China's 'little giant' firms inject new impetus into economy

At a factory laboratory in suburban Beijing, workers are pouring a milky-white substance into a starch fermentation cylinder. Forty hours later, bacteria in the tank will give birth to a mass of powder that can be used to make biodegradable plastic film.

"In those bacterial colonies, each cell forms a super factory," said Chen Guoqiang, a Tsinghua University bioengineering professor and founder of PhaBuilder, a startup using microbes to churn out high-value-added industrial raw materials.

The work conducted at PhaBuilder is typical of the country's emerging industrial landscape, where a host of tech-intensive Chinese startups have sprung up, acting as the new engines driving economic growth.