Pioneer in China luxury retailing in the 1990s through Ports Design brand is still eyeing expansion worldwide.

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Richard Suttmeier, a University of Oregon expert on Chinese science policy, said China hasn't figured out "the right formula" to pioneer new technologies in part because researchers are rewarded according to the number of academic papers they publish rather than the quality and novelty of their work.

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Take the case of Deng Xunming, a China-born U.S. citizen who is a pioneer of America's solar industry and whose innovations light up the first solar-powered billboard on New York's Times Square.

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Mr Moon's representatives initially hawked the idea around Beijing and Shanghai, where officials were sceptical about the ability of a church with no car-making experience to pioneer a foreign car industry in China.

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It was founded in 1919 by the man who would become his mentor, Cornelius Vander Starr, an insurance pioneer who sold policies in China.

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