The Singapore office environment is sluggish due to the pandemic, with the island-wide office occupancy rate shrinking by 0.3%. Commercial real estate prices continue to decline.
Kechuang Bio invested heavily to purchase an office building located 4km down from Tuas Biomedical Park in Singapore, near the Pacific Ocean, and had Abogen Biosciences fully transform it into a research and development center integrating laboratory and office functions.
Singapore has a highly developed pharmaceutical R&D industry, with the Tuas Biomedical Park housing research institutes of numerous multinational pharmaceutical companies, including AbbVie, Alcon, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Roche, and Shire.
The supporting facilities are very complete, but the office building chosen by Kechuang Bio is some distance away from the Tuas Biomedical Park, so it can only enjoy some of the conveniences of the Tuas Biomedical Park.
This office building will serve as the Singapore R&D center for Sci-Tech Biotech, with a total cost of 1.68 billion Singapore dollars, or approximately 8.4 billion RMB, including renovation costs.
For Kechuang Biotechnology, which has 5 billion US dollars lying on its books that it hasn't spent, this amount of money is at most a small sum.
Before building the R&D center in Singapore, Lei Jun had a special talk with Zheng Li in Suzhou. He felt that there was absolutely no need to invest so much money to build an overseas R&D center.
“Junior brother, it’s very common for pharmaceutical companies to build R&D bases overseas. In particular, scientific and technological innovation companies cannot rely solely on endorphins for development.”
“I completely understand and support it. The R&D environment and supporting facilities in Singapore are very good. In the future, rice may also establish an R&D base in Singapore.”
"However, it is not necessary to buy an office building. In the early stages, you can mainly rent office space, and then consider buying or even building your own if the scale increases later."
Lei Jun and Zheng Li now address each other as fellow disciples to show their closeness.
Zheng Li still holds 70% of the shares in Kechuang Biotechnology, giving him absolute control over the company. Other shareholders only have advisory rights.
Lei Jun's suggestion embodies typical internet thinking: small steps, rapid iterations, and continuous improvement.
Zheng Li replied, "I plan to be based in Singapore from now on. Cheng Gang and Li Miaomiao are helping me keep an eye on things at the company. Once the R&D base in Singapore is completed, I will be based there permanently. I have new research goals."
"The R&D base in Singapore will support the development of Kechuang Bio over the next five years."
Zheng Li's answer piqued Lei Jun's curiosity. It had been a year since Zheng Li began researching the industrial synthesis pathway of endorphins, and he had produced nothing else during that year, nor had he mentioned what he did every day in his laboratory in Suzhou.
“If that’s the case, then I think there’s no problem with the R&D base in Singapore.”
"But I'm still curious about your research goals?"
Zheng Li replied, "Brain-computer interface, I've been researching this area for the past year, and I've made some progress and have some clues. I need to go to Singapore to verify my ideas."
"The reason we have to go to Singapore is because Singapore has a relatively diverse population, and brain-computer interfaces require a sufficiently diverse population to conduct experiments."
Compared to the relatively homogeneous Mongoloid population in China, Southeast Asia has a much more diverse ethnic composition.
Zheng Li continued to explain: "Moreover, different languages can produce differences in people's consciousness. The same brainwave signal may express different meanings in different language systems."
Lei Jun was completely bewildered. He didn't understand what Zheng Li was saying. Most people don't realize that language family can affect your cognitive function.
Zheng Li: "Therefore, I need to conduct more multi-dimensional experiments to revise my theory and my product."
Zheng Li's statement was the official one; the real reason he was going to Lion City was because he had made a breakthrough in artificial brain technology.
Artificial brains are a common technology in the Mage Alliance, applied to everyone, but that doesn't mean he can create artificial brains. He may understand the principles, but it would take time to reproduce them.
Just as everyone in China who has received a secondary education knows the principle of a steam engine, it would be difficult to recreate a steam engine in ancient times with limited tools.
Of course, this is just an analogy.
Furthermore, America has imposed a blockade on China of many top-tier scientific research equipment.
The American Control List contains as many as 4,500 items, of which more than 40% are scientific research equipment needed for laboratories.
These research equipment can be purchased in Singapore, but are completely unavailable in China. This is also a major reason why Zheng Li wanted to go to Singapore.
Another important point is that even if an artificial brain were created, Zheng Li would not dare to use it on himself immediately; he would need test subjects to conduct experiments.
Zheng Li's public statement is that brain-computer interfaces need to be developed.
Lei Jun asked, "Are there any preliminary products you can showcase right now?"
Zheng Li led him to the laboratory on the seventh floor and handed him a black helmet. "Put it on and try to control the dots on the screen with your mind."
"Imagine the dots on the screen as mouse cursors, try it."
Lei Jun was having a great time watching the black background and white dots on the screen.
Zheng Li continued, "You can try our little games."
After saying that, Zheng Li sat down on the other side and put on a black helmet. He continued, "I control the white bar on the left, and you control the white bar on the right. It's a ping-pong game."
"The white stripe is the paddle, and the white dot is the ping-pong ball. We can't let the white dot touch the black parts on both sides."
Lei Jun nodded and said, "Isn't that just like the first computer game in history?"
The first computer game was a ping-pong game that scientists in America who were researching nuclear weapons used to play when they were bored. They combined a computer with an oscilloscope and used a control knob to control a ball – a light spot and two pieces bouncing back and forth.
After playing around for a while, Zheng Li stood up and gestured, "Let's go."
Lei Jun was still somewhat reluctant to leave:
"I will fully support you; you are truly a genius among geniuses."
Zheng Li said calmly, "The current brain-computer interface technology is still some distance from maturity. During my time in Singapore, I will focus all my efforts on developing brain-computer interface technology and commercializing it as soon as possible."
Lei Jun asked, "Can brain-computer interface technology be applied to mobile phones?"
Zheng Li: "These are all mature API interface calling methods. Brain signals are converted into electronic signals, so if it can connect to a computer, it can connect to a mobile phone."
Lei Jun: "Dami is in a difficult situation recently. Don't laugh at me, but Dami has been established for almost ten years and can only rely on cost-effectiveness as its selling point."
"Trying to break into the high-end market is impossible. Even today, with Huawei severely weakened by America's blockade of the high-end brand market, Xiaomi still cannot gain a foothold in the high-end mobile phone market."
Zheng Li didn't understand the mobile phone industry, or rather, he didn't understand the consumer goods industry on Earth: "What's wrong with cost-effectiveness?"
"Why did you start out making rice based on cost-effectiveness?" Zheng Li paused halfway through his sentence and remained silent.
His underlying meaning is that Xiaomi phones originated from the market of cost-effectiveness, so why should they now look down on cost-effectiveness?
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