Chinese biotech firm deplores US lawmakers’ accusation, saying US congressional bill to harm fair competition

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By Ma Jingjing (Global Times) 16:15, March 07, 2024

Technicians detect a non-alcohol drink made of bamboo in a biotechnology company in Anji County, east China's Zhejiang Province, June 3, 2016. Photo: Xinhua

The US Senate approved a bill on Wednesday (US time) to prohibit contracting with Chinese biotech providers including BGI Group, MGI and Complete Genomics, in the latest move by Washington to expand suppression on Chinese companies in the new medicine field under the guise of national security.

"BGI, WuXi AppTec, and other highly-subsidized Chinese Communist Party-directed companies seek to undercut their way into dominating the US biotech market while aggressively collecting the genetic and other sensitive medical data of tens of millions of Americans and transferring it back to China for malign or unknown purposes," US Senator Bill Hagerty alleged.

In a response, BGI Group said it fully supports the bill's premise of protecting Americans' personal data, but driving BGI out of the US, which is what this bill is intended to achieve, will unlikely accomplish its goal since BGI does not have access to that data.

"The bill will limit competition and strengthen the market monopoly in the important field of human genome sequencing by using the legislative process to pick winners and losers," the company told the Global Times on Thursday.

In a recent statement, WuXi AppTec said that the company does not engage in human genomics business nor does it collect human genomic data as part of any of its existing businesses.

And, the company has no affiliation with any government or military organizations, it said.

Chinese observers blast US politicians of portraying China as an "imagined enemy" and expanding crackdown on Chinese bio-tech and new-energy vehicle companies, saying that American politicians are purposely setting obstacles to impede normal China-US economic and trade ties.

"This is another typical case that US politicians purposely make China an 'imagined enemy' to step up suppression on Chinese companies for their own political gains, as the US presidential election draws near," Li Yong, a senior research fellow at the China Association of International Trade, told the Global Times on Thursday.

What US politicians are concerned is that they cannot live in a world led by Chinese companies and they have come up with every excuse to hinder China's development in a wide range of industrial sectors including telecommunications, new-energy vehicles and now bio-technology, Li said.

"While China and the US are boosting dialogues, what the US is doing has imposed impediments to normal China-US trade," he said, while urging the US to correct its wrongdoing.

Recent media reports said that US President Joe Biden will sign an executive order to prevent foreign entities from accessing troves of Americans' personal data.

"The US overstretches the concept of national security, falsely accuses China of purchasing Americans' personal and sensitive data for malicious activities, and prevents the transfer of data to so-called 'countries of concern' including China," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a recent press conference.

"The Chinese government takes data privacy and security very seriously. We have never asked and will never ask any company or individual to collect or provide data, information or intelligence located abroad against local laws for the Chinese government," Mao noted.

(Web editor: Tian Yi, Liang Jun)