Skyscrapers of over 70 floors full of tiny apartments, luxury shops, crowded markets and, on the roofs, the illuminated signs of the world’s main banks. It is Hong Kong, one of the Asian megacities where capitalism is most developed. If an alien landed here, they would never say they were from a communist country like China. The former British colony, which still retains a certain autonomy from Beijing and continues to be one of its financial and commercial centres, is moving towards a new objective: to consolidate itself as the scientific capital of the Chinese giant.
“We ask the international community to support us,” summarizes Timothy Tong, a 73-year-old engineer from Hong Kong and director of the Shaw Awards Forum, which has just been held in the city. The event brought together 12 winners of these awards, considered i nobel from Asia; and 200 young researchers from 20 countries, including Spain, with the aim of strengthening international scientific collaboration. It is a showcase for Hong Kong science, Tong admits, but also for that of the rest of China.
In the event, to which EL PAÍS was invited, there is an air of the future mixed with echoes of the Cold War. China is already the world’s leading power in some fields of science, the United States is heading towards an unprecedented decline in this field, and Europe starts from the assumption that, if it wants to continue carrying out high-level research, it will have to collaborate much more with the unstoppable Asian giant; even if it means swallowing their political prejudices.
In 2019, Hong Kong was the scene of violent protests against the Beijing regime – “Hong Kong is not China”, shouted the demonstrators, imitating “Catalonia is not Spain” –. The uprising was repressed and the new national security laws have for now prevented any public protests with serious prison sentences. Now the message is that the city can be the gateway to China for Western scientists, to whom it offers astronomical salaries – a professor can earn around 14 thousand euros a month -, freedoms unthinkable in mainland China and ease of entry without a visa. What this enclave has always done with trade and capital flow, it wants to replicate with science and technology.
Wolfgang Baumeister has just received the Shaw of Life Sciences and Medicine for the development of cryo-electron tomography, a revolutionary technique that allows us to see molecules atom by atom and which represents the next frontier in the knowledge of biology and diseases. For a few years, this professor emeritus of the Max Planck Institute in Germany has continued to work at the Shanghai Tech University, created in 2013 by the Shanghai City Council and the National Academy of Sciences, the highest Chinese scientific body, politically controlled by the Communist Party. Baumeister explains very clearly why he works in China. “In a 10-minute conversation with the rector you can get a new microscope worth more than 10 million euros,” he says in a meeting with journalists.
China is already the country in the world with the largest number of cryo-electron tomography microscopes, 40 out of a total of 80, far ahead of the United States and Europe, underlines the eighty-year-old German molecular biologist. “Even in China I have no limits within which I can retire and the authorities force me to spend only 100 days a year in the country.” The scientist assures that it is increasingly difficult to maintain these collaborations, especially for American scientists. If they receive funding from their government, they cannot cooperate with China. “It is clear that science is no longer a borderless activity,” he warns.
The Shaw Awards were created in 2004 by Run Run Shaw, an adopted Hong Konger who amassed one of the city’s largest fortunes making musicals and kung fu films at the world’s third-largest studios after Hollywood and Bollywood. “My favorite movies are the ones that gross a lot at the box office,” the mogul said, according to his obituary in The New York Times in 2014. Before dying at the age of 106, Shaw donated much of his money to education and health projects and to finance the three annual prizes in medicine, astronomy and mathematics, worth one million euros each, and which are considered a prelude to the Nobel Prize.
The German astronomer Reinhard Genzel, winner of the Shaw in 2008 and the Nobel Prize in 2013 for the discovery of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, knows this well. Today he is more interested in politics than research. “It is clear that the United States is falling apart; its president is destroying everything that has made America great.” This “critical” situation can have a positive side: “Europe has always been better than the United States at collaborating,” he explains. “There is no doubt that there will be more collaboration with China, the question is whether the country’s government will seek its own victory or accept to be part of a larger goal, even if it means losing recognition,” he adds.
The only woman – and the only Spaniard – among the 12 winners of the forum this year is Madrid-based biophysicist Eva Nogales. The scientist has worked in the United States for half her life and is now starting to see the consequences of the current blockade policy. Like other scientists in the United States, the country’s authorities have let her come, but she cannot bring her computer with her to avoid being attacked or spied on by China. “In my field, cryogenic electron microscopy, China is ahead of everyone else. They have very good scientists, enormous resources, they take considerable risks and are pursuing the most ambitious projects,” acknowledges the 2023 Shaw in Medicine winner.
