US-China Biotech Competition

Extracted Attributes

• China PhD Production

  3 times the rate of the United States

• Key US Reform Agency

  Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

• US Medication Dependency

  Up to 90% of widely used medications (e.g., ibuprofen, acetaminophen) imported from China

• Key Chinese Biotech Entity

  GenScript Biotech Corporation

• Strategic Window for US Action

  3-year period identified in April 2025 to retain or regain leadership

• US Clinical Trial Share (2024)

  35% of total global trial starts

• China Clinical Trial Share (2024)

  30% of total global trial starts

Timeline

• GenScript Biotech is co-founded in New Jersey before becoming a major China-based entity. (Source: Wikipedia)

  2002-01-01

• GenScript Biotech is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. (Source: Wikipedia)

  2015-01-01

• GenScript and its subsidiary Probio receive Series A funding from Hillhouse Capital. (Source: Wikipedia)

  2021-09-01

• China's clinical trial volume reaches approximately 80% of U.S. levels. (Source: Web Search Results)

  2024-12-31

• The United States imposes export controls on biotech equipment, including flow cytometers, to China. (Source: Web Search Results)

  2025-01-01

• The NSCEB releases a major report identifying a critical three-year window for U.S. biotech policy. (Source: Web Search Results)

  2025-04-01

• The NSCEB releases 'The Future of U.S.–China Biotechnology Competition' report, warning the window is closing faster than anticipated. (Source: Web Search Results)

  2025-12-01

• Public calls for urgent action to maintain U.S. global leadership in biotech innovation are issued following the NSCEB assessment. (Source: Web Search Results)

  2026-01-11

GenScript Biotech

GenScript Biotech, fully known as GenScript Biotech Corporation, usually referred to as simply GenScript, is a China–based biotech company. It was co-founded in 2002 in New Jersey by Fangliang Zhang, Ye Wang, and Luquan Wang. The company mainly provides life science research application instruments and services. It was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2015. The current rotating CEO of the firm is Shao Weihui, who also served as the chief operating officer and Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary for the company. The company's main subsidiaries include Legend Biotech, ProBio Technology, and Bestzyme. Outside of the United States, GenScript has established presences in China, Singapore, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, among others. The company's operations are divided into four main segments, CDMO platform, life-science services and products platform, integrated cell therapy platform, and industrial synthetic products platform. In September 2021, the firm and its subsidiary Probio received series A funding from Hillhouse Capital.

Web Search Results

• [PDF] The Future of U.S.–China Biotechnology Competition

  of U.S.-China competition in biotechnology, documenting both the empirical evidence of China’s emerging lead and the policy and investment mechanisms driv-ing it. While the Commission previously identified a three-year window for decisive action, new evidence indicates that this window is closing far faster than anticipated, underscoring the urgency for an accelerated U.S. policy response. [...] The Future of U.S.–China Biotechnology Competition 1 DECEMBER 2025 The Future of U.S.–China Biotechnology Competition The Future of U.S.–China Biotechnology Competition 2 Table of Contents The Current State of U.S.-China Biotechnology Competition 3 China is Demonstrating That it Can Out-Innovate the U.S. in Biopharma 4 China’s Strategy to Usurp U.S. Biotechnology Leadership 5 A Warning for the Future 5 Competing Against China’s Regulatory Playbook 6 How China’s Clinical Trial Reforms Have Fostered Innovation 7 How China Compounds Regulatory Reforms to Accelerate Domestic Innovation 8 China’s Rise Threatens U.S. Competitiveness 9 How China Successfully Finances and Commercializes Biotechnology 10 Investment as Strategy: China’s Use of Government-Directed Venture Capital to Shape Strategic [...] The Future of U.S.–China Biotechnology Competition 10 China’s recent regulatory reforms have reshaped its role in global drug development by cutting timelines and costs while bolstering domestic innovation. U.S. investors are taking notice. For ex-ample, in a March 2025 biopharma market update report by investment banking company Stifel, investors noted that China’s biopharmaceutical ecosystem is increasingly innovative and a “buyers market,” given the scale of available pipeline.30 With a conducive regulatory environment in place, current trendlines point to China becoming the leading source of new drug discovery within the next decade. If it does, the U.S. startup and clinical-stage biopharmaceutical ecosystem that has historically supplied the pipelines of major pharmaceutical

• Deep Dive: The State of the US-China Biotech Race

  Beyond state-sponsored investment, the same ecosystem that has enabled the US biotech scene to flourish is also facilitating China’s biotech sector's rise at an even greater scale. China produces three times as many PhDs as the US. With a robust patient population, clinical trials initiated by China-headquartered companies now account for 30% of total trial starts, rivaling the 35% from US companies as of 2024. Moreover, Chinese companies leverage their homegrown clinical trial infrastructure, running 83% of their trials domestically in 2024. Source: NSCEB [...] with the $36.9 billion in extramural research funding from the NIH, US biotech funding remains less than that of Chinese state investment; however, it can remain competitive if properly allocated to further develop its already established bioeconomy. [...] In January 2025, the US also imposed export controls on biotech equipment to China, including high-parameter flow cytometers and certain mass spectrometers. The cited concerns on China generating high-quality biological data for AI development signal an increasingly prominent view of Chinese biotech development through the lens of national security. China’s quality of technology and scientists rivals that of the US, and any American innovation will likely see a quick catch-up from China. Because of this, investing at the forefront of AI and novel technologies alone may prove insufficient in maintaining the US’s biotech lead. Source: NSCEB

• Is China Poised to Overtake the US as Biotech's Global Powerhouse?

  China’s Biotech Rise Challenges US Dominance Historically, the United States has maintained its top position in global biotech, but the gap with China is narrowing. China’s ascent has been driven by a deliberate national strategy combining government financial support, aggressive intellectual property licensing from abroad, and major investment in laboratories, technology parks and academic research, according to a 2020 report for the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. [...] A separate report from L.E.K. Consulting and PharmaDJ, Advancing Innovation and Global Reach: The Next Chapter in China’s Clinical Trial Development, finds that China’s clinical trial volume has reached about 80 per cent of U.S. levels and stands about 10 per cent above the EU in 2024.

• Urgent action needed to maintain US global leadership over China ...

  Sunday 11 January 2026 Home Biotech News Urgent action needed to maintain US global leadership over China in biotech innovation # Urgent action needed to maintain US global leadership over China in biotech innovation Biotechnology 22 December 2025 The US National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB) has released a new assessment of the state of the US-China biotechnology competition. This is the latest in a series of new analyses following the publication of its major report and Action Plan for Congress in April 2025. In April, the Commission came to a sobering conclusion: US policymakers have a three-year window to retain, or in some cases regain, biotechnology leadership or risk ceding profound military, geopolitical, and economic advantages to China.

• Understanding the National Security Commission on Emerging ...

  The U.S. biotechnology ecosystem has many historical strengths, but is falling behind: The United States continues to have significant underlying strengths in biotechnology, including world-class research institutions and longstanding commitments to foundational research: The United States has more patents, companies, and Nobel Prize winners in biotechnology than any other country. However, despite these unmatched historical strengths, it is falling behind in this new state-backed competition. As China’s investments have surged, federal funding for biotech has stagnated since the 1960s, and the U.S. regulatory environment makes it harder to commercialize new technologies. To stay competitive, the United States needs a more coordinated, forward-looking strategy. [...] #### Key Conclusions from the NSCEB Report After 20 years of strategic investment, China is rapidly gaining dominance in biotechnology. To remain competitive, the report argues that the United States has a narrow three-year window to respond. As the report warns, “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.” [...] China sees this opportunity and has treated biotechnology as a national priority since the early 2000s. China now outspends the United States in biotech research and development (R&D) and leads the world in areas like synthetic biology. Today, up to 90 percent of the most widely used medications in the United States, including ibuprofen and acetaminophen, are imported from China.