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US-China relations
China

Time to ‘cut off’ US outbound investment in China biotech firms like BGI Group and Wuxi AppTec: House panel

  • Bipartisan support on show amid concern ‘every bit of value flowing’ to companies in the industry ‘will be used to strengthen the CCP and the PLA’
  • American firms must recognise ‘there is no such thing as a truly private business in China’, adds influential committee’s chairman

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Covid-19 testing in an inflatable lab provided by Chinese biotech firm, BGI Genomics, a subsidiary of BGI Group, in Beijing in 2020. US lawmakers have raised alarm over such companies’ reach in the American market. Photo: Xinhua via AP
Ji Siqiin Washington

An influential panel in the US House of Representatives on Thursday urged sweeping restrictions on outbound investment in Chinese biotechnology, as it pushed for the advancement of a bill to restrict the industry’s operations in the American market.

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The hearing held by the House select committee on competition with China came after a Senate committee voted 11-1 on Wednesday backing a companion bill prohibiting US federally-funded institutions from contracting with certain biotech providers in China.

That legislation names genomics service provider BGI Group and biopharmaceutical firm Wuxi AppTec as companies of concern, along with their subsidiaries and direct affiliates.

“Every bit of value flowing to Chinese biotech or genetic-science companies will be used to strengthen the [Chinese Communist Party] and the [People’s Liberation Army],” said Republican congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, the select committee’s chairman.

“We must assume that we must operate accordingly and we must cut off this flow of support,” Gallagher added. “American companies need to take off the golden blindfold and recognise that there is no such thing as a truly private business in China.”

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