Companies in Kunming industrial development zone earn income of $17b in 2011
What would come into your mind if someone asked you about Yunnan province in southwestern China? Perhaps beautiful natural landscapes, wild animals and various ethnic groups, but it's less likely that you would think of the high-tech industry.
However, the companies gathered in the Kunming National High-tech Industries Development Zone, which occupies an area of five square kilometers in the provincial capital, had an annual income of $17 billion last year.
Thanks to the support of the local government, companies in the zone are making a number of achievements that are putting Kunming and Yunnan on the high-tech map.
Improving healthcare
An undiagnosed illness that was found when he was a baby almost wiped out 15-year-old Cheng Jianfeng's family's savings.
When he was young, Cheng would often suffer from fevers, and fell into comas on several occasions.
As a result, his family in northeastern Yunnan province, with an annual income of no more than 3,000 yuan ($472), was plunged into debt.
However, the biggest problem his family faced was a lack of access to good doctors and decent healthcare.
It takes more than a day to travel from Cheng's home to Kunming, the provincial capital. And despite having received medical treatment twice at a hospital in Kunming, his condition failed to improve.
Events took a turn for the better in 2006, when doctors from Peking University First Hospital gave him a consultation.
However, rather than traveling the long distance from Beijing to rural Yunnan, which would have taken a great deal of time and money, the doctors conducted their consultation using telemedicine technology.
Telemedicine - the use of telecommunication and information technology in order to provide clinical healthcare at a distance - is still an unfamiliar word to most Chinese people.
But in Yunnan, Cheng is among the 626,000 telemedicine cases that Sunpa has handled in the past 14 years.
Thanks to telemedicine, Cheng was finally diagnosed with sequel encephalitis and returned to school after a couple of weeks of treatment.
Sunpa, in the Kunming National High-tech Industries Development Zone, is China's the largest developer and manufacturer of telemedicine systems and digital medical devices.
The company, established in 1998, has set up one of the largest telemedicine networks in the world centered on Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Kunming, and affecting more than 1,000 hospitals at different levels throughout China. It has gathered more than 6,500 well-known medical experts and 70,000 outstanding doctors, aiming to provide quality medical services for 500 million people.
"It will make a significant change to the medical services in a very large geographical area in China," said Liu Yong, chairman of the company.
"Especially in those remote areas, where transport and medical support are so scarce, telemedicine will provide patients with chances to get healthier while reducing costs."
It is estimated that in Yunnan alone, Sunpa has helped to save the government and patients more than $460 million over the past 14 years.
It also has successfully carried out several telemedicine projects in South Africa and India.
"Our medical service platform will also benefit doctors, bringing convenience to medical education. Even physicians in county level hospitals can observe complicated surgery done by well-known doctors in other countries," Liu said.
He said the medical education services provided by Sunpa have saved the government and medical institutions $178 million.
Moreover, the company will further develop its portable wireless medical devices, providing various tests, and can immediately update information on its Internet database.
Sunpa is now working to develop a cloud-based medical service platform.
"We will build an all-in-one solution for health information systems," he said.
Internet connecting Asia
"China's logistics industry is on its way toward dramatic change in the near future. And the place where this dream comes true will be Kunming," said Lei Xin. She is the deputy managing director of Yunnan International E-commerce Co Ltd, and also the vice-president of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations office of Newegg, the second-largest online retailer in the United States.
Yunnan International E-commerce Company, a branch company of Newegg in the Kunming National High-tech Industries Development Zone, is trying to build an e-commerce platform connecting China and Southeast Asian countries.
"We have our unique advantages. In the past 12 years, Newegg has gained great experience in building a well-run warehouse and logistics system," Lei said.
Ozzo - Newegg's logistics company with five warehouses for almost the entire Chinese mainland - puts the company in good stead for future cross-border commerce.
Different from most retailers, Newegg has its own e-commerce software as an efficient solution for warehousing.
"Our software is designed according to every detail of our real working experience of every little process," Lei said.
"We are thinking about every second that can be saved in the deal."
Statistics from the Yunnan Department of Commerce show that trade between ASEAN and the province increased to nearly $6 billion last year, up 30 percent year-on-year.
She said the company will work to build a warehouse and shipping system, not only for retail but also trade in raw materials, including wood and minerals, and also design personalized services for various purchasers. "There will be a very big market with great potential," Lei said.
Vaccine breakthrough
On a Wednesday morning in 1984, 2-month-old Zhang Limei was fed a small red piece of sugar, a traditional oral polio vaccine.
She enjoyed the sugar very much and cried for another one. Zhang now plans to have a second baby, but there may be no need for it to eat the sugary polio vaccine. It is being replaced by a new safer vaccine made by the Institute of Medical Biology at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.
Polio, a highly infectious viral disease that mainly affects young children, causes paralysis in a small number of cases. It can only be prevented by immunization.
Chinese people have been taking oral polio vaccine, four sugar balls for a whole immune cycle, since the 1960s. It helps build an effective immune system but has two potential side effects - about two or three out of every one million babies will suffer permanent paralysis after taking it. More dangerously, the live virus used in the pill may lead to secondary transmission through excretion, allowing the virus to possibly turn into another new and threatening one.
According to Sun Mingbo, director of the institute's Production Management Department, a new injection vaccine tested on a cell which is very similar to human cells will be available in China next year.
"It is the leading technology in the world, which prevents all the risks that pills or other injection vaccines may have," Sun said.
The institute is building its factory in the Chenggong New Zone, in the city's high-tech industrial zone.
The factory, due for completion next year, is expected to have an initial annual output of 6 million doses of the new vaccine. The figure is due to surpass 20 million by the end of 2014.
Compared with imported injection vaccine priced at about 500 yuan ($78) for a whole cycle, the new vaccine will cost 120 yuan.
"Production will be sufficient for the 15 million newborn babies in China every year," he said.
And the institute will also apply for World Health Organization certification in the near future.
"No vaccine producers in China have so far received this certification, which permits overseas exports without clinical tests. After receiving it, we will be able to export a great deal of polio vaccine to neighboring countries, where the disease remains active," Sun said.
"As a result, Kunming will be making a remarkable achievement in terms of human health."
（Source: China Daily）
