It is highly unusual for a developing country to assume a leading position in an important field of scientific endeavour. But China says that it intends to do just that in agricultural biotechnology — and all the signs are that its plan should be taken seriously.

China has already devoted a considerable research effort to plant science, including the development of transgenic crops (see page 111). Its public programme is making progress on many fronts, from sequencing the rice genome to producing hundreds of promising crop varieties. The programme is characterized not just by the nation's customary determination, but also by talent, imagination and a strong outward orientation that engages Chinese scientists in collaboration with colleagues overseas.

Amid all this activity, Chinese regulators have recently been reluctant to approve the commercial planting of transgenic food crops (genetically modified cotton is already well established). The government claims to be worried about whether Europe will accept exports of transgenic food, and about public reaction at home. Neither argument is convincing: its agricultural trade with Europe is small, and the public reaction is firmly under the state's control.

What China really wants is some breathing space to enable its own transgenic technology to catch up with that abroad. There's nothing inherently wrong with this: unless the United States wants to fight a war to open up China's markets, as Britain once did to force it to accept opium imports, it needs to recognize China's strategic need to develop its own agricultural biotechnology. Advocates of US agricultural biotechnology, such as Senator Chuck Grassley (Republican, Iowa), probably want the United States to take China to the World Trade Organization for protecting its markets in this way. But this heavy-handed approach will do the technology no favours.

Like all developing countries, China needs time to assess and develop agricultural biotechnology on its own terms. The stranglehold on patents for methods and genes that Western corporations and universities have obtained in this arena is already making life hard for agricultural scientists across the developing world. At least China has the political and financial clout to overcome these obstacles and develop the technology in the interests of its own farmers.

An old Chinese proverb says that if you sit on the banks of the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float down past you. It is not clear if the author had President Bush, Senator Grassley or the board of Monsanto in mind. But China's patience will, in the long run, be the best way to assure the fruitful introduction of agricultural biotechnology into the world's most populous nation.