House Panel Zeroes in on China Biotech

The leaders of the House Select Committee on China are warning that a Chinese military company, BGI, is attempting to set up a new firm, Innomics, in Massachusetts and Kentucky, to avoid US regulatory scrutiny.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc) and ranking Democrat Raja Krishnamoorthi (Ill) urged the Pentagon to label Chinese companies that aid the Chinese Communist Party in military biotech research as “Chinese Military Companies.”

“The PRC’s 14th Five-Year Plan identifies dominance in biotechnology as critical to ‘strengthen the PRC’s science and technological power’ and calls to deepen military-civil science and technology collaboration in the sector,” the lawmakers wrote.

“PRC military and academic literature further stresses the importance of biotechnology to national power, arguing success on the future battlefield will require ‘achieving biological dominance,’ with one former president of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) National Defense University openly discussing biotech’s ability to create synthetic pathogens that are ‘more toxic, more contagious, and more resistant.’ Urgent action is needed to identify the PRC biotechnology entities at the forefront of this work.”

They called on the Pentagon to consider labeling the following biotech companies ‘Chinese Military Companies’: MGI Group and Complete Genomics, Innomics and STOmics, Origincell, Vazyme Biotech and Axbio.

Section 1312 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 requires Defense to identify and place problematic People’s Republic of China biotechnology companies on the DoD’s 1260H list of Chinese Military Companies within 180 days.