Frank Pitzer, general manager of Roche Diagnostics' factory in Suzhou, Jiangsu province When Frank Pitzer first visited China, in 2000, he could tell the country was developing rapidly by looking at the infrastructure being built. Two years ago, when he officially relocated to the country as general manager of Swiss healthcare giant Roche Diagnostics' new factory in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, development was still the theme, but with tremendous changes due to a new focus on research and development. Pitzer joined in the Suzhou project in October 2013. He flew regularly to China for preparatory work in 2015 and moved to the city in early 2016 to break ground on the project. He said the new position was exciting, because very few people have the privilege to build a factory from scratch. Roche Diagnostics Suzhou, the company's first production base in the Asia-Pacific region, is scheduled to roll out its first products for sale in Asia this year. The investment in the new factory, covering some 48,000 square meters in the 24-year-old China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park, was about 450 million Swiss francs ($472 million). When completed, it is expected to employ about 400 local people. In the long-run, production of 102 products for the Asian market, targeting metabolic, cardiovascular and hepatic diseases, among others, will be transferred from Germany to the Suzhou factory. Pitzer has established a five-person R&D team in Suzhou that is likely to expand. The facility is already cooperating with local universities and professors in other parts of the world in the hope of building up Roche's R&D strength in China. We want to make sure that the interests of Chinese patients will be better reflected within the global development framework, Pitzer said. He said he had noticed a significant improvement in the quality of Chinese academic studies and the output of China's universities over the past three years, laying a solid foundation for good R&D work. However, while innovation was happening in China, it was doing so in a spotty, uncoordinated manner, Pitzer said. But things will change given all the investments that China has made in universities and institutions, and in industries such as healthcare and life science. Former science and technology minister Wan Gang said early this year that China's investment in R&D last year rose 14 percent year-on-year to 1.76 trillion yuan ($279 billion) - which was 2.1 percent of the country's GDP. According to World Bank statistics, spending on R&D in the United States in 2015 equaled 2.8 percent of that country's GDP, compared with 2.9 percent in Germany and 3.3 percent in Japan. China should become one of the leading countries in terms of innovation, and grow into a major technology driving force worldwide by 2050, Wan said. While China may have begun focusing on innovation later than some other countries, Pitzer said there is no significant gap between China and those countries in terms of infrastructure and critical thinking. For science practitioners, critical thinking is vital, he said. I do see that among the employees in our facility. They can make their own decisions and apply knowledge when necessary. China is doing everything right. A lot of innovation will come from the country in the future. It won't take long. aa wristbands24 hour braceletsballer bands
China released regional rankings for its green development index on Tuesday, the first time the country has evaluated local performance based on environment-related indicators rather than speed of GDP growth.Analysts said the move will help the country achieve a more coordinated social, economic and environmental development.Beijing tops the overall green development rankings among 31 provinces and regions on the Chinese mainland, followed by Fujian, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Chongqing, according to results released by the National Bureau of Statistics. The Ningxia Hui, Tibet and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions round out the bottom three.The index covers seven major subindexes, including resource utilization, environmental governance, environmental quality, ecological protection, growth quality, green life and public satisfaction. Indicators such as total energy consumption, carbon emissions per unit of gross domestic product and total water consumption are included in the assessment system.The capital stands out in terms of environmental governance, quality of growth and green life, but it falls toward the bottom in terms of environmental quality.China has made more efforts to upgrade its growth model and improve its ecological system since 2013 and at the 19th CPC National Congress in October the leadership further called for attaching importance to the coordinated development of economic, social and environmental development and urged improvements to the country's economic and social development assessment system.The index will play an important role in improving the social and economic development assessment system and guide regions and departments to implement new development concepts and form better career performance concepts, said Ning Ji¬zhe, deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission."Ecological civilization construction is a long-term, tough systemic project and annual appraisals (of green development) will be standard in the future," said Ning, who also is head of the bureau of statistics.The public satisfaction sub-index, based on surveys by the bureau, includes 14 indicators, such as natural environment and local pollution and environmental management, said Jin Yongjin, an economist at Renmin University of China.The public satisfaction survey has been conducted seriously and thoroughly in all areas, he said. "So the results are reliable and persuasive."The move to survey public satisfaction is "down-to-earth" and "supported by the public", said Li Xiaoxi, an economist at Beijing Normal University.He said the green development index "can reflect the overall development of protections for ecological systems in China's provinces and regions"."It is a powerful measure for China to accomplish its green development strategy and provides a valuable basis for officials at all levels, especially provincial-level officials, to implement a green development strategy and the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20)."Local authorities have started to map out their own assessment rules to implement the central government's new policy.In Hainan, for example, the provincial government has released a new development assessment method that no longer includes GDP, industrial output or fixed-asset investment growth in assessing the performance of 12 out of 19 cities and counties in the province. Meanwhile, failure to meet ecological and environmental protection standards will be equal to a veto in assessment of local development, according to the new rule.
