US companies are flocking to Beijing and Shanghai to strike big-dollar deals to license therapeutic molecules developed in China. But the country’s growth as a drug innovator didn’t happen overnight; it took decades to develop. Consider Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals, a Chinese drugmaker that has become a popular partner for international firms. Just a month ago, Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) agreed to pay Hengrui $600 million up front, followed by $175 million in annual payments over the next 2 years, to jointly develop drug candidates. BMS will have the rights to sell any resulting drugs worldwide, while Hengrui will be able to market them in China.
Hengrui’s journey began in 1970 with the production of generic medicines for the local market. The company’s playbook is a classic example of how Chinese companies rooted in making copycat drugs have transitioned to the lucrative side of the pharma world: novel pharmaceuticals protected by patents.
The rising associations between US pharmaceutical companies and their Chinese counterparts haven’t gone unnoticed by the US government and lawmakers. This month, a US House select committee started investigating whether five US pharmaceutical companies that conducted clinical trials in China may have helped the Chinese Communist Party, according to a story first reported by Reuters. And the US Department of Defense recently blacklisted WuXi AppTec, a Chinese contract drug research and manufacturing firm with multiple US companies as clients.
US lawmakers have also proposed amendments to the Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security (COINS) Act that will require government screening of US investments in Chinese biotechnology to prevent the transfer of intellectual property and capital to foreign adversaries. And US politicians have even attempted to stop academic collaborations between the US and China.
But imposing restrictions on working with Chinese companies is the wrong approach. Just as tariffs have proved to be an inadequate fix for the US trade imbalance, restricting international alliances isn’t going to help the US pharmaceutical industry, which has already become heavily reliant on China.
Many commercially approved drugs have their roots in academic research. According to a 2023 analysis by Bentley University researchers (PLOS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288447), funding from the US National Institutes of Health played a role in all 313 patented drugs the US Food and Drug Administration approved between 2010 and 2019.
Some catch-up with the US was to be expected from China, but the US is doing itself no favors by cutting funding for scientific research. These cuts threaten to upend the US’s position as the world’s leading ecosystem for turning science into cures.
Translating cutting-edge research into real-world products is something the US has prided itself on since World War II. And like China’s, the US’s rise was years in the making. Some researchers have pointed out that research funding cuts and stricter visa policies could result in long-term damage to the fabric of US R&D. In fact, we are already beginning to see how US policies that create an adverse environment for researchers could lead to massive brain drain.
Take the case of Omar Yaghi, who shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The celebrated scientist left his faculty post at the University of California, Berkeley, earlier this year and moved to China, where he will lead an institute that uses artificial intelligence to accelerate the discovery of new materials.
China’s biotech catch-up is not surprising, given all that it has invested. The US still leads in cutting-edge science, but it could lose that lead if the federal government doesn’t adequately fund the institutions where academic research mostly comes from.
This editorial is the result of collective deliberation in C&EN. For this week’s editorial, the lead contributor is Aayushi Pratap.
Views expressed are not necessarily those of ACS.
