The skyscrapers, 70 tales excessive, are stuffed with tiny residences. The streets are full of high-end outlets and bustling markets. On the rooftops, the neon indicators of the world’s main banks are perched. This is Hong Kong, one of Asia’s megacities, the place capitalism is late-stage. If an alien have been to land right here, it will by no means guess that the place belonged to a communist nation like China. And in the present day, the former British colony — which nonetheless maintains a level of autonomy from Beijing and stays one of the nation’s monetary and industrial epicenters — is shifting towards a brand new aim: to consolidate itself as the scientific capital of China.
“We’re asking the international community for its support,” sums up Timothy Tong, a 73-year-old Hongkongese engineer who is additionally chairman of the Hong Kong Laureate Forum, which was held in early November to award the Shaw Prize, thought-about to be the Nobel Prizes of Asia. The occasion introduced collectively 12 earlier winners, in addition to 200 younger researchers from 20 nations, with the purpose of strengthening worldwide scientific collaboration. It’s a showcase for Hong Kong’s science sector, Tong acknowledges, in addition to for the relaxation of China.
At the occasion, to which EL PAÍS was invited, there was an air of the future, combined with echoes of the Cold War. China is already the world’s main energy in some scientific fields of analysis, the United States is hurtling towards an unprecedented decline on this space, and Europe is realizing that, if it desires to proceed conducting world-class analysis, it must cooperate far more with the unstoppable Asian large, even when meaning swallowing its political prejudices.
In 2019, Hong Kong skilled violent protests in opposition to the Beijing regime. “Hong Kong is not China,” the demonstrators chanted. The rebellion was in the end crushed. And new nationwide safety legal guidelines have (for now) prevented any public protests, with the risk of extreme jail sentences.
Today, the message is that the metropolis will be the gateway to China for Western scientists, providing them astronomical salaries (a professor can earn round $14,000 a month), a stage of freedom that’s unthinkable in mainland China, in addition to straightforward visa-free entry. The enclave has all the time succeeded with commerce and capital flows. It now desires to duplicate this success in the area of science and expertise.
Wolfgang Baumeister has simply acquired the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine for the growth of cryo-electron tomography. This revolutionary method permits scientists to see molecules atom by atom; it’s the subsequent frontier in understanding biology and illness. For a number of years now, this emeritus professor from the Max Planck Institute in Germany has continued working at Shanghai Tech University, which was established in 2013 by the Shanghai municipality and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is the nation’s top scientific physique and is politically managed by the Communist Party.
Baumeister is very clear about why he chooses to work in China. “In a 10-minute conversation with the rector, you can get a new microscope worth more than €10 million,” he asserts, in a gathering with journalists. China already has the most electron tomography microscopes in the world: 40 out of a complete of 80. The Asian large is far forward of the United States and Europe.
The 80-year-old German molecular biologist explains: “In China, I also have no retirement age. And the authorities only require me to spend 100 days a year in the country.” The scientist maintains that issues have gotten more and more troublesome for sustaining these collaborations, particularly for American scientists. If they’ve authorities funding, they can not companion with Chinese establishments. “It’s clear that science is no longer an activity without borders,” he warns.
The Shaw Prize Foundation was established in 2002 by Run Run Shaw, a Hong Kong resident (by selection) who amassed one of the metropolis’s biggest fortunes. He produced musicals and kung fu movies for the world’s third-largest movie studios after Hollywood and Bollywood. “I particularly like movies that make money,” the tycoon as soon as replied, after being requested what his favourite movies have been. This quote was included in his obituary, which was revealed in The New York Times upon his dying in 2014.
Before his dying at the age of 106, Shaw donated a good portion of his wealth to academic and medical tasks, in addition to to fund the three annual Shaw prizes in medication, astronomy and arithmetic, which are sometimes thought-about to foreshadow some of the Nobel Prizes.
This is one thing that German astronomer Reinhard Genzel is aware of very properly. He was the winner of the Shaw Prize in 2008 and the Nobel Prize in 2013 for locating the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy, the Milky Way. These days, nevertheless, he’s extra involved with politics than with analysis. “It’s clear that the United States is falling apart; its president is destroying everything that made America great.” And but, this “critical” scenario could have a silver lining: “Europe has always been better than the United States at [partnering with others],” he explains. “There’s no doubt that there will be more collaboration with China; the question is whether the Chinese government will seek its own triumph, or accept being part of a broader objective even if this means losing recognition,” he provides.
The solely lady amongst the 12 award recipients who have been current at the latest discussion board was Eva Nogales, a biophysicist from Madrid, who has spent half her life working in the United States. She’s now starting to see the penalties of the present geopolitical scenario. Like different U.S.-based scientists, the American authorities allowed her to go to Hong Kong, however she couldn’t deliver her laptop. The reasoning for this was to forestall it from being attacked or spied on by China. “In my field, cryogenic electron microscopy, China is ahead of everyone else. They have excellent scientists [and] enormous resources… they take considerable risks and they’re carrying out the most ambitious projects,” she emphasizes.
