Abstract:Three decades after introducing market reforms and opening up to the rest of the world, China has become a major economic power. As the country prepares to show the world its sporting might, its competitiveness in life sciences may still need a boost.

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As the 2008 Summer Olympic Games kick off on August 8 in Beijing, China is aiming to surpass the United States to win the most gold medals (http://en.beijing2008.cn/). China's Olympian prowess may have paralleled its rapid economic growth, but the country still needs to boost its competitiveness in the life sciences. It is more than 30 years since the end of the disastrous Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), when all educated Chinese were sent into the fields to be “re-educated.” Since that dark era, China has made great strides forward in many aspects, including science and education. For example, the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC)—the country's primary funding source for basic research—saw its budget grow by an average annual rate of 22% since its founding in 1986, reaching $786 million this year. There are also signs that the brain drain of talented Chinese scientists primarily to the US may be reversing. Indeed, several top expatriate scientists such as neuroscientist Yi Rao of Northwestern University in Chicago and structural biologist Yigong Shi of Princeton University have given up their tenured posts in the US and have returned to lead the School of Life Sciences at Beijing (Peking) University and Qinghua (Tsinghua) University, respectively. Last year, perhaps to signal its commitment to medicine and life sciences, the Chinese government appointed a non-Party member, physician-scientist Zhu Chen, as the country's new health minister. “I tell my students in the US, this is the time to come back,” says Xiongli Yang, a senior neuroscientist at Fudan University in Shanghai. However, leading Chinese scientists including those who have recently returned say there are still many challenges to be overcome before life sciences research in China can compete internationally, including a shortage of postdocs and systemic problems with the allocation of funding and the evaluation of research.