P016: The Business of Chinese Science: Global Engagement and Nationalist Imaginaries

Organizer(s)

• AC

  Abigail Coplin

  Vassar College, United States
• CM

  Covell Meyskens

  National Security Affairs
  Naval Postgraduate School, United States

Chair(s)

• SG

  Susan Greenhalgh

  Harvard University, United States

Paper Presenter(s)

• AC

  Abigail Coplin

  Vassar College, United States
• SG

  Susan Greenhalgh

  Harvard University, United States
• ZZ

  Zhaojin Zeng

  Duke Kunshan University, China
• LJ

  Lijing Jiang

  Colby College, United States

Discussant(s)

• JG

  Julian Gewirtz

  Columbia University, United States

Session Abstract: Since the 1980s, China has envisioned science as a driver of economic growth, panacea of social problems, and source of state legitimacy. While entrepreneurs, scientists, and party officials strive to build a prosperous, stable, and independent China by harnessing science and technology and linking it to the market in ever-tighter configurations, this endeavor is perpetually fraught with tensions, resistances, and unintended consequences. This panel probes the evolution of the science-market-state nexus from the early market reforms to today. Jiang opens by demonstrating how pressures to marketize science in the 1980s transformed goldfish breeding from a traditional craft to a biotech-driven, export-oriented industry, and how these transitions were contested. Next, Zeng leverages new archives from Beijing Jeep and Tsingtao Brewery to illustrate how businesspeople’s pursuit of scientific knowledge, technological competitiveness, and capital beyond China’s borders shaped the future of US-China relations and the global economic order. Moving to the contemporary era, Greenhalgh uncovers the interlocking ties among the Chinese party-state, industry, and global scientific nonprofits, exposing the clandestine involvement of multinational corporations in China’s “scientific policy-making,” and the hidden dangers to China’s people. Finally, Coplin reveals how techno-nationalism in China’s biotechnology industries fosters symbiotic firm-local government alliances, strengthening companies’ technological development and the state’s governance capacity, but hindering firms’ international expansion and endangering the legitimacy of state and industry alike. Collectively, we expose how the entanglement of science and market in China has rearranged the connections among science, society, industry, and the state, and reconfigured the boundaries between national and global.

Presentations:

• Symbiotic Imbroglios: State-Firm Alliances in China’s Biotechnology Industry
  

  Paper Presenter: Abigail Coplin – Vassar College
• Coca-Cola Science and the Dangers of “Business as Usual”
  

  Paper Presenter: Susan Greenhalgh – Harvard University
• Beijing Jeep, Tsingtao Beer: Market Exploration, Technology Transfer, and the Re-making of US-China Economic Relations in the 1980s
  

  Paper Presenter: Zhaojin Zeng – Duke Kunshan University
• The High-tech Dreams and Hybrid Realities of the Butterfly Tail: Genetics and Production of Goldfish Varieties in China since the 1980s
  

  Paper Presenter: Lijing Jiang – Colby College