EA - A write-up on the biosecurity landscape in China by Chloe Lee

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: A write-up on the biosecurity landscape in China, published by Chloe Lee on April 8, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Hello everyone,This is my first post on this forum and I am excited to share the output of my work supported by the Long Term Future Fund. My write-up is titled "China’s Take on Biosecurity: A Report on China’s View, Institutions, Policies, and Technology". It is now published on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) preprint site, see here.I would like to thank my mentor (requested to remain anonymous) for being incredibly helpful and encouraging throughout my biosecurity and EA journey. She provided excellent advice in shaping the research direction, writing the structure, and coming up with the content. I would also like to extend my thanks to Jonas Sandbrink for suggesting that I focus my research on understanding the biosecurity landscape in China and for taking the time to review my write-up. Last but not least, I want to express my gratitude to the following individuals for their constructive feedback and suggestions: Brian Tse, Ziya Huang, Myron Krueger, and Ruowei Yang.Scope and MethodologyMy conversations with Jonas Sandbrink helped shape the initial research directions for the project. We had some preliminary understanding that the Chinese community supports international pathogen surveillance and zoonotic risk prediction efforts, but not much beyond that. To further investigate this topic, we wanted to identify key points of contact (the government, researchers, and policy advocates) for biotechnology regulations and biosecurity, particularly governance against the deliberate misuse of biotechnology and biological weapons.After conducting initial research and discussions with my mentor, we concluded that it was important to tease out the Chinese term for biosecurity and its definition in the first part of the write-up to provide the necessary context to understand how biotechnology and biosecurity are governed. I studied multiple relevant terms, the interpretations provided by various academic researchers, and the context and frequency in which the terms are used in both Chinese and Western literature.The subsequent sections of the write-up focus on three areas: governance, processes, and technology related to biosecurity within the context of shengwu anquan in China. To comprehensively describe various perspectives on biosecurity, I adopted the common consulting framework of “People, Process, and Technology”. Each aspect of the framework could very well be a standalone research project in and of itself. Nonetheless, I tried to capture as many interesting and relevant observations as possible based on secondary research and analysis of various sources between 2002 and 2022 including peer-reviewed scientific journals, press announcements, government reports, and online searches via Google, Baidu, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI).What follows is a list of questions and excerpts from the write-up that illustrate the current state of development of biosecurity in China.FindingsThe Concept of Biosecurity in ChinaHow did the concept of biosecurity come about in China?World War II biowarfare (inflicted upon Chinese civilians and war prisoners in the 1930s-1940s), the advent of genetic engineering in the 1970s, and infectious disease outbreaks (SARS in 2003) spurred awareness of biosecurity in China and encouraged their participation in international treaties and the development of regulations.How do the Chinese communities define biosecurity?Various terms have been used to describe biosafety and biosecurity, including shengwu anquan, shengwu anbao, neibu shengwu anquan, and waibu shengwu anquan. Until today, there remains no consensus on the most accurate term and meaning for biosecurity.According to the ...