“During the lockdowns, I felt very lonely for the first time in my life. I realised I might be single forever and needed to plan my life. Even if I don’t find a partner, I am sure I want to have a child,” said the 34-year-old tech worker from Shenzhen, one of many women to head to a clinic in the Chinese territory in search of fertility treatment.

Single mothers have long been stigmatised in Chinese culture and by a communist party keen to promote the nuclear family. Until recently, single mothers were unable to include their children in their household registration, a critical step to unlocking access to benefits.

The Instagram-like Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu is filled with recommendations for the best clinics in the city. There are about 20 licensed fertility clinics in Hong Kong.

One administrator at a Hong Kong fertility clinic targeting mainland clients said they had seen a surge in demand after Beijing shed its border controls. Appointments are booked for next month, and the administrator said the “wait could be even longer as we’re seeing an uptick in appointments”.

Hong Kong fertility clinics charge between HK$80,000 and HK$100,000 (US$10,000-US$13,000) for one round of egg freezing. IVF success rates vary widely according to age. About one-third of women under the age of 35 become pregnant after IVF, according to UK figures. Lord added that egg freezing was not a “fail-safe option” since it is “more difficult to get pregnant with a frozen egg”.

While it is possible for single or gay women to freeze their eggs in Hong Kong, only married heterosexual couples can access IVF treatment. In practice, that means eggs are stored until women get married and begin the IVF process.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Eleanor Olcott

They range from clear duplication — the same images of cell cultures on microscope slides copied across numerous, unrelated studies — to more subtle tinkering. Sometimes an image is rotated “to try to trick you to think it’s different”, Chesebro says. “At times you can detect where parts of an image were digitally manipulated to add or remove cells or other features to make the data look like the results you are expecting in the hypothesis.” He estimates he rejects 5 to 10 per cent of papers because of fraudulent data or ethical issues.

The soaring output has sparked concern in western capitals. Chinese advances in high-profile fields such as quantum technology, genomics and space science, as well as Beijing’s surprise hypersonic missile test two years ago, have amplified the view that China is marching towards its goal of achieving global hegemony in science and technology.

The problem is that no publisher — even the most vigilant — has the capacity to weed out all the frauds. Retractions are rare and can take years. In the meantime scientists may be building on a fake paper’s findings. In the biomedical sphere this is all the more worrying when the aim of a lot of research is the development of treatments for serious diseases.

 . . . but they share a lot of features that have simply been mirrored

‘Sea turtle’ backlash

The scrutiny of fake Chinese research has exacerbated the mistrust between western and Chinese academic institutions, which was already growing as a consequence of fraying geopolitical relations — and allegations that researchers from China are using their time in overseas labs to steal intellectual property.

“In view of the increasing geopolitical tensions, we are conducting background checks [of applicants from China] in relation to our grants and other activities, whenever and wherever this is relevant,” says Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, chief executive of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, one of Denmark’s largest funders of academic research. “We do this based on recommendations from the authorities and in collaboration with our grant recipients.”

China has swiftly and indisputably become the world leader in the commercialisation of research as measured by patents. The World Intellectual Property Organization says the country’s patent office received 1.6mn applications in 2021, compared to 600,000 for its US counterpart.

Such activity has unsettled western governments, who have erected barriers for many Chinese science and tech researchers coming to their universities, fearing that these academic exchanges have contributed to the country’s rapid global ascension. Several Chinese researchers in the US have been arrested under suspicion of leaking intellectual property to China under a Donald Trump-era programme to root out economic espionage.

“Some of the growing hostility and suspicion [in the west] is around legitimate areas of concern, some of it is paranoid and daft,” says James Wilsdon, professor of research policy at University College London. “But there are now many examples of Chinese science and technology espionage and dodgy practices.”

As countries that have been “big contributors to the growth of collaborative science” decelerate their engagement, the prospects for China’s research output “are far more uncertain” than they have been in the recent past, Wilsdon adds.

In China, academics with international training are most likely to be published in leading publications. Qingnan Xie, an intellectual property expert at Harvard University, found that 76 per cent of articles published in the Nature and Science journals from Chinese addresses had an author who had studied overseas before returning to the mainland.

The culture [in China] is more one of systematic thinking building on other research, whereas the west tends to applaud individualism

Beijing has bankrolled the massive outbound movement of science graduates to study in universities from Tokyo to San Francisco and London through scholarships and grants, providing incentives to return to the mainland once they’ve completed their education.

This so-called “sea turtle” strategy is one pillar in a broader policy to develop an indigenous scientific and technological power base. It has “fostered international collaboration and lifted standards in China”, says Steven Inchcoombe, president for research at Springer Nature.

As geopolitical tensions erode the trust needed to keep collaborative ventures alive, scientists say both sides are set to lose out. For many labs worldwide, Chinese researchers are a crucial source of labour to participate in large-scale experiments. Western researchers benefit from access to cheap and well-educated Chinese PhD students who can help bolster their findings by running experiments.

