Nanotechnology in China is focusing on innovations and new products

August 17, 2005

Hkc22.com, Beijing just released a new study about nanotechnology developments in china from 2005 to 2010 and 2015. China is now one of the world leaders in terms of its number of newly registered nanotechnology firms, nanotechnology publications and nanotech related patents.

The markets in china for nanotechnology products and systems is 5.4 billion us dollar in 2005 and will increase to 31.4 bn us $ by 2010 and 144.9 bn us $ by 2015. The main segments are nanomaterials, nanoelectronics, nanobio and nano-life-sciences which count already for 70 percent of the turnover. The market share ( worldmarket ) will be more then 6 percent by 2010 and 16 percent by 2015. Like no other country china understood that to win the race depends on finished products through Nano-Bio-Cogno-Info convergence and not on nano science mainly. Second but maybe even more important, there are no ethical restrictions or social controversy on developing and using nanotechnologies for new products and systems.

Over the past three years, the number of companies in the field of nanotechnology in China has grown and reached over 800. This growth rate is very rapid and it has yet to show signs of slowing down. The sales to date have been largely domestic, but with the increasing global interest on the development of nanotechnology and with the advantage of modern communication we can for sure speculate that this could be a very profitable investment in the near future.

Nanotechnology and nano-bio-info-cogno converging technologies are becoming more and more the decisive factor of the race between regions and nations to win the future markets and society’s wealth and political stability. The development shows that five nations are leading the competition today. China, as one of these five nations, has its unique advantage of high flexibilty, low labour costs, no barriers for new technologies, young and vibrant society, large amount of foreign venture capital, underestimated currency (today about 25 percent undervalue compared with the US Dollar), low taxes, goverment support and a home market with more than 1.3 billion people for applications.

China has a lot of comparative advantages in nanotechnology research:

Early starting in nanotechnology, China is among one of the few countries who has begun to explore nanotechnology since 1990s; a large and highly competent research team, with scientists trained in US, Europe and Japan, Some of which are leaders in their fields worldwide; a research and development network of three national centers and over 20 university institutes in nanotechnology; rich of several important mineral and biological resources which are important for developing nanomaterials; very competent, even leading, in the fields of nanomaterial research and application, tunnel microscopes, single atom operation etc; a huge domestic market, ideal for the growth of enterprises.