“The company is not under the control of any government,” New Jersey-based contract manufacturing and development service provider (CDMO) GenScript Biotechnology Co said in a notice on June 2 in response to some US lawmakers’ request, along with the FBI, of a briefing on the company’s connections to China.

The response came after the US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability voted overwhelmingly (40-1) to approve the Biosecure Act (H.R. 8333), on May 15, making GenScript Biotech the latest victim of the US’ intensified measures to contain China’s biomedicine industry.

Following the same tactic that was used to target Chinese telecommunications companies in the late 2010s, the act would limit the ability of US life sciences companies to contract biotechnology companies that “have ties to the Chinese government or other designated foreign governments” on national security grounds once passed into law.

Specifically, five Chinese companies are named in the approved version of the bill, naming China’s contract research organization (CRO) giant WuXi AppTec, its sister company WuXi Biologics, BGI Group (BGI), BGI’s affiliate MGI Tech (MGI), and MGI subsidiary Complete Genomics.

In the next step, the bill must get through the full House and Senate for further debate. As an earlier version (S.3558) of the bill had been approved by the Senate in March, the Congress has to combine both versions into one before US President Joe Biden signs it into law.

From the communication technology, chips, and artificial intelligence, to biomedicine, from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, the US is accelerating efforts to utilize national power to maintain technological hegemony, observers said.

But the US would not succeed as it had dreamed, experts warned. The US is lifting the stone to drop it on its own feet as decoupling Chinese companies would first harm patients and companies in the US. And in a long run, the US’ companies’ enthusiasm for innovation and international cooperation would be largely discouraged, they noted.

Fast track to ‘de-Chinaization’

Although the legislative process has kicked off, some legal experts stressed the long and complex procedures before the bill can finally be part of a legal document. They noted that, usually, it would take years for an initiative to be passed into law in the US. Not to mention that there are still many details that need to be discussed. More revisions might also probably be made, some experts said, referring to the 8-year buffer period added in the latest version.

However, Liu Lu, a senior consultant from Ernst & Young Advisory (China), pointed out that the process had already moved faster than observers expected. “And we deem that Biden might also approve it very quickly once the bill is put on his table,” Liu told the Global Times.

“The deadline extension is a result of the consideration of the actual situation, but it does not indicate any change of the US’ long-term aim, which is that, as they had realized their dependence on Chinese CXOs, they want to reduce such dependence and maintain its leading position in the biomedical area and safeguard their supply chain security,” Liu said.

CXO is a collective name for companies that provide medical contract outsourced services.

Before the bill was amended, a survey carried out by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), a Washington-based trade association representing biotechnology companies, revealed that 79 percent of 124 respondents have at least one contract or product agreement with a manufacturer based in China or owned by China, according to Reuters.

The trade group told Reuters that millions of US patients would be harmed unless there is “a comprehensive and thoughtful decoupling from China-based or China-owned biomanufacturing.”

According to media reports, in 2023, WuXi AppTec’s revenue from US clients was 26.13 billion yuan, accounting for 65 percent of the company’s total revenue; meanwhile, revenue from North America for WuXi Biologics was 8.073 billion yuan, accounting for 47.40 percent of the total revenue.

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