China Challenges the West in Stem-Cell Research

In 1983, Sheng Huizhen did what many of China's brightest students do: She left to pursue research opportunities unavailable to her at home, first in Australia and then in the United States. Sixteen years later, in search of greater scientific freedom, she migrated again. This time she headed back to China. As a researcher who studies embryonic stem cells, Ms. Sheng found the climate in the United States limiting. Although she landed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, where she worked her way up to a permanent staff position, federal policy at the time barred her from using human embryos or the cells derived from them.

China, however, embraced Ms. Sheng's work. The city of Shanghai in 1999 offered her $875,000 to set up a new center at her alma mater, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, to study embryonic stem cells. She now directs a group of more than 50 people who are working on several lines of research, seeking to make cells useful for treating disease.

Restrictive policies and a frosty cultural climate in the United States...