While some may not take seriously President Chen Shui-bian's (陳水扁) effort to make biotechnology Taiwan's star industry, Californians do. And they demonstrated that fact by raising the ROC national flag at the BIO 2001 trade show in San Diego last week -- a move most conferences would shy away from.
Why did they offer Taiwan this rare honor? Because Taiwan had the strongest showing of any Asian nation at the event with over 100 delegates. And with over 12,000 attendees, the four-day June conference is North America's premier biotech show.
"They were so happy with our turnout that they raised our national flag ... and we were happy to see that nobody protested," said Elan Liao (
Typically, raising the red, white and blue flag of the Republic of China draws immediate protest from Beijing -- but most Taiwanese officials who attended BIO 2001 were uncertain if the Chinese delegation showed at all.
In contrast to their industrializing neighbor, Taiwan sent two separate high-tech delegations to southern California last week.
Top-level government ministers headed both delegations, highlighting the high priority given to biotechnology in Taiwan.
One group, led by the Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yi-fu (
They also drummed up interest from another 18 high-tech firms and gained a letter of intent from the University of California at San Diego to work together on biotechnology ventures in the future.
* Taiwan sent two separate high-tech delegations:
- One group, led by the Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yi-fu, returned to Taiwan with some US$155 million in pledged investments and cooperative agreements.
- A second group toured several companies and two major California biotechnology parks seeking partnerships and investment opportunities.
Not to be outdone, the BIO 2001 group, led by Minister-without-Portfolio Tsay Ching-yan (蔡清彥), toured several companies and two major California biotechnology parks seeking partnerships and investment opportunities.
In search of pharmaceutical investment targets, China Development Industrial Bank (
"We didn't finalize any investments, we just made a lot of introductions," said James Yan (
This hesitance to pounce on promising new ideas was shared by a number of Taiwanese venture capitalists at BIO 2001. Growing signs of worldwide economic trouble has made venture capitalists everywhere more cautious -- but at least one investor sees things differently.
"Now is a great time for biotech investment," said Elizabeth Green Sah, who is gathering investors to launch a US$100 million biotechnology fund at Primasia Securities.
"The reason is that [company] valuations are so much lower -- at least 70 percent -- just because money is harder to get."
Partnerships also topped the delegation's agenda, as US-based New Biotics met with Taiwan's TTY Biopharm Co Ltd (台灣東洋藥品). New Biotics specializes in compounds designed to beat drug-resistant cells and bacteria.
TTY Biopharm aims to help New Biotics win government regulatory approval for their products, then take care of Asia-wide marketing.
"We're 99 percent sure we made a deal with them," said Chen Chang-hui (
Government ministers and their charges also scoped out Mission Bay, a new biotech park at the University of California at San Francisco and an older park in San Diego to better put in perspective America's thriving biotech scene.
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