About Laoshan Laboratory

Laoshan Laboratory

Laoshan Laboratory, formally the Laoshan Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, is China's national laboratory for marine science, based in the coastal city of Qingdao in Shandong Province. It operates today under the Laoshan name as the restructured successor to the Pilot (Qingdao) National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, known in English-language records as QNLM. That predecessor was China's first national-level laboratory for marine science and technology, created to consolidate marine research strength that had previously been dispersed across separate institutes and universities. The laboratory's stated ambition, set out at its opening, was to become a world-class comprehensive research centre for marine science and technology and an open platform for collaborative innovation, gathering China's leading marine research teams in one institution.

Approval and opening

The laboratory was approved by China's Ministry of Science and Technology in December 2013, a date recorded consistently by the ministry-linked reporting of the period, by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Tethys knowledge hub and by Chinese Academy of Sciences releases. It was jointly built by national ministries and departments together with Shandong Province and Qingdao City. The laboratory opened in April 2015, with People's Daily reporting the launch on 16 April 2015 and describing it as China's first national-level lab for marine science and technology. The physical scale announced at the opening was substantial: total investment of about 1.3 billion yuan (around 200 million US dollars at the time) and a site covering about 150,000 square metres in Qingdao.

The institutions behind it

From the start, the laboratory was designed as a pooling mechanism rather than a single-institute laboratory. Scientists from 11 marine-related organisations participate in its research, including Ocean University of China and the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, both headquartered in Qingdao. Earlier planning records for the national laboratory describe co-sponsorship involving Ocean University of China, the Institute of Oceanology, the First Institute of Oceanography, the Yellow Sea Fisheries Research Institute and the Qingdao Institute of Marine Geology, supported by ministries responsible for science, finance, land and resources, education and agriculture alongside the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Shandong provincial government and the Qingdao municipal government. That breadth is central to the laboratory's identity: it was China's first attempt to consolidate its top marine research power into a single national platform.

Leadership

The laboratory's first head was academician Chen Yiyu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who at the 2015 opening said the laboratory was expected to become one of the world's largest marine science research centres within ten years. Leadership subsequently passed to academician Wu Lixin, also of Ocean University of China, who is quoted in Chinese Academy of Sciences reporting describing the consolidation experiment and setting the goal of ranking among the world's top five oceanographic research institutions, in company with institutions such as the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the United States. Chinese Academy of Sciences institute reporting from cooperation visits records Wu Lixin as director, Wang Zaiyi as managing vice director and Song Jinming as a vice director, which gives a documented picture of the laboratory's senior structure in that period.

Eight functional laboratories

The laboratory was built around eight functional laboratories. Contemporary opening coverage summarises their fields as marine and climate change, the evolution and protection of marine environments, and the sustainable use of marine biological resources. Planning documents describe the wider architecture as eight functional laboratories supported by research platforms and technical support systems, with individual functional laboratories assigned to participating institutions — for example, the Qingdao Institute of Marine Geology took responsibility for the marine mineral resources assessment and survey technology laboratory and a simulation platform for deep-sea mineralisation. The functional-laboratory model allowed each partner institution to build the part of the national laboratory closest to its own established strength while operating under a common national banner.

Strategic programmes: Transparent Ocean and beyond

Three strategic targets structured the laboratory's work during China's 13th Five-Year Plan period: "Transparent Ocean", "Blue Life" and "Submarine Resources". Academy reporting explains that Transparent Ocean focused on marine observation and marine dynamics research, Blue Life on marine fisheries and marine pharmacology, and Submarine Resources on undersea mineral resources. In the laboratory's later Qingdao planning, the named strategic projects appear as "Transparent Ocean", "Blue Medicine Bank" and "Blue Seed", which Qingdao's draft 15th Five-Year Plan proposals in 2025 said should be implemented to break through key core technologies and strengthen new marine productivity. The Transparent Ocean programme also acquired an international dimension: academy reporting noted that eight countries had joined the project under the Belt and Road Initiative, and Ocean University of China reported real-time observation buoy deployments in the Kuroshio Extension of the northwestern Pacific, supported by the pilot national laboratory, as part of building a real-time observation network spanning the Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

Research fleet and major facilities

Seagoing capability was part of the laboratory's plan from its early years. Wu Lixin described the development of an ocean-drilling research vessel, named Dream, intended to enhance China's exploration of deep-sea resources and described at the time as set to become the third vessel of its kind in the world after the United States' JOIDES Resolution and Japan's Chikyu. Qingdao's draft 15th Five-Year Plan proposals later grouped the laboratory with three major deep-sea national platforms to be built and operated to a high standard, and proposed accelerating next-generation marine science satellites and marine comprehensive test sites, alongside a national artificial intelligence marine application pilot base. Those planning commitments place Laoshan Laboratory at the centre of Qingdao's stated goal of building an internationally influential marine science and technology innovation centre.

International collaboration

The laboratory presents itself in international research directories as one of the leading marine research centres in the world and as an institution that embraces global collaboration. A concrete example recorded by the Tethys Engineering knowledge hub is its partnership, established in August 2019, with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to create the Center for Ocean Research in Hong Kong and Macau (CORE), a joint research centre pooling resources from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau to advance multi-spheric and interdisciplinary ocean research. Domestic collaboration agreements follow the same pattern: the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Xi'an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, for example, concluded a strategic cooperation agreement with the laboratory to conduct all-round cooperation in underwater optics research and to establish a joint marine optics laboratory under its framework.

From QNLM to Laoshan Laboratory

China's national laboratory system was restructured in the years after QNLM's opening, and the Qingdao laboratory was reorganised and renamed Laoshan Laboratory as part of that process. The continuity between the two names is documented rather than assumed: international organisation records list the institution both as the Pilot (Qingdao) National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology and as the Laoshan Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, with the same Qingdao base and the same mission of conducting basic and cutting-edge research aligned with China's national marine development strategy. Qingdao's draft 15th Five-Year Plan proposals from 2025 treat Laoshan Laboratory as the city's principal marine strategic science and technology strength, proposing support for its standardised, full-element operation.

Place in Qingdao and Shandong

The laboratory's location is not incidental. Qingdao hosts Ocean University of China, the Institute of Oceanology and a dense cluster of national marine institutions, which is why the national laboratory was based there with, in its own description, a national and global vision. Shandong provincial reporting on the wider marine economy — including the "Blue Medicine Bank" initiative, a China Blue Drug Bank development fund and marine drug development associated with academician Guan Huashi's team — shows the provincial industrial context into which the laboratory's Blue Medicine Bank and Blue Seed programmes feed. The laboratory therefore operates simultaneously as a basic-research institution, a coordinator of national marine research capacity and an anchor for Shandong's marine industries.

Standing and outlook

Measured against its founding goals, Laoshan Laboratory's documented record is that of the institution that first unified China's marine research at national-laboratory level: approved in 2013, opened in 2015 with 1.3 billion yuan of investment and eight functional laboratories, led successively by academicians Chen Yiyu and Wu Lixin, and organised around observation, marine life and subsea-resource programmes whose names — Transparent Ocean, Blue Medicine Bank and Blue Seed — still structure Qingdao's marine planning into the 15th Five-Year Plan period. Its reorganisation under the Laoshan name marks the current phase of that same institution, and Qingdao's planning documents indicate that its role as the core of the city's marine innovation centre ambitions is expected to continue.