A new study from the RAND Corporation examines how China’s Tianjin Binhai New Area (TBNA) and the Tianjin Economic Technological Development Area (TEDA) can build regional development and economic growth by focusing on emerging high technology applications.
Despite strong economic growth in the past few decades, China still has a number of pressing challenges. China needs to reduce rural poverty, provide for a large and rapidly aging population, meet the population’s health and sanitation needs, meet growing energy demands, address water shortages, reduce pollution, and sustain high economic growth.
According to Richard Silberglitt, lead author of the study and a senior physical scientist at RAND a nonprofit research organization, said “TBNA and TEDA’s pursuit of the recommended technology applications will provide nations with all levels of science and technology capacity to productively engage China as it moves forward, both as consumers and suppliers of advanced technologies.”
The RAND study took national concerns into account along with the missions of the two regions. The study analyzed the factors that can facilitate or hinder implementation of technologies. The researchers also looked at the capacity available to TBNA and TEDA to evaluate which technology applications would be the most feasible and productive to pursue.
The RAND report recommends that TBNA and TEDA focus on promising technology applications to include, cheap solar energy, advanced mobile communications and radio-frequency identification (RFID), rapid bioassay tests to quickly detect the presence or absence of specific pathogens or toxins in blood food, air, or water, membranes, fabrics, molecular scale drug design and development, electric and hybrid vehicles, and green manufacturing.
