Much has been made of China’s efforts to close the gap between western high technology sectors, and in the case of certain spaces, to actually bridge the gap and become a global leader. In form, these efforts represent the potential – but not the inevitability – of similar outcomes in other high technology sectors. One of the sectors that has received significant interest by the Chinese government are life sciences; however, as we found in a nearly two year survey of various Chinese officials, entrepreneurs and multinationals, the unique requirements to re-create the innovative ecosystem for the life science space remain immature in China. While the potential for China to disrupt how and where life science innovation takes place globally, there are reasons to believe the country’s policies to develop domestic success stories may fall short of similar endeavors in other high technology segments such as clean-technology.