China’s quickly gaining an edge in biotech
It’s not just AI — China’s quickly gaining an edge over the US in biotech
- Out of five critical tech sectors, “China has the most immediate opportunity to overtake the United States in biotechnology,” the Harvard Belfer Center said in a new report.
- Just as China is developing its biotech sector, reports from the US biotech hub of Cambridge and Boston reveal layoffs and empty labs.
CNBC (BEIJING)— For all the attention on US-China competition in artificial intelligence, new studies point to China’s rapid rise in biotechnology, especially for drug and agricultural development.
Out of five critical tech sectors, “China has the most immediate opportunity to overtake the United States in biotechnology,” the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs said Thursday in its release of a “Critical and Emerging Technologies Index,” covering AI, biotech, semiconductors, space and quantum.
While the US is still the leader in all five, “the narrow US-China gap [in biotech] suggests that future developments could quickly shift the global balance of power,” the report said.
The assessment echoes growing concerns in Washington. In fact, the US National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology struck a more urgent tone in an April report, citing two years of research.
“There will be a ChatGPT moment for biotechnology, and if China gets there first, no matter how fast we run, we will never catch up,” the bipartisan Congressional commission said in the report, referring to the transformative chatbot released by US-based OpenAI.
“Our window to act is closing. We need a two-track strategy: make America innovate faster, and slow China down,” the commission said. It recommends that the US government spend at least $15 billion over the next five years to support the domestic biotech sector.
China’s biotech industry has evolved to the point that US and European pharmaceutical giants in the last several months have spent billions to acquire China-developed drugs that could treat cancer if commercialized with regulatory approval. In March, British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca announced it will invest $2.5 billion in a research and development center in Beijing.
The Harvard Belfer Center pointed out that China’s biotech strengths stem from its “dominance in pharmaceutical production and manufacturing,” in addition to having more human talent than the US.
China also has a “more flexible regulatory regime and the ability to push things out faster,” Cynthia Tong, one of the Harvard report’s authors, told CNBC in an interview Thursday. She noted that the US tends to have a longer approval process, as well as more drawn out research and development period.
Data shows that China has surpassed the US in the number of clinical trials conducted, seen significant patent growth and boasts the most life sciences construction activity in the world.
China-based Capital O venture partner Yang Fan, who previously worked in the pharmaceutical industry, said he expects the best biotech companies of the future will navigate different countries’ regulations and use resources across the globe, if not benefit from arbitrage opportunities given different requirements and cost of entry in various markets.
“The Chinese market is like a big supermarket for anything that can be commoditized, AI or biotechnology,” he said, adding that new startups in China have to be “really good” to stand out. As AI drives innovation costs down, Fan predicts that in biotech, “the real DeepSeek moment is probably going to happen in five years.”
Joel
A Prophecy of Esau and Jacob 