Returned scientist finds opportunity back home

Song Xu is a busy man these days.

Song divides his time between teaching classes at Sichuan University and his work as R&D director at the Chengdu Foregene Biotechnology Company.

He and the company he founded specialize in two technologies. The first is called DNA single-column technology, which is exclusively produced by his company.

The second is called Direct PCR. It can be used to determine if food is pure or contaminated.

This technology could be used by quality inspectors to detect the adulterants in some food.

In 2006, Song came back with a doctorate from Yale University to teach at Sichuan University, where he had gotten his undergraduate and master’s degrees.

While teaching and conducting scientific research, he found that almost all the highend agents are imported. He resolved to change this by creating his own business.

With the help of two former classmates who now work in financing and investment, Foregene was established in April 2011, with an initial investment of 2.3 million yuan ($371,000).

Now investments total more than 6 million yuan. Almost all of the 30 staff members of the company are Chinese who have returned from overseas.

Currently, two leading experts in genetically modified rice use Foregene’s agents. One is Yuan Longping, who has been nicknamed the “father of genetically modified rice”, and the other is Zhang Qifa, a professor at Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan, capital of Central China’s Hubei province.

“The Chengdu government provides us excellent services, and I’m very satisfied,” Song said. The local government has done everything to accommodate the company, he also noted.

“Investors in Chengdu are more willing to support those companies at the beginning level or that are rather mature. So it is relatively tougher for companies at the middle level, like us,” he said.

He told reporters that the 2013 sales goal is to reach some 5 million yuan in sales revenue. He said he hopes to attract large investments to help the company capture a greater share of this potentially lucrative market.

His goal is to achieve a 30 percent domestic market share in the next three to five years.

Song said a lot of his colleagues are returning from overseas because they see new opportunities back home.

“In the US, it is relatively more stable. You can envision what you will be like in a couple of years. In China, there are more changes, and of course, more chances,” he said.

“Biological companies in China lag behind those in some overseas countries, but actually there is not that much of a difference between good universities here and their competitors abroad.”

Song has a lot on his plate, heading the company’s research division while tutoring some 20 graduate students.

“I have had some problems making the transition from being a scholar to being a businessman,” he said.

For example, old friends have become clients. Also, he said that in school he was more concerned with the theoretical implications of his research, but as the head of a company, he must think more about commercial application.

“As an overseas returnee, I think the most important thing is looking toward the future,” he told reporters.

ZOU HONG / CHINA DAILY Song Xu, R&D director at the Chengdu Foregene Biotechnology Company.