China is poised to dominate biotechnology in the 21st century

When you or your child next take a dose of antibiotics, consider that 90 percent of its raw ingredients were likely manufactured in China using biotechnologies. China has captured production of portions of the global biotechnology supply chain to accomplish President Xi Jinping’s goal to “develop effective deterrent against attempts by other countries to sever our supply chains.”

What if China decided to sever American access to the drug ingredients your sick kid depends on? But America’s losing position in the biotechnology race with China has broader implications than just pharmaceutical choke points.

Signs of China’s ascendance in biotechnology are everywhere. Chinese researchers publish over 60 percent of high-impact research papers in synthetic biology. The New York Times cited an estimate that the Chinese firm WuXi is involved in a quarter of all drugs used in the U.S. WuXi, like other contract research organizations, conducts all stages of clinical trials and makes key ingredients in critical drugs, such as those used to treat cancers. This not only gives a Chinese company direct knowledge into how drugs work on our bodies and why they fail, but it means that our supply chain of drugs for obesity and leukemia have come to depend on WuXi.

Likely not by coincidence, the Chinese government has more than doubled its publicly declared subsidies to WuXi to $48 million in 2023, up from $21 million in 2019. The Chinese have also successfully captured part of the therapeutic supply chain in only four years — global pharmaceutical companies now purchase over one-third of new therapeutic molecules from China, up from zero just four years ago.

Beyond investments in research, private companies and manufacturing, China is strategically investing in the final pillar of its biotech dominance: education. In 2003, my colleague Drew Endy helped launch a competition for undergraduates at MIT — a sort of Olympiad for engineering biology — that has grown into a worldwide competition called iGEM. It is now held annually in Paris with around 400 teams. While U.S. participation has stayed steady at about 50 teams since 2012, half of the teams now come from China. This surge speaks to a cultural level of enthusiasm — this is what an all-of-nation approach starts to look like.

Why does this all matter? For starters, there’s an economic argument of opportunity. While biotech currently comprises just 5 percent of the goods and services in the U.S. economy, McKinsey estimates as much as 60 percent of the physical inputs to the global economy — things like wood, plastics and fuels — could in principle be produced by biotech. China possessing a majority of biotech manufacturing capabilities would not only transfer economic opportunity away from the U.S., it would increase American dependency on China.

There is also an existential argument. It is reasonable to assume that the country that now dominates the drug development life cycle, from research and development to production, will be more equipped to protect its population from harmful biology, either natural or manmade.

How did we get here? China executed a comprehensive all-of-nation strategy that began in 2012 with a 20-year road map for synthetic biology, ironically developed in partnership with the U.K. and America. China replicated how those countries performed tech investment and advancement, building state-of-the-art facilities. The Chinese biotech firm BGI alone can sequence, or read, the DNA code of 10,000 humans per year, outpacing the full combined capacity of American firms.

China poured resources into education, as evidenced by iGEM. China aligned the entire nation — from government to industry to academia — behind biotechnology development. A Chinese Academy of Science official explained, “As Europe won in the 19th century using industry, and the United States won in the 20th century using information technology, so China will win in the 21st using biology.” China designed this outcome: The U.S. is already reliant on China, and China wants to increase that reliance.

The good news is that the American government does not need to outspend the Chinese Communist Party. Public capital, however, must be bold, as sundry, small-scale biomanufacturing grants won’t be enough.

For example, we could repurpose funding at the Department of Energy to create a large-language laboratory whose mission is to ensure the foundational models in biology are developed here and not in China. Also, we could task the intelligence community with collecting and analyzing environmental DNA rich in information so America gains a baseline and early warning of biological threats. Xi is doing it — he already told his government in April 2020 to make “early warning capabilities the most urgent priority.”

The choice before us is stark and obvious. China is implementing a 20-year road map with central coordination from Xi down, with investment and energy flowing to education, research, manufacturing and ostensibly private companies. We can invest in bolder actions now and harness that special American ingenuity or face a future where our prosperity and security will depend on a technology likely controlled by others.

Biology is as programmable as computers. The nations that master this technology will reap benefits as large as the computer-based information revolution of the last 50 years. Xi clearly anticipates the biological century. The question is whether America will lead it — or follow China.

Emily Clise Tully is a visiting fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and part of its Bio-Strategies and Leadership Program. She works at Ginkgo Bioworks and formerly served on the Senate Intelligence Committee and at the CIA.

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