“China is very good at application and refinement,” says Inchcoombe. “But the culture is more one of systematic thinking building on other research, whereas the west tends to applaud individualism. China doesn’t seem to see the need for standout heroes in the same way.”

The physics lecturer in Beijing makes a similar point. “American or British scientists tend to have breakthrough ideas and do truly innovative research,” he says. “Chinese are quick learners. They help to find evidence and make the framework more solid.” 

Carsten Fink, chief economist at the World Intellectual Property Organization, says Chinese innovation is strikingly successful when researchers are able to “leapfrog” over existing technology into a new field. One example is Beijing’s strategy of focusing investment on electric vehicle production rather than the already saturated combustion engine market. Another is the country’s domination of global solar panel production.

Jonathan Adams, chief scientist at ISI, points out that China’s international collaborations are “strongly biased towards physical sciences: information and communication sciences, materials and areas like that — and particularly so in the US. In some areas of US research, 80 per cent of publications have a China address for a co-author.”

Discovering the extent of Chinese involvement in US research had come as “a complete surprise” to some American policymakers, Adams says. “They were quite unaware of how far Chinese research had moved to underpin what they were doing. The most highly cited US-authored research in a lot of these technology areas is co-authored with China.”

Advocates for science in the US are working to ensure that collaboration with China does not collapse completely. “Our culture of science is a beacon for Chinese scientists,” says Sudip Parikh, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “They help to enrich our economy and our labs. These intellectual relationships matter and it is important that we don’t lose the big picture of the benefits of international collaboration.”

If scientific ties with the west break down, the individuals who will suffer most are diligent Chinese academics, as an atmosphere of distrust and the country’s reputation for fraudulent research make it more difficult for them to gain international recognition.

“The worst impact is on sincere Chinese researchers,” says Bimler. “There is enough junk coming from China that researchers privately admit that they don’t read papers if they’re from a Chinese source . . . Scientists don’t have time to determine what is junk and what isn’t.” 

Additional reporting by Xueqiao Wang in Shanghai

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Eleanor Olcott

President Xiomara Castro announced on Twitter on Tuesday that she had instructed officials to open official relations with China, which would involve the central American country cutting off ties with Taiwan.

Next month, Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen is expected to meet US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California — rather than in Taipei, as the Republican had initially sought, out of concern over provoking a harsh military response from Beijing. Tsai will also make stops in Guatemala and Belize, two of Taiwan’s remaining allies.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Eleanor Olcott

CanSino was in the middle of rolling out an inhaled version of a coronavirus vaccine when China shed lockdown restrictions in early December. The vaccine had received emergency approval, adding to the existing dozen domestic vaccines serving the Chinese population.

Beijing has refused to import BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA jabs for its domestic population, despite research showing they provide higher level and more long-lasting protection than the widely used inactivated vaccines made by China’s Sinopharm and Sinovac.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Eleanor Olcott

Once praised by President Xi Jinping for having “braved hardships and courageously persevered” in the face of the pandemic, workers such as Liu were left jobless, disillusioned, and angry by the abrupt end of China’s zero-Covid policy last month.

“The opening was very sudden,” said Liu, who now works as a delivery courier in the capital. “We all found out through the media.”

“Pre-Covid, a quarter of all jobs in China were in accommodation, catering, retail and tourism,” he said. “The recovery here will relieve a lot of labour market pressure.”

Many volunteers and medical workers have been able to more easily transition into other jobs. “Other people working at our booths were simply reabsorbed into hospital jobs,” said a nurse working at a testing booth at Beijing Children’s Hospital.

But even those with medical training were affected by the sudden end of the zero-Covid.

Yajie, a 21-year-old medical student who spent two months working for the local health commission of Lu’an, a city of 4mn in Anhui province, received a subsidy of Rmb100 per day as well as room and board. But she said working as a dabai had set back her medical career.

“Because of [our work] fighting the epidemic, my classmates and I missed our opportunity to do internships”, she said. After the restrictions ended, she added, “none of us ever received a formal volunteer certificate or recognition. No one remembers us.”

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Eleanor Olcott

“By the time I realised my mother had Covid, it had been two days since she had eaten or drunk anything,” she said.

Relatives in Shanghai rushed to send antiviral drugs by post after the local hospital and clinic ran out of supplies, but when the medicine arrived, Wu’s mother had already tested negative.

China’s failure to build robust defences in preparation for an inevitable Covid exit wave has created a legitimacy crisis for President Xi Jinping and his flagship zero-Covid policy.

“They have three years to prepare for this,” said one Shanghai-based pharmaceutical industry insider. “They didn’t have the right vaccines or the sufficient supply of drugs to cope with the case surge.”

As cases rise across China, for Wu’s mother, the recovery from Covid has proved long and painful.

She suffered a brain bleed, her daughter said, and there were still shadows on her lung scan. But since medical guidelines recommend patients take antiviral drugs within five days of infection, they did not use the medication they had.

