Bioeconomy as the Next Industrial Frontier: Kjeld Friis Munkholm on China, BRICS, and the Race to 2030

Why Is China’s Bioeconomy Becoming a Strategic Priority?

This was the right move because my work was already deeply focused on sustainability, ESG, SDG alignment, circular economy, and practical industrial transition long before I joined the World Bioeconomy Association. The ambassador role gives me a stronger platform to contribute positively, connect China more meaningfully to the global bioeconomy discussion, and bring wider international attention to how seriously these themes are already being treated in China.

What many outside observers still underestimate is that China has moved beyond policy language alone. It already has a formal national bioeconomy plan, a stated ambition to be at the forefront globally in comprehensive bioeconomy strength by 2035, and real foundations in agricultural germplasm, biodiversity monitoring, industrial biotechnology, biomedicine, and biomanufacturing. That makes the Chinese bioeconomy important not only as a sustainability story, but as a state-supported industrial story.

China is treating bioeconomy as all three, but with a clear order of priority. Sustainability gives the agenda legitimacy, industrial strategy gives it force, and geopolitical competitiveness becomes the consequence if the first two succeed.

China is not framing bioeconomy merely as an environmental theme. It is linking it to healthcare, food security, biological breeding, advanced materials, environmental protection, industrial upgrading, and increasingly to biomanufacturing as a future-industry capability. In that sense, the Chinese interpretation is broader and more strategic than many Western observers still assume.

“It is not simply about greener products. It is about future productive capacity, industrial resilience, and long-term strategic positioning.”

Which Signals in China’s 2026–2030 Framework Matter Most?

The most important signal is that biomanufacturing has moved from being a specialist biotech topic into China’s future-industry frame. That changes the strategic reading completely, because companies should now see China not only as a market, but also as a scale-up platform, an engineering environment, and a place where industrial policy, pilot infrastructure, commercialization pressure, and standards ambition are increasingly aligned.

A second signal is the strengthening of emerging and future industries across the 2026–2030 period through national demonstration bases, forward-looking science and technology projects, and government investment funds. A third signal is ecosystem density: official data show that around 1.13 million companies were established in emerging and future industries in 2025, up 9.9 percent year on year, which means opportunity is expanding but disciplined counterpart selection is becoming even more important.

The clearest strategic winner is industrial biomanufacturing. I see it as the strongest platform segment because it connects enzymes, fermentation-derived chemicals, specialty ingredients, agricultural biology, biomaterials, performance molecules, and selected health-related inputs.

Bio-based chemicals, specialty ingredients, and functional molecules also rank very high because they fit China’s priorities around performance, import substitution, scale, and value addition. Bio-agriculture is becoming increasingly strategic as an operating system, especially in biological breeding, microbial inputs, soil biology, smart farming, and agricultural residue valorization, while precision fermentation should be understood less as a narrow food-tech story and more as part of a wider industrial architecture linked to synthetic biology and scale-up capability.

Where Are the Most Realistic Entry Points for BRICS Companies?

The most realistic entry points are technology partnerships, industrial pilot projects, supply-chain integration, and selective joint ventures once trust, governance, and technical fit are established. Academic cooperation also matters, but it creates the strongest practical value when it is linked to translation, testing, pilot-scale work, standards, or commercialization.

In China, the strongest approach is usually institution-first and cluster-aware rather than random company outreach. Serious foreign players should focus on strong research systems, applied institutes, industrial translation platforms, and selected cluster environments where policy support and execution capability already meet, because that reduces noise, improves partner quality, and increases the probability of working with ecosystems capable of delivering real results.

Bioeconomy changes competitiveness from a narrow question of cost, volume, and delivery into a broader question of managed biological systems. By 2030, serious business leaders will need to measure feedstock security and conversion efficiency, pilot-to-scale reproducibility, water intensity and carbon intensity, traceability, biosafety, regulatory fit, and MRV capability across the operating model.

Carbon, resource, and process claims now need to be documented credibly for regulators, customers, investors, and supply-chain partners. Biological resources and biological data are becoming part of industrial power, and the companies that stay relevant will be the ones that can manage biology, engineering, compliance, and verification as one integrated industrial discipline.

“Winners will be defined by pilot infrastructure, traceability, and MRV discipline.”

How Should Companies Navigate Europe and China Together?

Companies should not choose one operating logic and reject the other. They should combine them intelligently, because Europe remains highly relevant for standards, certification, lifecycle discipline, traceability, and premium-market legitimacy, while China remains highly relevant for industrial clustering, engineering density, execution speed, and the ability to connect policy, manufacturing, and commercialization.

An equally important part of the China equation is the role of universities, academies, research institutes, and applied innovation platforms. The strongest corporate model is therefore dual-track: use Europe for validation, regulatory discipline, and premium positioning, and use China for engineering depth, selected pilot acceleration, industrial learning, manufacturing scale where appropriate, and access to institution-linked innovation ecosystems, always with disciplined partner screening, IP protection, contracts, quality assurance, data boundaries, and reciprocity.

