I recently spent some time in the “Golden Triangle,” which on its Northern edge is delineated by the area between Nanjing and Shanghai. What is initially striking is the absolutely mammoth investment in infrastructure that has occurred in this region in recent years, and is continuing to occur. The Shanghai/Nanjing bullet train is due to open in 2011 and will reduce the journey time from over two hours to down to 50 minutes. It is in this region that most of the 250 million middle-class Chinese live and work. Most of the families using the more highly-priced Western drugs will be in this region. The overall infrastructure is striking — with the huge modern airport, several times the size of Terminal 5 Heathrow, with mile-upon-mile of elevated highway with not a single pot-hole, and with literally hundreds and hundreds of apartment blocks built in the past few years. Then there is the infrastructure for life sciences R&D based in and around the leading science parks. And it is not a question of these facilities standing empty as they do in relation to many equivalent projects in the Middle East. These facilities are full of scientists going about their business. How has this been achieved?
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