Future industries spur China's economic engine

BEIJING — A group of Chinese researchers has created a gene target therapy drug for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

SineuGene Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company, successfully completed a clinical drug delivery attempt of adeno-associated virus vector gene therapy for ALS.

The company's co-founder and CEO Peng Lin acknowledged that treating ALS is a worldwide challenge.

"Based on the basic research achievements in neuroscience of the Tsinghua University School of Medicine, we developed the drug and completed the transformation of the research result within two years."

The company is currently promoting the drug to patients with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.

Cell and gene therapy is a potential future business for Beijing.

The city has released an implementation plan for establishing a world-leading source of future industries.

The implementation strategy focuses on six fields — information, health, manufacturing, energy, materials and space.

The added value of Beijing's strategic emerging industries in 2021 was 996.16 billion yuan ($139.2 billion), a 14 percent increase year-on-year.

Beijing's story is an example of China's efforts to foster new development engines by actively developing emerging industries and future industries.

In 2021, "future industries" was included in China's Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) for National Economic and Social Development and Vision 2035.

At present, seven provinces and municipalities as well as more than 20 prefecture-level cities nationwide have issued more than 30 policy documents relevant to future industries.

According to Jiang Jiang, an official with the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research, the main composition of China's future industries is cutting-edge technologies such as new energy, artificial intelligence, biological manufacturing, low-carbon, and quantum computing, along with a large number of new business forms, new models and new industries derived from their applications.

In recent years, South China's Shenzhen has promoted the development of basic research platforms to aid in studies pertaining to brain science, precision medicine imaging, supercomputing, free electron laser, synchrotron radiation light source and material genome.

Last year, the city announced a policy to boost critical emerging industries and foster future industries.

Shenzhen-based BYD announced the production of its 6 millionth new energy vehicle on Nov 24.

In the first three quarters of 2023, the output of NEVs in Shenzhen increased by 125.8 percent, official data revealed.

The added value of Shenzhen's strategic emerging industries reached 1.04 trillion yuan in the first three quarters of 2023, up 14 percent year-on-year, and accounted for 42.5 percent of the GDP, up from 37.7 percent in 2019.

Strategic emerging industries have been the driving engine behind Shenzhen's high-quality development.

Since the beginning of 2023, China has continued to increase its support for future industries.

China has already met the preliminary criteria for developing future industries, said Pan Jiaofeng, president of the Institutes of Science and Development under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Pan said that the country has a relatively excellent industrial system, rapidly increasing research and development investment, a diverse and huge market, qualified talent and local initiatives.

Xinhua