But America's research expenditures, as a percentage of the nation's economic activity, slipped from 2.74% in 2000 to 2.68% in 2004, the latest figures available; China's increased from 0.9% to 1.23% during the same period.

The contrast in trends has heightened concerns about Washington's support for basic research and about American schools' competitiveness in math and science. It has also raised the specter of higher-paying jobs leaving for China, India and other emerging nations with cheaper costs.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-chiresearch14jan14,1,6075607,full.story

[Double T]

1. Additionally, many american corporations have established..........

substantial R & D facilities in India; the brain drain of america will continue thanks to corporate america's traitorous and insatiable greed.