Shanghai piloting research model built on patience, support and agility

By wielding an unusual combination of long-term strategic patience and real-time institutional agility, Shanghai is forging a distinctively Chinese model for original innovation — one that tolerates failure, rewards long-haul risks and bridges the "valley of death" between lab benches and hospital beds.

As the core engine of the Shanghai (Yangtze River Delta) International Science and Technology Innovation Center, Shanghai is steadily consolidating its role as a pivotal source of original innovation through system reforms.

Shanghai's edge lies in bold institutional experimentation across diverse platforms. The Interdisciplinary Research Center on Biology and Chemistry, launched in 2012, for instance, is implementing innovative basic research mechanisms by breaking disciplinary silos and adopting a performance evaluation system centered on substantive contributions — a move to break the "four-only" criteria of papers, titles, diplomas and awards. Backed by five-to-10-year stable funding for research, it has established a problem-oriented research paradigm.

The Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, meanwhile, has built a globally calibrated governance system, recruiting 150 researchers from 16 countries and regions and implementing phased assessments focused on potential rather than papers.

And launched in 2024, the Shanghai Academy of Natural Sciences is a platform that abandons traditional project applications and consensus-based review. Instead, it uses active global talent scouting to support non-consensus, high-risk research with multiyear grants.

Complementing these organizations, the Shanghai Innovation Institute practices an integrated model centered on AI frontier research, innovating a mentor-student co-creation mechanism that effectively connects basic research, talent incubation and industrial transformation. This has yielded breakthroughs in the form of aerosolized broad-spectrum neutralizing antibodies.

The complementary strengths of these platforms are vividly illustrated in the work of researcher Liu Cong. Supported simultaneously by IRCBC's long-cycle assessment and SANS' non-consensus funding, his team has conducted decade-long research on Parkinson's disease. Under conventional three-year evaluation cycles, this project — which yielded few publications in its first five years — would likely have been terminated. Instead, the institutional safety net carried the team through the difficult phase of molecular screening. The result: an innovative PET molecular tracer enabling early presymptomatic diagnosis, validated through 150 clinical trials, commercialized via SynuSight Biotech, and backed by the Michael J. Fox Foundation — a complete chain from basic discovery to clinical application.

Shanghai has rolled out systematic policies to reinforce its innovation ecosystem. In July 2025, it issued management measures for the Explorer Program, which align basic research with industrial needs via public-private co-investment, with corporate partners contributing no less than 3 million yuan ($443,000) annually while strict rules safeguard research originality. By November 2025, 54 projects had secured a total of 52.9 million yuan in funding, with early signs of "zero-to-one" breakthroughs. In 2025, Shanghai also launched the Qiyuan Innovation Foundation — the country's first State-owned capital public welfare foundation dedicated to basic research — raising nearly 100 million yuan to support national strategic priorities.

Underpinning these advances is robust investment. China's national R&D intensity reached 2.8 percent in 2025, with basic research accounting for a record 7.08 percent of total R&D spending. Shanghai outperforms these benchmarks: Its R&D intensity stands at 4.5 percent, with a 2026 target of 4.6 percent, and its basic research proportion has reached 12 percent — approaching the level of developed economies such as the United States (15-17 percent) — signaling a shift from quantitative catch-up to structural optimization.

In the race for tech supremacy, Shanghai's pilot zone for basic research serves as a national stress test. By replacing shortsighted utilitarianism with a long-cycle ecosystem, Shanghai is cultivating the soil for transformative discoveries, demonstrating that true originality cannot be mandated, but it can be enabled.

— GUO YALI, CHINA DAILY