Astronomer Simon White is a overseas member of the highly effective Chinese Academy of Sciences. This director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute pioneered tutorial collaborations with the Asian nation in the late Eighties. He has since witnessed its rise from underdevelopment to international dominance. “China has already overtaken the United States as the world’s leading producer of scientific studies. It’s only a matter of time before it also leads in quality,” the researcher notes.
After many years of collaboration, White says that German immigration authorities are making it more and more troublesome for Chinese college students to review in the nation, as a result of new legal guidelines on strategic applied sciences. Global geopolitics places Europe in an advantageous place in its relationship with China, “but if we put up barriers, we won’t take advantage of it,” he warns.
One of the most putting examples of China’s new dominance is the gigantic Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), which has an influence that’s unattainable by any Western facility. Mathew Bailes, who was awarded the 2023 Shaw Prize in Astronomy, says that, due to this funding, China already dominates a number of areas of radio astronomy. The scientist factors out that the high quality of Chinese and Western research and researchers in lots of fields is now indistinguishable. But he does spotlight one main distinction. “In the West, we advance by questioning the ideas of our elders. In China, there’s still resistance to a young student proclaiming, ‘Professor, you’re wrong’ – even if they are.” He ventures that will probably be attention-grabbing to see if this cultural subject finally ends up altering, now that China is at the similar stage of funding and expertise as the U.S.
EL PAÍS visited 4 of the 30 new analysis facilities opened by the Hong Kong authorities since 2020, following an funding of over $1 billion. This is a substantial sum for an autonomous metropolis of seven and a half million inhabitants.
In some of these analysis facilities, there’s a sense that one is witnessing the future of medication. For occasion, at the heart specializing in neurodegenerative ailments, researchers are creating one of the largest biobanks, with samples from 1000’s of Hong Kong residents. Their blood is analyzed and, subsequently, they’re given an Alzheimer’s risk rating, primarily based on dozens of biochemical markers. The aim is to advance prognosis by about 10 years and gradual the development of the illness with new medicine.
Furthermore, scientists at the heart are creating a number of molecules that might deal with the illness by modulating the immune system’s response. “[This is being done in lieu of] curing Alzheimer’s, since we still don’t understand the true causes of the disease,” explains Dr. Kin Ying Mok, chief doctor at the Hong Kong Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (HKCeND). “What we’re aiming for is to intervene so early on that people don’t fully develop the worst symptoms of the disease.”
The heart, with an annual funds of over $10 million, additionally creates replicas of human brains with functional neurons, so as to take a look at the effectiveness of its molecules. Staff members embody main Western consultants, reminiscent of John Hardy of University College London and Swiss scientist Tony Wyss-Coray, from Stanford University. Wyss-Coray is one of the foremost consultants on blood proteins which can be related to ageing.
In the similar expertise park, one other analysis heart is creating new surgical robots which can be being examined on human cadavers, which have been donated to science. One of the predominant aims is to create gadgets with a 3rd arm — together with digital camera, scalpel and forceps, built-in right into a single catheter — so the robots can carry tissue and take away total areas affected by gastric tumors, that are more and more prevalent in China and different nations.
This heart is additionally engaged on creating capsules which include hundreds of thousands of nanorobots. These can be inserted right into a affected person and guided externally by a magnetic machine. In animal research, these have already demonstrated effectiveness in relation to dissolving clots in arteries. Once the process is full, the nanorobots return to the capsule and are extracted.
The technical workforce at this heart consists of Lord Ara Darzi, a professor at Imperial College London and a world-renowned professional in minimally-invasive surgical procedure. One of the institute’s most up-to-date milestones is having efficiently examined robotic surgical procedure on a pig: the process was carried out concurrently from Shanghai, Hong Kong and London. In the coming years, these robots may deliver cutting-edge medication to distant areas.
A 3rd heart makes a speciality of creating new medicine derived from conventional Chinese medication. The predominant aim right here is to get international drug companies to approve the first compound of this type. Such a transfer would vindicate a type of conventional data that has been in use for two,000 years however at the moment lacks scientific backing.
At the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the purpose is to do extra with much less. American-trained astronomer Renbin Yan is creating the Affordable Multiple Aperture Spectroscopy Explorer (AMASE), a brand new telescope supposed to have the world’s largest protection of its form. It’s primarily based on the use of many low-cost lenses, not in contrast to these in an expert digital camera. Meanwhile, his colleague, Li Huabai, is finalizing an instrument that he plans to put in on the Greenland Telescope, which will probably be deployed to the highest level of the Arctic island.
“Besides finance and dim sum, we do excellent science,” Cheng Shuk Han chuckles. She’s the director of one of Hong Kong’s largest analysis and growth facilities. And regardless that the metropolis isn’t at the moment experiencing its greatest financial interval (nor is China), she factors out that the island’s authorities is nonetheless investing closely in science and innovation. “Our message is for everyone, regardless of nationality: if you’re good, come.”
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