“We wanted to use antivirals,” Wu said, “but don’t dare to”.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Eleanor Olcott

The 15-year-old’s grades had deteriorated markedly after weeks of trying to take classes on a smartphone with patchy internet in a crowded house while being cared for by ageing grandparents. His parents were 750km away in Lhasa, the capital, working.

“It was very difficult to concentrate during the lockdown. My three younger siblings were also taking classes in a noisy house,” he says, sitting next to baskets of dried fungi and herbal medicines, which are his village’s main trade.

She adds that there is also a sense of exhaustion among much of China’s middle class, dashing hopes of an economic recovery based on pent-up consumer demand.

“We’re going to enter a very long phase of stagnation of the Chinese economy. For me, that’s the biggest fear,” Yu says, adding that the resulting inequality appears to be “very Dickensian”. 

Fu says that ultimately Xi’s zero-Covid policy has put on the line a fundamental pillar of the party’s legitimacy: the promise of a basic living standard for Chinese citizens.

“The party’s social contract with 1.4bn people is that it would provide for needs such as jobs, housing, food and security in exchange for popular support of its rule and acceptance of limitations on political rights,” she says. “To the extent that these basic social rights have been taken away during the pandemic, this poses a legitimacy dilemma for Beijing.”

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Eleanor Olcott

Experts have warned that the situation will deteriorate as the virus spreads from China’s big cities to rural areas with more precarious healthcare systems, as the country struggles with one of the world’s biggest Covid outbreaks.

“We can work hard, we can work overtime, but at the end of the day, medical staff, like others, are made of flesh, not iron,” said a Beijing-based doctor surnamed Ning. “No matter how dedicated we are, we have physical and mental limits.”

Xu tested positive but was asked to continue working. “More than half of the medical workers are sick but each hour more patients come here for treatment. [We] have no choice but to carry on working.”

The Beijing-based doctor Ning said one of the most stressful aspects for medical staff was that they were being blamed by the public for the difficult situation, with videos online accusing doctors of not treating Covid patients in a proper or timely manner.

He also felt guilty and worried about the legal risks of working while infected because of the danger of exposing vulnerable patients to Covid.

“No matter which path we choose, medical staff are the frontier fighters taking the blow,” he said.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Eleanor Olcott

The majority of the Chinese population has been vaccinated with the inactivated Sinovac and Sinopharm jabs, which were designed to target the original virus strain identified in Wuhan in 2020.

“We can’t rely on old vaccines which are currently being used nationwide going forward,” said a Beijing-based adviser to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Beijing has expanded the choice of vaccines available to the population. In September, it approved the world’s first inhaled Covid-19 vaccine from Tianjin-based CanSino Biologics, which is based on the original virus strain.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Eleanor Olcott

Shares in CanSino Biologics rose as much as 70 per cent in Hong Kong after the Chinese pharma group said its inhaled Covid-19 vaccine had been approved for use in some cities. Its mainland China-listed shares also added as much as 20 per cent.

The wider Chinese market rallied for a second day, with the Hang Seng index adding as much as 2.6 per cent and the CSI 300 gaining up to 1.9 per cent, after unsubstantiated claims on social media that Beijing was preparing a road map to loosen lockdown measures and travel restrictions.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Eleanor Olcott

On Sunday, China reported more than 1,700 cases over the previous 24 hours, more than triple the figure from the previous week. The growth in infections follows a week-long national holiday as travellers returned from tourist spots with Covid outbreaks.

“Over the National Day Golden Week holiday, China’s overall Covid situation evidently deteriorated,” Ting Lu, Nomura’s chief China economist, wrote in a note.

The World Bank forecast that China’s economy would grow 2.8 per cent this year and that its economic output would lag behind the rest of Asia for the first time since 1990. In April, the bank had predicted growth of between 4 and 5 per cent.

Chinese economic data reveals the continued economic damage wrought by the implementation of lockdowns. In September, when Chengdu in Sichuan and Dalian in Liaoning were under lockdown, services activity contracted for the first time in four months.

On Saturday, the Caixin services purchasing managers’ index fell to 49.3 in September, down from 55 in August. Any reading below 50 indicates a contraction in activity.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Eleanor Olcott

The Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical company turned down Beijing’s request to hand over the recipe for its messenger RNA vaccine because of commercial and safety concerns, said two people involved in negotiations that took place between 2020 and 2021. The vaccine maker says it is still “eager” to sell the product to China.

The mRNA vaccine technology used by Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer provides longer-lasting and higher levels of protection than the inactivated vaccine technology used by Chinese makers. Several Chinese pharma companies are racing to develop a homemade mRNA alternative but have struggled with the emergence of more infectious variants.

Moderna has been fiercely protective of its intellectual property around the world, saying handing over patents would do little to address supply constraints. Talks in Italy for a tech transfer to local manufacturing sites have also failed, but Moderna gave the reason that it lacked the capacity to oversee it.

This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Eleanor Olcott