SHANGHAI KEY TO BASIC RESEARCH LEAD

City's policies, investment help country maintain global edge in science

Shanghai's leading role in ensuring China's global preeminence in basic scientific research got off to a stellar start this year, with four major papers published in a single issue of the prestigious journal Cell in late January.

The papers were from teams at the Synthetic Science Innovation Research Center at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, or SJTU, the Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the CAS' Center for Excellence in Brain Science and Intelligence Technology.

Also, in the first two months of this year, researchers from Shanghai's Fudan University published six papers in the world's top three journals — Cell, Nature and Science — while another four papers have been accepted. As of early March, researchers from SJTU had published seven papers in these journals.