Astronomer Simon White is a foreign member of the powerful Chinese National Academy of Sciences. This director emeritus of the Max Planck Institute was a pioneer in establishing collaborations with the Asian country in the late 1980s, and saw it go from underdevelopment to global dominance. “This country has already surpassed the United States as the world’s leading producer of scientific studies, and it is only a matter of time before it also becomes a leader in terms of quality,” the researcher emphasizes. After decades of collaboration, White says German immigration authorities are making it increasingly difficult for students from the Asian giant to travel to the country to train due to new laws on strategic technologies. Global geopolitics puts Europe in an advantageous situation in its relations with its Chinese brother, “but if we put up barriers, we will not take advantage of it,” he warns.
One of the most evident proofs of the new Chinese dominance is the gigantic FAST radio telescope, of a power unattainable by any Western structure. Thanks to this investment, China already dominates several sectors of radio astronomy, emphasizes Mathew Bailes, Shaw of astronomy in 2023. The scientist emphasizes that the quality of Chinese and Western studies and researchers in many fields is already indistinguishable. But a big difference emerges. “In the West we advance by questioning the ideas of our elders. In China there is still resistance to a young student proclaiming, ‘Professor, you are wrong,’ even though that is the case.” It will be “interesting” to see if now that China is already at the level of investments and talents this cultural issue will also change, adventure.
This newspaper visited four of the 30 new research centers opened by the Hong Kong government since 2020, after an investment of over 1,000 million euros, very considerable for an autonomous city of seven and a half million inhabitants and the size of the city of Córdoba. The feeling among some of them is that of seeing what the medicine of the future will be like.
At the HKCEND center specializing in neurodegenerative diseases, they are creating one of the largest biobanks with samples from thousands of Hong Kongers whose blood is analyzed and who are assigned an Alzheimer’s risk score based on dozens of biochemical markers. The goal is to be able to anticipate the diagnosis by approximately 10 years and reduce the progression of the disease with the new drugs available.
Furthermore, several molecules are being developed that could treat the disease by modulating the reaction of the immune system. “More than curing Alzheimer’s, which we still don’t know if it’s possible, given that we don’t know the true causes of the disease,” explains Kin Ying Mok, medical director of HKCEND, “what we’re looking for is to be able to arrive so early that people don’t completely develop the worst symptoms of the disease.” The centre, with an annual budget of 10 million euros, also creates replicas of human brains with functioning neurons to test the effectiveness of its molecules. Here Western eminences such as John Hardy, of University College London, or the Swiss Tony Wyss-Coray, of Stanford University, one of the leading experts on blood proteins linked to aging, are on the payroll.
In the same technology park, another research center is developing new surgical robots to test on human cadavers donated to science. One of the main objectives is to create devices equipped with a third arm – camera, scalpel and forceps, incorporated into a single catheter – so that they are able to lift the tissues and eliminate the entire area affected by gastric tumors, which are increasingly widespread in China and other countries. This center is also working on the development of capsules containing millions of nanorobots that would be introduced into the patient and guided from the outside by a magnetic device. In animal studies they have already demonstrated effectiveness in dissolving clots in the arteries. Once the work is done, the robots return to the capsule and are extracted. Part of the technical team of this center is Lord Ara Darzi, professor at Imperial College London and a world reference in minimally invasive surgery. One of the institute’s most recent milestones is having tested robotic surgery on a sow, performed in unison by Shanghai, Hong Kong and London. In the coming years these robots could bring the most advanced medicine even to remote areas.
A third center specializes in the development of new drugs extracted from traditional Chinese medicine remedies. The big goal here is to convince the world’s medical agencies to approve the first compound of its kind, which would represent a major reclamation of this traditional knowledge that has been in use for 2000 years, but which currently has no scientific support.
At the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the goal is to do more with less. US-trained astronomer Yan Renbin is developing AMASE, a new telescope that aims to be the largest in its class in the world, and which relies on the use of many low-cost lenses not unlike those of a professional camera. His colleague Li Huabai is finalizing an instrument he plans to install on the Greenland Telescope, which will be located at the highest point of the Arctic island.
“In addition to finance and small sums (a typical dish), we do excellent science,” emphasizes Cheng Shuk Han, director of one of Hong Kong’s largest research and development centers. Even though the city is not going through its best economic moment, and neither is China, the island’s government is increasingly committed to science and innovation, he points out. “Our message is for everyone, regardless of nationality: if you are good, come.”
