Bioethical governance and basic stem cell science: China and the global biomedicine economy

The rapid growth of the global biomedicine economy has been matched by an expansion of the governance knowledge required to facilitate its development. As part of that process, and in response to the governance needs generated by cultural conflict, bioethics has emerged as the political means for the creation of a global moral economy where the trading and exchange of values is normalised and legitimated. However, as a novel form of governance, bioethics cannot assume that it has automatic legitimacy within the jurisdiction of states, such as China, who are new entrants to the bioeconomy. Taking the case of basic stem cell science, this paper explores how far bioethics in China has evolved as an epistemic community capable of drawing on global bioethics networks to produce governance knowledge that is both compatible with traditional Chinese values and able to be translated into a legal/bureaucratic form that can be employed in policy agenda setting, formation and implementation.