As a statement of intent, it could hardly have been more dramatic. Last week, scientists in China announced they had cloned monkeys. It is the first time that the technique used to create Dolly the sheep has been applied successfully to primates.

While the milestone has spurred discussion about whether it could herald the onset of human cloning, the real story is the meteoric rise of China on the scientific stage. The country is pouring billions into efforts to become a research superpower. It is setting records, year on year, for the number of papers published in prestigious international journals. It files more patents each year than any other country (a record 1.1m in 2015), and more than the US, Japan and Korea combined. But China is also raising eyebrows for its use of cash incentives: many institutions pay scientists for papers published. The country’s most prolific scholars are pocketing amounts akin to City of London bonuses.

The birth of two identical macaque monkeys in Shanghai refreshes the technical possibility of human cloning. Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua were produced using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). To create a clone, a monkey embryo was emptied of its DNA and the vacancy filled with DNA taken from a tissue cell of a macaque foetus. Two embryos altered in this way resulted in successful live births, producing two clones of the same macaque foetus. (Nature is also capable of creating two genetic clones in the form of identical twins, which result from a single embryo dividing in the womb). The research, published in the journal Cell, was carried out by scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience.