Opinion: America’s biotech race with China must be won at home

Sept. 30, 2026 Locke is the former U.S. ambassador to China, U.S. secretary of commerce, and governor of Washington. McHenry is a former U.S. representative from North Carolina and former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Both are senior advisers to the American Biosecurity Initiative. Last week, President Trump welcomed Chinese President Xi Jinping to Washington for the first time in a decade. Tariffs, Iran, and rare earth minerals were among the issues that dominated their summit. But another arena of competition deserves Washington’s attention: biotechnology. The United States remains the global leader in biotech, but China is rapidly narrowing the gap. Yet Washington remains focused on containing China’s rise rather than investing in the strengths of America and our allies. If U.S. leaders want to preserve America’s leadership and protect our national security, they must focus first and foremost on making U.S. biotech stronger. Recently, Beijing released a new five-year plan to make biomedicine a national “pillar industry.” By 2030, China aims to produce a quarter of the world’s first-in-class drugs — a category in which the United States currently produces medicines at seven times China’s rate. It plans to grow its innovative-drug industry by 20% a year, speed regulatory approvals, and strengthen protections for cutting-edge drug development. China already leads the world in the number of clinical trials initiated annually. As of 2025, Chinese-designed medicines accounted for almost 30% of all drugs in development globally, up from less than 7% a decade prior. Chinese labs manufacture about 20% of the active ingredients used to make medicines the FDA considers essential. If China becomes the global biotech leader, it will give Beijing significant leverage over America’s health and security in future crises. It’ll also weaken America’s ability to shape the future of medicine, profoundly damaging our economy and military readiness. That threat is precisely why many of our friends and former colleagues in Washington have recently proposed sweeping measures meant to slow China’s biotech progress. Both of us understand the value of targeted trade restrictions. As commerce secretary and later as ambassador to China, one of us, Gary Locke, worked to reform America’s export control system to better protect sensitive technologies. The other, Patrick McHenry, was in Congress for 20 years and helped craft export controls on surveillance technologies that could benefit China’s military or intelligence agencies. Importantly, our efforts remained narrowly focused because we understood that restricting China at times risked weakening our country instead of strengthening it. Some of the broad restrictions now under consideration would actually erode key U.S. advantages in biotech. Consider the risk posed by blanket tariffs on many drug ingredients. They may be intended to reshore manufacturing, but they would disrupt critical U.S. supply chains long before sufficient domestic capacity could come online, raising costs and risking medicine shortages. Or consider proposals to limit U.S. biotech partnerships and investments involving Chinese firms. Sweeping restrictions would cut American companies off from some of the most promising experimental medicines, reducing America’s ability to compete in developing the next generation of treatments and giving Chinese companies control over their access. Biotech export controls could also spur China to independently build capabilities it currently imports from the United States. In the past, U.S. export restrictions have compelled Chinese companies to significantly increase R&D spending and patenting. Export controls on semiconductors pushed Chinese firms to develop more efficient technologies. America has seen in semiconductors, 5G, and other strategic industries that restrictions alone cannot permanently stall China’s ambitions. Instead, the surest way to secure our biotech lead is to build up our own capabilities. That starts with strengthening the weakest links in the supply chain. We don’t need to reshore every plant and factory to protect America’s security. But expanding domestic and allied capacity to manufacture the most critical medicines and ingredients — and maintain adequate strategic reserves — would dramatically reduce China’s leverage in any future crisis. Second, we need to leverage our alliance network. By coordinating manufacturing, research, and clinical development with partners like Japan, South Korea, Europe, and India, America can build a more secure but still economically viable alternative to Chinese developers. Third, Washington needs to make it easier for companies to invest in the next generation of manufacturing technologies so America can build industrial capacity without relying on Chinese suppliers. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need to stop weakening the research ecosystem we spent decades building. America originally became the global biotech leader thanks to ample and predictable federal funding for basic scientific research, a university and corporate system that developed and trained a highly skilled workforce, and immigration policies that attracted the world’s top scientists and engineers. It’s a proven formula for success, and we depart from it at our peril. China has laid out exactly how it intends to claim global biotechnology leadership by the end of the decade. To prevent that outcome, Washington needs an equally comprehensive strategy — one that takes America’s biotech ambitions as seriously as China takes its own. Gary Locke is the former U.S. ambassador to China, U.S. secretary of commerce, and governor of Washington. Patrick McHenry is a former U.S. representative from North Carolina and former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Both are senior advisers to the American Biosecurity Initiative.