China Reveals Lists of Top Global, Chinese Scientific Advances for 2021

China has unveiled its lists of the top 10 scientific advances in China and the world for 2021, as selected by members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and members of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE).

Among the scientific breakthroughs listed, China’s progress on its first solar exploration mission stands out.

The China National Space Administration released new images taken by the country’s first Mars rover Zhurong, including the landing-site panorama, the Martian landscape, and a selfie of the rover, signifying the complete success of China’s first Mars exploration mission.

Other advances include progress on long-term stays at China’s space station, research into synthesizing starch from carbon dioxide, the lunar samples brought back by the Chang’e-5 mission, the route to de novo domestication of wild allotetraploid rice, as well as the prevention and control of the agricultural pest Bemisia tabaci.

Topping the list of the world’s top10 scientific advances is the development of the first living robots with the ability to reproduce. The millimeter-sized living machines, called Xenobots 3.0, are neither traditional robots nor a species of animal, but living, programmable organisms.

Other notable advances include research on the accurate prediction of protein structures, a genetic engineering technique for genetic diseases, using human pluripotent stem cells to grow sesame-seedsized heart models, and the recreation of the early structures of the human embryo from stem cells.

The selection of the top-10 scientific advances in China and the world plays a positive role in popularizing the latest sci-tech developments at home and abroad.