ALL STEM CELLS

Taizhou plans to lead the world in both new and traditional Chinese medicine.

If local government leaders have their way, the name Taizhou will soon be synonymous with China’s Medical City (CMC), as it aspires to become the pharmaceutical and medical technology capital of Asia. Taizhou, even with a population of 5.08 million, is a third-tier city located in the country’s Jiangsu Province, on the northern bank of the Yangtze River.

Taizhou’s authorities highlighted both their progress and plans to become leaders in all things related to medicine at a presentation to the media on January 7. Lan Shaomin, Secretary of Taizhou’s Municipal Party Committee, described a “vigorously developing health industry,” with a stated goal that by 2020 the city will have built itself into a “world-famous medical center.”

At the same time, officials are working to establish the region as a medical tourism center for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), aimed at a domestic audience. Already, city planners and politicians have begun amassing a large number of multinational companies and foreign direct investment into the sprawling mass of buildings being constructed in and around the footprint of China’s Medical Hi-Tech Zone.

A modern metropolis

The actual campus of CMC is located across more than 120 square km, and is studded with massive, modern buildings that dwarfed its visitors. A full-scale model of the city boasted ecological areas along the Yangtze River Delta, health centers strategically located based on anticipated need, restaurants, hotels, post offices, churches and residential housing units.
All of it is being built and provided for the large amount of foreign and returning Chinese researchers that Taizhou’s officals hope to recruit.

“We have mostly domestic companies now but we hope that companies from foreign countries will come and join us soon, so we can become a big family,” said Fiona Wang, Deputy Director of international business development for the CMC. “We even have a museum and a children’s playground to enrich people’s lives after work,” she explained enthusiastically.

The CMC aims to have a local healthcare industry worth more than 100 billion yuan ($15.2 billion) and house 1,000 pharmaceutical enterprises over the next three to five years. In 2010, the city began hosting the China (Taizhou) International Medical Expo, which is now held each fall. What started as a local initiative has been upgraded into a national priority, receiving central funding to support its expansion.

“Our focus on healthcare is in part due to China’s aging population, and it is also a priority under China's next five-year plan." Wang told Beijing Review, referring to China’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20). “Taizhou has been chosen as a focus for biochemistry, biotech, and medical tourism and has developed over the last nine years into a national hi-tech zone.”

According to the CMC, it currently hosts more than 560 medical enterprises, including 12 vaccine companies, TCM and general medical universities, in addition to a children’s hospital. The range of medical projects in the works includes regenerative medicine, biotechnology, medical devices, and stem cell research.

The CMC staff and local officials alike spoke in earnest about their desire to recruit more foreign students to study at local universities, and were keen to draw attention to the prestigious university degrees held by the center’s resident researchers. See More : Magazine Beijing Review, Feb 4th, 2016

Source : Magazine Beijing Review, Feb 4th, 2016