SCIENCE * AGING'S SCAMPER : PARENTS GLOBAL ESSAY

THE SEARCH for the elixir of life - embraced with gusto in recent years by American tech billionaires like Peter Thiel, has been underway in China for more than two millenniums.

It started with the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who ordered a nationwide hunt death-defying potions.  Just in case that did not work, he also ordered the creation of thousands of terra-cotta warriors to protect him in his grave should he die.

CHINA IS ATTEMPTING TO CONQUER AGING - though some of the science is rather shaky.

When a Chinese state television microphone recently caught China's top leader Xi Jinping and President Vladimir V Putin of Russia musing about the possibility of living to 159 and perhaps even forever,  many reacted with anxious consternation.

But there has been no tut-tutting in the laboratory of Lonvi Biosciences, a longevity medicine start-up in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. '' Living to 150 is definitely realistic,'' said Lyu Qinghua, the  chief technology officer of the company, which has developed anti-aging pills based on a compound found in grapeseed extract.

'' In a few years, this will be the reality.'' He is sceptical about modern medicine defeating death entirely - some thing Mr. Putin said was possible with organ transplants - but he thinks longevity science is advancing so fast even the seemingly impossible might come to pass.

'' In five to 10 years, nobody will get cancer,'' he predicted.

Returning the story to the emperor, he died at 49, possibly from mercury poisoning caused by an anti-aging treatment.

A whiff of quackery has long hung over longevity business from the start. But investment from the state and private companies, as well as surging interest among the Chinese leaders and the public, have turned it into a legitimate and sometimes lucrative branch of medicine.

China, eager to catch up with and, whenever possible, surpass the West in biotech, artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies has made the longevity industry a national priority pouring billions into research and related commercial spinoffs.

'' They have improved very rapidly. A few years ago, there was nothing here and the West was still far ahead,'' said Vadim Gladyshev, a Harvard Medical School professor who has done pioneering work on Longevity, including an experiment that extended the expected life span of old mice by connecting their circulatory system to young mice.

Chinese researchers, he said, during a recent trip to China to attend two scientific conferences, '' are rapidly catching up.''

The World Students Society thanks Andrew Higgins.