Exciting times ahead for innovation

Max von Zedtwitz, managing director of Glorad, a partly Shanghai-based research center and think tank, believes cures for cancer and solutions to global warming could be achieved more quickly than many now expect.

"If the whole of China was suddenly operating at US levels of R&D there would be so many scientific breakthroughs emerging," he says.

Von Zedtwitz, a 44-year-old Swiss, was speaking in his office on the campus of Tongji University, one of Shanghai's leading academic institutions.