Academician Tan Tianwei Highlights Biomanufacturing as a $30 Trillion Market, Comparable in Strategic Importance to Semiconductor Development

“Biomanufacturing, as an industrial technology that utilizes living organisms for large-scale production, is projected to account for one-third of global manufacturing output by the end of this century,”reaching a scale of up to30Trillion-Dollar Emerging Industry Market.”

According to the official WeChat account of Beijing University of Chemical Technology, recently in2025At the China Biomanufacturing Technological Innovation Forum, Tan Tianwei, President of Beijing University of Chemical Technology and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, stated in his keynote speech titled “Developing Biomanufacturing to Boost New Quality Productive Forces.”

Academician Tan Tianwei is a primary initiator of China’s biomanufacturing industry. He was the first to propose the concept of third-generation biomanufacturing on the international stage, leveraging biomanufacturing approaches to develop bioenergy, bio-based materials, and nutritional health products. He has achieved breakthroughs in the fermentative production of lipases and their application in industrial enzymatic catalysis. These contributions have helped enhance production efficiency and reduce carbon emissions, thereby promoting the high-quality development of China’s biomanufacturing industry.

In the view of Academician Tan Tianwei, biomanufacturing demonstrates immense potential in addressing the challenges posed by resource and environmental constraints.

For example, adopting50cubic-meter bioreactor for artemisinin production, with an efficiency equivalent to saving3Ten thousand mu of arable land significantly demonstrate the superiority of the industrial model over the traditional agricultural model. In the materials sector, each ton of bio-based plastic can reduce0.6tons of carbon dioxide emissions, becoming an important pathway to achieving the “dual carbon” goals.

Academician Tan Tianwei has pointed out that the current annual total carbon emissions from China's petrochemical and coal chemical industries are approaching9100 million tons, accounting for approximately of the total industrial emissions23%. With its lifecycle carbon-negative characteristics—“utilization of renewable carbon sources, low-carbon process design, and product carbon sequestration”—biomanufacturing has become a key pathway to achieving carbon neutrality.

According to estimates, bio-based products achieve an average emission reduction compared to the petrochemical route.50%~70%, if achieved in the chemical and materials sectors30%replacement rate,2030Cumulative emission reductions of over15100 million tons of carbon dioxide.

Moreover, it is worth noting that by advancing innovative technologies such as synthetic protein production, China is poised to replace its current reliance on soybean imports—which currently require hundreds of millions of mu of arable land to produce—through industrialized manufacturing, thereby fundamentally strengthening its capacity to ensure food security.

Beyond resolving the dilemmas of resources and the environment, biomanufacturing technology is also driving revolutionary breakthroughs at the application level.

Academician Tan Tianwei stated that precise pest control methods, such as the use of bio-pheromones, are emerging in the agricultural sector and can replace high-residue pesticides; Germany has already developed green pesticide technologies with long-lasting adhesion properties.

In terms of materials, the cost of products such as hyaluronic acid has been significantly reduced through biomanufacturing, while carbon dioxide holds broad application prospects as a raw material for third-generation biomanufacturing.AI empowerment further accelerates innovation, for example, by enabling the industrial-scale, high-efficiency production of scarce components such as protocatechuic acid, an antioxidant found in green tea, through digital cell factory design.

While biomanufacturing holds immense potential, Academician Tan Tianwei pointed out that it is becoming a focal point of strategic competition among major powers, with the United States having formulated a detailed action plan aimed at20Replace with bio-based products within the year90%of traditional plastics; the European Union will2027The carbon border adjustment mechanism implemented in [year] also constitutes a new green trade barrier for China’s high-carbon-emission products.

Moreover, in the international market, the United States, the European Union, and others have been strategically implementing their plans in recent years.“Life Foundry”and“Microbial Cell Factories”and other plans, organize multiple relevant universities and research institutes to study the use of synthetic biology technologies to achieve standardized design and manufacturing of bio-based materials.

Furthermore, according to a previous review by Academician Tan Tianwei,Major international biotechnology companies are increasing their investments in capital and talent to varying degrees, aiming to establish R&D platforms for industrial microbial strains and build competitive market advantages for their core strains.

For example, DuPont de Nemours, Inc. (USA)Duration12Year, Investment4hundred million USD, through genetic engineering modification of Escherichia coli, successfully achieved1,3-The fully bio-based synthesis of propylene glycol has completely disrupted traditional petrochemical synthesis routes and has maintained a global market monopoly for many years. Ajinomoto Co., Inc. of Japan has established a dedicated1700Large R&D team, with annual R&D expenditure3hundred million U.S. dollars, enabling it to maintain a long-term international leading position in core technologies related to key microbial strains such as amino acids.2022Year,GinkgoandZymergenCompleted M&A and successful IPO, with a valuation of approximately150hundred million US dollars, making it a unicorn company in the field of synthetic biology.

Academician Tan Tianwei once published an article in Frontiers of Science, emphasizing thatTo some extent, the importance of biomanufacturing is no less than that of chip development.

“Although China’s biomanufacturing industry has already formed a global70%fermentation production capacity scale, but bottlenecks such as the lack of proprietary microbial strains and restrictions on core tool software still constrain industrial competitiveness.”

In response, Academician Tan Tianwei called forStrengthen top-level design and prioritize breakthroughs in frontier areas such as biological carbon dioxide conversion and future food manufacturing., exploring a “kill two birds with one stone” approach to simultaneously address the challenges of green chemical substitution and protein supply security, thereby enabling China to seize the initiative in the competition shaping the future industrial landscape and injecting new momentum into high-quality economic development.