New policy to tempt more professionals to zone

Overseas expert and entrepreneur who industrialized biomedicine in China one of zone's success stories

For entrepreneurs who are trying to achieve their business dreams at one of China's top innovation hubs, Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, or E-Town, is an ideal place to work and live.

New talent policy

The E-Town's administrative committee supports people working in the area in all kinds of ways, including effective infrastructure, comprehensive public services and tempting financial rewards for selected professionals. In mid-September the area released a new policy for financial and service support for innovative talent, which entrepreneurs said was even more "alluring" than the previous one.

The new policy will allocate 200 million yuan ($31 million) every year to reward and support professionals, twice the amount than the previous policy. Previously the policy focused on overseas talent, while the new one covers both overseas and domestic professionals, even including those working in public administration. For the first time, selected professionals can also benefit from all the preferential policies from Beijing's Haiju Project, which aims to attract overseas Chinese back to the capital.

The new policy covers overseas high-end professionals, professionals in sciences and innovation, managing professionals, professionals with unique and high-level expertise and professionals in the public service sector. All selected professionals can receive 500,000 yuan each as a reward and startup entrepreneurs can each receive 2 million yuan as a subsidy for renting office facilities.

In the past two decades, the E-Town has created communities for thousands of domestic and overseas professionals, nurturing and encouraging their creativity to help bring about new businesses and innovation.

E-Town is home to 247 overseas professionals and 50 people from the State-level "1,000-talent" project, which aims to attract 1,000 leading overseas returnees to the country to benefit its technological advancement. A further 90 people are from the Haiju Project.

E-Town's innovator

Xie Liangzhi is one of the prominent overseas experts working and living in E-Town. He has made headlines in China's media in the past few years for his contribution to the country's biomedicine industry and his devotion to his cause and persistent pursuit of innovation.

Xie is president and CEO of Sino Biological, a company specialized in protein, antibody and quality reagents production.

The 49-year-old graduated from Dalian Institute of Technology (now named Dalian University of Technology) with a bachelor's degree in 1987 and a master's degree in 1990. In 1996, he got his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Xie joined Merck & Co, a leading pharmaceutical company based in the United States, in 1996. He took charge of the development and production technologies for three kinds of viral vaccines, Varivax, Proquad and Zostavax.

He also established globally advanced production technologies for the adenovirus vector AIDS vaccine.

Xie could have led a very successful and comfortable life in the US as he has a doctorate degree from one of the world's best institutions, worked at a leading company in the industry and initiated some of the firm's most important projects. However, Xie returned China in 2002 and decided to start a new life in E-Town.

Xie said some of his friends thought he was crazy to return to China. But in 2001, he received a phone call from his old colleague Liu Qian, then the director of China National Center for Biotechnology Development. Xie and Liu used to work together on some research projects at MIT. As an old colleague, Liu knew Xie's expertise well. He briefed Xie on the situation of China's biological sciences development and also the "entrepreneurship tide" sweeping the country at the time.

Liu said China's biological sciences sector boomed but it needed someone to make it an industry. Xie recalled Liu said "the country needs you and your expertise", so Xie quit his job and headed back to Beijing.

Talking about his life-changing decision, Xie just said that it was a decision he had to make sooner or later. "If I made it earlier, I would have more time to fight for my career in China," he said.

Xie returned to Beijing in 2002. At that time, the innovation center was called Zhongguancun, nicknamed "China's Silicon Valley". It was just emerging as a new engine in innovation and high-tech industry.

Xie chose E-Town because he liked the general environment and the fact that there with not yet very many people and enterprises, which he said was "a bit like the countryside in America". Of course he also saw the potential of E-Town.

Xie founded his first company Sinocelltech in E-Town in 2002. At first he planned to produce medicine but later he found out that there was no reagent in China at that time. Reagents are substances used in medicine production to cause chemical reactions.

In 2007, Xie established Sino Biological with his teacher, renowned biotech pioneer and MIT professor Daniel I.C. Wang to work on the development of reagents and other technologies crucial for industrializing China's biomedicine industry.

Reserved and low-key, Xie appears more like a laboratory researcher than a CEO of a large company. He follows a strict schedule of going to work at 8 am and leaving for home at 8 pm and he eats just two meals a day.

"There has to be someone to do these things. For me, it's to develop new medicine for the 1.3 billion people in China," he said.

In 2009, during the global H1N1 flu pandemic, Xie's company, using genetic engineering technologies, successfully collected a protein from the virus that was crucial for the development of the vaccine in 30 days.

Top facilities for great minds

In E-Town, there are many innovators like Xie working on things that they think are important and trying to be innovative and original. E-Town offers them not only a community of like-minded people, but also well-developed facilities and comprehensive services.

The area is equipped with first-class road and rail links combined with internal infrastructure. It is ideally positioned with subway stations, the city's fifth and sixth ring roads, the airport expressway and highways that connect the area to surrounding cities.

Entertainment and dining facilities within the zone include shopping malls, cinemas, supermarkets, sports centers and community halls.

Its one-stop administrative office buildings provide services in taxation, customer relations and administrative governance. Customs services within the zone have reduced bureaucratic wrangles for business operations.

Across the area are new apartment complexes and housing developments as well, as a range of high-end hotels.

Education resources range from kindergartens and primary schools to middle and international schools popular with expatriate families. The Beijing Vocational College of Electronic Technology offers specialized training for companies within the area.

Living costs in E-Town remain relatively low compared to downtown Beijing. Officials from the area's administration committee said there are also considerable environmental advantages, such as the lack of traffic congestion and clear skies.

People working together also shop, dine and jog together. The community has become a neighborhood. That is the real appeal of the E-Town for bold innovators like Xie and his peers. It may also be the E-Town's secret to success in maintaining its pole position as the top innovation hub in China.