Cosmopolitanization and China’s Stem Cell Research: An Introduction

Abstract

It is almost a cliché to say that we are in a globalized world. This may be especially true for the life sciences. Thanks to the development of telecommunications and information technology, the latest research findings seem to be at the command of one’s fingertips. With international travel made easy and surging R&D (research and development) investments in Asia, the world scientific atlas is covered with complex and interwoven networks of human mobility. The old catchphrase ‘brain drain’, which describes the process by which developed countries select the best young talents from developing countries, seems to be giving way to the new term global ‘brain circulation’. It is not uncommon for one research project to be streamlined and coordinated in several laboratories dispersed across the world.