Last April, as the world fell to Covid-19, one Chinese company was there to offer a helping hand: BGI. But the line between the biotech giant and Beijing is increasingly blurry.
Listen to SupChina editor-at-large and Sinica podcast host Kaiser Kuo read this article.
On January 25, 2020, as the city of Wuhan headed into the world’s first Covid-19 lockdown, the Chinese billionaire Wang Jian arrived on one of the last incoming trains. Flanked by a small entourage of younger scientists, Wang exited the station wearing a mask, a light puffy jacket and a backpack. Thousands were fleeing the river port metropolis. But Wang came ready to work.
During the SARS epidemic in 2003, the now 66-year-old geneticist had been similarly proactive, repeatedly flying to the outbreak’s epicenter in Guangdong Province to petition authorities to allow his young bioscience firm, the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), to sequence the deadly respiratory virus’s genome. Wang’s requests were denied until the last moment, after SARS reached Canada and scientists there became the first to sequence it — a national embarrassment for a rising China. BGI eventually sequ
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Increasingly, Democrats and Republicans believe that climate change and China pose a single interconnected challenge. As a result — and for the first time ever — a window is opening for bipartisan cooperation on climate policy. Historically progressive ideas like a 'carbon border adjustment mechanism' now have conservative champions, for instance. But with Washington's main focus on the Warming War with China, can it still save the planet?
A look at China’s electricity grid: how it works, who foots the bill, and how its structure leads to power crunches and expensive prices despite the relative abundance of energy in China.
The academic talks about the changing understanding of Leninist regimes; common misperceptions of the post-Mao era; and what the collapse of the Soviet Union means for China today.
