All your translation are belong to us

From the quality control page of Shanghai Ju Peng Translation Co., a representative sample:

★1．We have a sound and stable pool of translation team, tasks of translation are strictly selected and assigned in accordance with languages and specialty fields.

★4．We track up and monitor text pieces in the course they are being translated, and deal with and resolve all the way those key points and pitfalls involved; project team is so created whenever for any large project of translation work and senior translators, professors or foreign experts are initiated to be in charge of jobs of aligning, tuning glossary and of ensuring texts consistent to the style of overall work translated.

★5．Once pieces of translation completed, there are other translators assigned to conduct follow-up proofreading in order to eliminate occurrences of usual errors as letter omission, mistranslation, wrong figures and improper typeset.

If you need work, offer to clean up their copy....

How would you like to live in Hyderabad?

Rob Bryant, a fine chemicals consultant based in the UK, had a provocative essay called Can Asia innovate? published in Scrip in January.

Given the far lower margins to which most Asian companies operate (bar those in Japan) compared to their European counterparts, improving the efficiency of processes would seem to be a good idea. Yet the majority of Asian pharmaceutical manufacturing processes remain inefficient, often polluting and generally second-rate.

Bryant suggests that Europe benefits from an innovation-friendly culture that is absent in Asia.

It is certainly intriguing that Asian social traditions tend to avoid intellectual confrontation and that people are educated to respect the status quo to a degree that Europeans could not tolerate.... Perhaps a talent for asking difficult, and even annoying, questions is one of Europe's competitive advantages in the pharmaceutical industry.

If that's so, it hasn't stopped pharma fine chemicals manufacturing from migrating to Asia. Companies in India and China can easily undercut Western companies on cost. However, Bryant notes, competition among Asian companies has cut even their margins to the bone. He says the only room for reducing costs is improved processes, and he suggests that Asian companies will have to turn to Western technologists for that.

Europeans must be quick-witted enough to take advantage of this opportunity to continue to participate in API manufacture in this way. By inventing better processes to replace the older ones employed in Asia, they can participate actively in these countries' success and, where scale of manufacture allows, even compete successfully from a Western production base.

If not Hyderabad, how about Shenzhen?

China: a growth market for... psychotherapy?

An article in Psychology Today describes China's "little emperors":

When China began limiting couples to one child 30 years ago, the policy's most obvious goal was to contain a mushrooming population. For the Chinese people, however, the policy's greater purpose was to turn out a group of young elites who would each enjoy the undivided resources of their whole family—the so-called xiao huangdi, or "little emperors."

These kids are the subject of enormous pressure to succeed. Being only children, they will be solely responsible for the support of their parents in old age:

With only one child to carry the load, parents' fortunes are tied to their child's, and they push (and pamper) the little ones accordingly. "In China, the term for a one-child family is a 'risky family,'" says Baochang Gu, a demography professor at Beijing's Renmin University who advises the Chinese government on the one-child policy. "If something happened to that child, it would be a disaster."

That this has taken place in the wake of China's cultural revolution heightens the stakes:

The pressure to succeed was all the greater given that his parents' own dreams had been dashed during China's Cultural Revolution, when Mao Zedong closed schools and sent difficult-to-control intellectuals to be "reeducated" by working the fields. Wang's father spent eight years herding goats. His own dreams destroyed, he poured all his hopes and ambitions into his son. "Because of the Cultural Revolution, my parents literally wasted 10 years," explains Wang, 29, who was among the first Chinese only kids born under the one-child policy. "I was explicitly told that they had lost a lot in their lives, so they wanted me to get it back for them."

Parents sacrifice everything to give the little emperors a competitive advantage over their peers:

Bringing up a high-achieving child in a crowded and impoverished city like Hohhot, parents sometimes have to get creative. Since the government issued minuscule rations of milk, for instance, Yu Wang's parents scraped together the money to buy a sheep and kept it with relatives outside the city. Every day, Wang's father cycled 40 minutes to fetch fresh milk for his son. Out of his parents' meager monthly salary of 45 RMB (about $6), 35 RMB went to Wang's education—including a packed slate of piano, painting, guitar, and even dancing classes.

Everything rests on a single test called gao kao, or "tall test," that will determine whether the kid gets into a university. Even if they do get in, however, and even if they get their degree, there aren't enough jobs for the highly educated:

The country now churns out more than 4 million university graduates yearly, but only 1.6 million new college-level jobs. Even the strivers end up as security guards. China may be the world's next great superpower, but it's facing a looming crisis as millions of overpressurized, hypereducated only children come of age in a nation that can't fulfill their expectations.

This culture of pressure and frustration has sparked a mental-health crisis for young Chinese. Many simmer in depression or unemployment, unwilling to take jobs they consider beneath them. Millions, afraid to face the real world, escape into video games, which the government considers a national epidemic. And a disturbing number decide to end it all; suicide is now China's leading cause of death for those aged 20 to 35.

