Opinion: America’s biotech race with China must be won at home — SkimNews
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- China released a five-year plan designating biomedicine a national "pillar industry," targeting 25% of the world's first-in-class drugs by 2030, a category where the U.S. currently produces medicines at seven times China's rate.
- Chinese-designed medicines accounted for nearly 30% of all drugs in development globally as of 2025, up from under 7% a decade earlier, according to the op-ed.
- China leads the world in annual clinical trial initiations and its labs manufacture roughly 20% of the active pharmaceutical ingredients in medicines the FDA considers essential.
- Locke and McHenry warn that blanket tariffs on drug ingredients would disrupt U.S. supply chains and risk medicine shortages before sufficient domestic manufacturing capacity could come online.
- The authors argue sweeping restrictions on U.S.-China biotech partnerships and investments would cut American companies off from promising experimental medicines, handing Chinese firms control over access.
- Locke and McHenry cite past U.S. export controls on semiconductors and 5G as evidence that restrictions alone push Chinese firms to boost R&D and patenting rather than permanently slowing their rise.
- The authors propose four priorities: expand domestic and allied manufacturing of critical medicines, coordinate R&D with Japan, South Korea, Europe, and India, invest in next-generation manufacturing tech, and protect federal basic-research funding plus immigration pipelines that attract top scientists.
Why it matters: The authors frame a stark policy choice: restrictive tariffs and investment curbs that risk disrupting U.S. medicine supplies, versus building domestic and allied biotech capacity. With Chinese-designed drugs rising from under 7% to nearly 30% of global development pipelines in a decade and Beijing targeting 25% of first-in-class drugs by 2030, U.S. leverage over medicine access and military-relevant biotechnologies could erode without parallel domestic investment in research, manufacturing, and talent pipelines.
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