A recent science commentary shed light on China's recent reveal of its technological progress in cloning and its "meteoric rise" on the scientific stage.
Published Sunday on the Financial Times, the opinion piece by the newspapers' science commentator Anjana Ahuja, said the birth of the two identical macaque monkeys in Shanghai -- Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua -- refreshes the technical possibility of human cloning.
The British Indian science journalist referred to an announcement scientists in China made last week that they had successfully cloned the world's first macaques, using technique used to create Dolly the sheep.
The arithmetic behind their success bears testimony to the technical difficulty of cloning primates as well as the more obvious moral considerations regarding human individuality, the article said.
The author pointed that China files more patents each year than the U.S., Japan and Korea combined and has overtaken the U.S. when it comes to the total number of scientific publications in 2016: 426,000 versus 409,000.
China is now "pioneering" gene-editing in humans and has become a "scientific superpower," read the op-ed.
China is pursuing a policy called "Double World Class", an attempt to catapult six universities into the league of top global institutions by 2020. The Recruitment Program of Global Experts, also known as the Thousand Talents Plan, meanwhile, is attracting international professors to China, the passage said.
The adorable face of a baby monkey is perhaps the most eye-catching symbol of a nation intent on academic dominance. When it comes to science and technology, the sun is most assuredly rising in the east, Ahuja wrote.