The Chinese have been spared Freud, but neither have they much access to any more useful psychotherapy. According to the article, mental health problems were viewed from a purely political perspective during the Mao era.

When Mao cracked down on intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution, he decimated the nation's already thin psychological establishment. "Back then, every mental problem was seen as anti-socialist," says Kaiping Peng, a University of California Berkeley professor who was among the first generation of Chinese psychologists to receive formal clinical training, in the late 1970s. "If you were depressed, they thought you were politically impure and sent you to a labor camp."

Not exactly encouragement to admit you have problems. But the situation is changing, says PT. Not only are more university-trained psychologists entering the work force, but also the government is trying to depressurize the situation:

Schools no longer publicly announce each student's exam scores and class rank, for one, and the government is also asking parents to let their precious little emperors actually play every once in a while.

Image: Patrick Lee

"It's in the national interest"

It's no secret that Beijing's primary objective for the Olympics is to show the world how far it has come. However, the country's efforts to present a "perfect" event ironically highlight exactly what continues to hold China back -- a systemic focus on appearances over substance. The opening ceremonies offered an interesting example. The organizers wanted a child to sing "Ode to the Motherland," but while 7-year-old Yang Peiyi was judged to have the best voice, she did not have the best looks, so they had 9-year-old Lin Miaoke lip sync the song. "The audience will understand that it's in the national interest," said Politburo member Chen Qigang, expressing the delusion, common to the totalitarian mindset, of complete control of perception. Apparently the fireworks weren't good enough for the Politburo, either, according to the same piece:

The news follows reports that some footage of the fireworks exploding across China's capital during the ceremony was digitally inserted into television coverage, apparently over concerns that not all of the 29 blasts could be captured on camera.

As a friend of mine who sent me the piece observed, the philosophy of development in China seems to be "just look the part". He added: "This is evident every time you hear about lead poisoning, food poisoning, water poisoning etc. They even think they can get away with mimicking drugs because one chemical *appears* to have properties like another completely different chemical."

The problem is fundamentally one of leadership. Until the Politburo rewards substantial value and rejects mere appearance, "made in China" will continue to inspire suspicion.

Drug shortage in India?

According to the Indian Drug Manufacturers Assoc., Olympics-related shutdowns of key raw materials suppliers in India are going to mean drug shortages in India in the next few months. Says DNA India:

India imports as much as 80% of its pharma raw material requirement, including APIs, from China because it is 10-40% cheaper, said Swati A Piramal, director, Piramal Healthcare.

Shinde says the shortage is not being felt today because medical stores are coping with pre-clampdown inventories.

“But after September, the shocks will be felt everywhere. The current stock will be consumed by then.

People will find it difficult to source drugs they would desperately want,” Shinde warns.

Domestic manufacturers are hurting, too, because shortage is spiking raw material prices and price control has become a bigger headwind.

“After the clampdown, prices of raw material have risen by 30-50%,” Piramal said. About 40-60% of the total costs of a pharma company is accounted for by raw material.

Indian manufacturers blame price controls in the country for driving them to outsource so much raw material manufacture in China, although it's hard to imagine why they wouldn't go to the cheapest source even absent the price controls.

Tapan Ray, director general of Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI), says companies have primarily been sourcing raw material from China because the low cost offsets the price control in India.

Up-and-coming Chinese CROs

Seeking Alpha today notes an interesting development that highlights two up-and-coming Shanghai CROs. Morningside Venture, Lilly Asian Ventures and Pfizer Venture Investments have all put their money behind the Shanghai-based, bio-focused CRO HD Biosciences Inc. HD seems to have a close relationship with Sundia, another Shanghai-based CRO that focuses on drug discovery chemistry. The two announced a service alliance with Novasecta in February, and with United PharmaTech in 2007.

Lonza's new engineering business

Lonza is starting up a new engineering business that will focus on China. It'll offer engineering, design and maintenance. Quite an interesting way of embedding the company in an expanding market and supplier base. Lonza will raise the production standards of any company they work with. They'll know exactly how the Chinese customer does business, and whether they'd make a good partner (or even acquisition...) for the Swiss fine chemicals leader. It'll be interesting to see how widely the service is engaged. Considering Lonza's reputation, compared with that of Chinese producers, I would think that the main limiting factor will be the price tag. Being able to point to a relationship with Lonza should be a valuable selling point for Chinese companies looking for business in abroad, particularly in the West & Japan.

“This new business unit is a very logical expansion of our existing strengths in manufacturing of complex products. We have built chemical and biotech plants around the world, at very high levels of quality and regulatory compliance,” remarked Lukas Utiger, Head of Life Science Ingredients. “We have built strong project management and maintenance experience in China since the mid 1990’s for the construction and maintenance of cGMP and Food GMP plants which have been certified by global regulators. Our talented and highly qualified staff of 130 technical experts has a strong drive to capitalize on this new business opportunity.”