On 3 January 2019, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology officially accepted the five policy recommendations Dr Joy Zhang, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at SSPSSR, proposed on promoting transparent governance and public engagement capacities in Chinese scientific communities.
This comes after a period of turmoil around China’s controversial biomedical research which had earned it the title of the ‘Wild East’ of Biology and sparked a global ethics debate around the morality of cloning and, more recently, the CRISPR scandal where a Chinese researcher used the gene-editing tools to create the world’s first genetically edited babies.
This set of policies are based on Joy’s Economic and Social Research Council project, Governing Scientific Accountability in China, which proposed a timely study into the accountability of China’s governance of stem cell research and GM foods.
More information about Dr Joy Zhang’s research can be found on the Governing Scientific Accountability in China website.