On Jun 20, 2026, at 5:58 PM, Chas Freeman via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:
--Wrong prescriptionDon’t restrict Chinese biotech
Patients benefit from faster, cheaper treatments, wherever they are invented
Photograph: Alamy
Jun 18th 2026|3 min readListen to this storySomeone whose life is saved by a new medicine is unlikely to care whether it was invented at home or on the other side of the world. Yet America’s policymakers have begun treating China’s biotechnology industry as the next front in the tech war. A bill before Congress would amend the COINS Act, which restricts American investment in sensitive technologies abroad, to include licensing Chinese biotech. Some want the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), America’s drug regulator, to disregard clinical-trial data from China.
America’s worries have been brought about by a remarkable shift in where innovation happens. Chinese firms ran nearly a third of the world’s clinical trials last year, up from just 6% a decade earlier. China is now the world’s second-largest source of new drugs, behind only America itself. In 2025 nearly half of licensing deals worth $50m or more were struck with Chinese firms, up from none in 2020. In some categories, such as antibody-drug conjugates, a promising class of cancer treatments, Chinese firms accounted for almost all the licensing.
To view Chinese medical innovation as anything other than good news would be a mistake. In AI and semiconductors, America worries about its intellectual property leaking to China. In biotechnology the flow of information runs in the opposite direction. And though anxiety about China’s dominance in the physical supply chain for drugs is understandable—the country accounts for over 70% of the active pharmaceutical ingredients for essential drugs—manufacturing resilience and scientific collaboration are different issues. America cannot lose from gaining new knowledge.
Setting aside Chinese advances would be especially foolish, given that drug development suffers from poor productivity. Bringing a new medicine to market now costs roughly $2.8bn and can take well over a decade. Policymakers often complain about the rising cost of medicines. Yet proposals such as disregarding Chinese clinical-trial data would lengthen development timelines, raise costs and make drug discovery less productive. Does Congress really want pioneering treatments to be available in Europe or Asia before they reach Americans?
Some politicians fear that if drug firms spend their research budgets licensing Chinese molecules, less capital will be available for American biotechnology. But investment is not a lump to be divvied up. As the AI boom shows, when opportunities grow, so capital flows in. What matters is to make sure that American biotech is not hindered by bad policies. Fortunately, American firms remain the world’s leaders in drug discovery. They possess deep expertise in taking promising molecules through late-stage clinical trials, regulatory review and commercial launch. Chinese biotechnology executives privately acknowledge the FDA as the global regulatory leader.
America’s recent choices are blunting its edge. The FDA has suffered high turnover among senior officials, including the resignation of Marty Makary, its head. Decision-making has been politicised: firms can receive “priority vouchers” that speed up reviews in return for lowering their prices and investing in domestic manufacturing. Funding for the National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, has been slashed. Research programmes have been cancelled for ideological reasons. At the same time, immigration policies are making America a less attractive destination for the scientists on whom the industry depends, including many talented researchers from China.
Take the red pill
America should fix those problems rather than locking out Chinese innovation. The best world for patients is one in which both China and America develop cheap and effective drugs. Diseases cross borders. So should their cures. ■
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