The clearest front-runners today are China, India, and Brazil, but each for different reasons. China stands out for policy orchestration, industrial scale, scientific infrastructure, and execution capacity; India stands out for biotech entrepreneurship, talent, agribiologicals, diagnostics, and growing biomanufacturing ambition; and Brazil stands out for biodiversity-linked value chains, tropical agriculture, biomass, regenerative pathways, and the strategic importance of sociobioeconomy.

What will separate winners from late movers is not rhetoric, but continuity and operating discipline. Policy continuity, pilot infrastructure, feedstock governance, traceability, standards discipline, commercialization capability, and the ability to convert science or biomass availability into bankable industrial models will define who leads the next phase of the global bioeconomy.

Where Do Investors Still Misread the Bioeconomy, and What Must Happen by 2030?

The biggest mistake is to confuse scientific promise with industrial readiness. Another common mistake is to assume that because biomass exists, a viable value chain automatically exists as well, when in reality that often remains untrue until infrastructure, governance, and processing capability are in place.

I see over-optimism around scale-up speed, consumer adoption, and the ease of cost reduction in areas such as precision fermentation and new biomaterials. I see underestimation in the less visible but more durable layers of competitive advantage: pilot infrastructure, downstream processing, industrial water reuse, wastewater resource recovery, traceability, MRV systems, and the institutional architecture required for commercialization. In this field, discipline matters more than excitement.

A credible BRICS–Europe bioeconomy agenda must be built on practical pilots rather than general declarations. In practice, that means focused tracks such as joint pilots and scale-up partnerships in industrial biotechnology, biomass and residue valorization models, wastewater and circular-resource demonstration projects, standards and traceability work, and biodiversity-linked value chains with proper governance.

The international environment is becoming more supportive, not less, and the World Bioeconomy Association is explicitly structured around bioresource, biotechnology, and bioecology. Companies that want to be relevant by 2030 should start now with one or two focused themes, a disciplined counterpart map, a pilot pathway, and a governance framework covering IP, MRV, standards, and compliance, because MRV is essential if sustainability, carbon, and resource-performance claims are to be commercially credible.

“A credible BRICS–Europe cooperation agenda must be built on practical pilots, not general declarations.”

About the Expert

Kjeld Friis Munkholm 孟可和 is Ambassador to China at the World Bioeconomy Association, Owner & CEO of Munkholm & Zhang Consulting, and a member of the EUCPTID Committee. Based in Shanghai, he works across industrial development, industrial processes, green energy, circular economy, sustainability, and ESG- and SDG-aligned transformation.

With more than 26 years of international experience, he brings research and operating insight across manufacturing, energy, water, and waste handling. His work bridges policy and execution, supports investment and infrastructure, and connects Europe, China, and BRICS markets around long-term industrial transformation.

He is also a regular contributor to B2BRICS Magazine’s coverage of markets, industrial strategy, and sustainability. His previous B2BRICS interview focused on industrial transformation, ESG, and the future of BRICS–Europe cooperation.

Key Points

Q: Why is China’s bioeconomy now strategically important for BRICS and European companies?

China’s bioeconomy matters because it is no longer only a sustainability narrative. It is being built as an industrial system with policy support, pilot infrastructure, commercialization pressure, and future-industry ambition, which means foreign companies now need to see China as a scale-up and engineering environment rather than simply as a large end market.

Q: Which bioeconomy segment looks strongest over the next three to five years?

Industrial biomanufacturing is the strongest platform segment because it connects multiple value pools at once, including enzymes, chemicals, specialty ingredients, agricultural biology, biomaterials, performance molecules, and selected health-related inputs. In practical terms, it offers the broadest industrial platform for investors thinking beyond a narrow biotech niche.

Q: What should business leaders measure differently if they want to stay relevant by 2030?

They should measure feedstock security, conversion efficiency, pilot-to-scale reproducibility, water and carbon intensity, traceability, biosafety, regulatory fit, and MRV capability. The broader point is that competitiveness in bioeconomy depends less on slogans and more on the ability to document and manage biological, industrial, and compliance performance together.

Q: Which BRICS countries are best positioned to lead the bioeconomy?

China, India, and Brazil are currently the strongest candidates, but for different structural reasons. China has orchestration and scale, India has biotech talent and entrepreneurship, and Brazil has biodiversity-linked value chains and biomass advantages; the differentiator will be whether those strengths are converted into bankable industrial models.

Q: Where do investors most often misread bioeconomy opportunities?

They often overestimate scientific promise and underestimate industrial readiness. Common blind spots include pilot infrastructure, downstream processing, wastewater and water systems, traceability, MRV, and the institutional architecture required for commercialization, all of which determine whether a promising concept becomes a durable business.

Q: What should companies do now if they want to be part of a credible BRICS–Europe bioeconomy agenda by 2030?

They should begin with one or two focused themes, build a disciplined counterpart map, develop a pilot pathway, and put governance around IP, MRV, standards, and compliance in place early. The companies most likely to succeed by 2030 will be those that move from general interest to practical pilot preparation now.