From mobile communications to biotech, Chinese companies are demonstrating that they too can produce state-of-the-art products.
Kai Jiang has designed a technology that makes it easier for people to shop.
"Let's say I go out shopping and I want to buy Johnson and Johnson baby lotion," he says. "I can simply take a picture of the bottle's barcode with my mobile phone.
"The mobile phone recognises the barcode immediately and automatically sends a message to a central computer. The computer then conducts a search for all shops in the area carrying this lotion and what price they charge.
"It then sends the results back to my phone within five seconds, along with the address and phone number of each of the shops. So every time I shop, I can save money."
Bargain hunt
The technology was developed by Kai Jiang's Shanghai-based company, Kaible, in collaboration with two local universities.
All you need is a mobile phone capable of taking photographs and a small piece of software, which can be downloaded for free from the company's website.
Chinese consumers, who love to compare prices and are always searching for a good bargain, have taken to the idea.
The service, launched in February, is already attracting 10,000 users a day in Shanghai. And with 400 million mobile phone users in China, the company has plenty of room to grow.
Kai Jiang plans to take his idea overseas and has already registered five patents in China and the US.
"China is a huge market, so we'd like to focus on them right now, but in the next few years, we are looking for this service to benefit shoppers worldwide," he says.
Medical advances
Mobile telecommunications is the largest area of innovation in China's tech sector, but it is not the only one.
The team at the Sinovac biotechnology company in Beijing have successfully developed a combined vaccine for hepatitis A and B, only the second of its kind in the world.
Now they are working on developing a vaccine for bird flu - all using the company's own technology.
The company has managed to overcome a traditional lack of funding in China's biotech sector by listing on the US stock markets - first the Nasdaq bulletin board and, more recently, the American Stock Exchange.
Kaible's barcode-based system is proving popular
The money raised has allowed them to attract better scientists.
According to Joseph Cho of Pacific Epoch in Shanghai, "Out of 25 overseas companies that were listed on the Nasdaq last year, 11 of them were Chinese. Between 20 and 30 more are lining up to list this year."
Chinese tech firms are not only finding their funding overseas, they are also looking at selling to foreign markets.
Until now, Sinovac has focused on the Chinese market, where there is plenty of demand for its medicines. More people in China are infected with hepatitis than any other infectious disease.
However, the company has also begun to look at opportunities to sell its drugs overseas.
Sinovac's Managing Director, Weidong Lin, says: "We are in the process of registering our hepatitis drug in South-East Asia and South America and we will certainly supply the avian flu vaccine to Europe once clinical trials are over, if and when there is an outbreak."
Inward investment
Companies coming up with their own technology are still the exception rather than the rule in China.
But the fact that they exist at all is evidence that China is moving beyond straightforward imitation to innovation of its own.
At the same time, a growing number of multinationals are choosing to move their research and development operations to China.
On 28 February, Intel became the latest to open a vast new R&D facility, employing 1,000 engineers, with plans to double that number within the next few years.
Chinese scientists are better funded than they used to be
Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, General Electric, Unilever and telecommunications giant Alcatel are just a few of the firms that have established similar-scale operations in China within the last three years.
Scientists in China cost less than a third of their counterparts in the West.
"The researchers we have in Shanghai are generating patents at a higher rate than the rest of Alcatel," says Alcatel's chief technology officer for Asia Pacific, Vince Pizzica.
Gone are the days when China was only capable of low-end manufacturing. The Chinese are proving that they are capable of much more.
Source:BBC.
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