Taiwan Hsinchu Biomedical Science Park: NSC, DOH, MOEA participate in organization

President voices hope for biotech industry

2011/05/18 Taipei, May 18 (CNA) President Ma Ying-jeou expressed hope Wednesday that the biotech industry will become the nation's next high-tech industry following the recent scrapping of a controversial petrochemical project. Speaking while presiding over the inauguration of a biomedical research and development center at the under-construction Hsinchu Biomedical Science Park, Ma was referring to the multi-billion dollar Kuokuang Petrochemical Project, originally scheduled to be built in a wetland area of central Taiwan's Changhua County, but later scrapped because of stiff opposition by environmentalists. "We hope the inauguration will represent the start of another major high-tech industry," Ma said. The science park's plan is for three centers to be established. Wednesday's inauguration was for a biomedical technology and product R&D center planned by the National Science Council. The other two centers -- a hospital to be set up by the Department of Health that will be in charge of clinical experiments and serious disease care, and an incubation center to be set up by the Ministry of Economic Affairs -- have yet to be completed. The government has been planning the park since 2003, but has suffered delays and setbacks for many years. Ma noted that when he visited the planned park as recently as October 2008, it was still just a vacant lot, and he expressed happiness that the project has finally got off the ground. "Biotech is the star industry of the 21st century. With the recent scrapping of the Kuokuang investment project, biotech will have to step in to take the place of petrochemicals as a leading industry," Ma said. He said that Academia Sinica, Taiwan's highest academic institute, and National Health Research Institutes, have already achieved good results in basic research of biomedicine and medical equipment development. In addition, Taiwan National University Hospital and Veterans General Hospital introduced French technology as early as 1984 to develop hepatitis vaccines, he went on. The two hospitals have also been in cooperation with the world's five top pharmaceutical companies, the president noted. These, coupled with government investment of more than NT$20 billion in biotechnology, have made the biotech field an ideal one for the nation, Ma said. Meanwhile that same day, supporters of the park and those opposed confronted each other. Those opposed to the biotech park said that the world has entered a period in which there is insufficient food and that the government should not requisition more farmland for urban development. One protest banner proclaimed that "the government has become a bandit." The supporters, on the other hand, carried banners reading "no development, no progress." Police were mobilized to keep order, but due to prior coordination, the two camps restrained themselves from shouting at each other while the president was speaking.