Musings from Beijing

GREETINGS from Beijing! My fifth visit to China and this time I am spending more time here. It is the Chinese Academy of Sciences PIFI (President's International Fellowship Initiative) Fellowship that is supporting me in developing research and research collaborations. I sense the position of the Chinese Academy of Science when walking into China as the airport immigration had a special lane for those men and women of sciences - Academicians in China.

- By Prof. Ajith de Alwis

CAS has a long history starting on 1 November 1949. It is the world's largest research organisation. In China with Science and Technology as the base platform for growth and competitiveness, CAS is an important national institution.

I am based in the Haidian District of Beijing which is one of 16 districts but this is the second most contributing district to the Chinese economy - over a trillion RMB. However, it was the first district in China to do so in 2023. Today, the No. 1 prefecture is the Padong district in the Shanghai area. The Haidian is home to Zhongguancun - China’s Silicon Valley. I walked down at Innoway in that zone and the vibrancy was unbelievable. I was told that if you throw a stone and hit three one would be a Professor, the other a Doctor, and the third a worker! Full of universities and research institutes, science and tech is felt in the air. To give some numbers there are 83 universities and about 183 research institutes packed into this district.