Why China is a Genetic Powerhouse with a Problem

In the South China city of Shenzhen, a thriving manufacturing hub known for cheap goods and high-tech electronics, the genetic secrets of life roll off machines by the minute.Here at the global headquarters of BGI-Shenzhen, housed in a former shoe factory, the genomic revolution runs on an industrial scale. Powered by an army of young lab technicians and banks of high-end, U.S.-made sequencers that hum 24/7, the DNA of human kind is decoded with conveyor-belt speed and brute force.

But not just human DNA. Once known as the Beijing Genomics Institute, BGI is on a mission to sequence the genomes of a vast array of living things. It has already done rice, the cucumber, the Giant Panda, the Arabian camel, the chicken, the coronavirus behind severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), 40 strains of silkworm and the Tibetan antelope, to name just a few.

Its services are in high demand. It has unravelled the DNA of a 4,000-year-old Greenlander dubbed Inuk, teamed with Saudi Biosciences to sequence Arab genomes and with the University of Edinburgh to decode plants, animals and people...