China pivots to biology in quest for improved manufacturing

BEIJING, Feb. 10 (Xinhua) -- On the site of a former steelworks, a new kind of factory is humming. This facility, owned by Shougang Group, one of China's largest steelmakers, sees carbon-rich industrial tail gas, once simply vented as a pollutant, now piped into fermentation tanks. There, microbes transform it into a high-protein powder used for animal feed.

This operation is more than a recycling project. It is a flagship example of China's strategic bet on bio-manufacturing, an emerging sector that uses biological processes to make goods, ranging from chemicals and materials to medicines and fuels.

This shift is part of China's broader agenda to open up new areas for economic growth, as the country plans to build a new massive tech-intensive sector within the next decade.

"The next three to five years will mark a period of accelerated growth for bio-manufacturing, driven by the dual forces of technological innovation and policy momentum," said Cao Hui, an industry analyst from Beijing University of Chemical Technology.

China named this sector a priority in its blueprint for the 2026-2030 period, known as the 15th Five-Year Plan. Also, more than 20 provincial-level regions have launched their own support measures, including research funding and the creation of specialized industrial parks.

"This evolution will revolutionize traditional industrial production and fundamentally alter our ways of living and working," Cao added.

Shougang's microbial protein products highlight the strong commercial potential of this type of technology. Boasting crude protein levels above 80 percent, far exceeding imported fishmeal and nearly doubling standard soybean meal, the procedure, if scaled up, could meaningfully reduce China's dependence on imported feedstocks such as soybeans.

Meanwhile, biotech firm QI Biodesign is achieving precise multidimensional genome operations like gene knockout, base replacement, expression fine-tuning and large-fragment DNA insertion. This Beijing-based company has established an efficient, autonomous delivery system targeting major global staple crops such as rice, wheat and corn as well as economically significant plants, aiming for precise trait enhancement.

In other industrial applications being pursued in China, soybeans are transformed into popular health supplements via enzymatic conversion, corn is turned into ethanol to cut aviation emissions, and insulin produced from engineered strains is used to effectively treat diabetes.

Additionally, China's ongoing "artificial intelligence plus" strategy is significantly accelerating bio-manufacturing. In innovative drug development, AI technology is dramatically reducing both time and cost. A recent market report indicated that AI can shorten molecular discovery periods from 2 years to just 11 months, while slashing associated costs from 414 million U.S. dollars to 200,000 U.S. dollars.

Youcare Pharmaceutical Group in Beijing exemplifies this trend. The company utilized AI to analyze vast biomedical datasets, efficiently identifying a potential target for the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) with an 80-percent reduction in time needed compared with traditional methods. This approach has supported the development of its mRNA vaccine candidate, which recently received U.S. FDA clearance to proceed with clinical studies.

"China's bio-manufacturing industry has reached a total scale of nearly 1 trillion yuan (about 144 billion U.S. dollars)," said He Yaqiong, an official from the country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. A forecast by CEC Capital Group suggests that China's bio-manufacturing market is likely to expand to 1.8 trillion yuan by 2030, which is set to account for almost 25 percent of the global market.

"Bio-manufacturing's green production, renewable inputs and ability to cut energy use, material waste and emissions are positioning it as a strategic engine for China's industrial competitiveness," said Xu Guanhua, academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.