An excerpt (with gift link)
China’s biotech industry is part of its expansion of soft power around the world this century. The country is increasing pharmaceutical exports to countries in Southeast Asia. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Chinese enterprises like CanSino and Sinovac developed and exported large quantities of Covid vaccines to the developing world.
The rise of this industry is also fueling a very strong bench of life sciences talent in China. The Chinese Academy of Sciences and major Chinese universities produce four to five times as many medical graduates annually as the United States does. And when Nature polled American scientists recently, 75 percent said they were considering leaving the United States. A Chinese venture capitalist told me that if the ethnically Chinese among those 75 percent went back to China, it could supercharge the country’s efforts.
And while China’s biotech industry may be focused on making drugs ultracheap, that talent is laying the foundation for the country to achieve innovative breakthroughs, too. Consider Likang Life Sciences, a Chinese company whose new cancer vaccine, which uses mRNA editing, is undergoing clinical trials for F.D.A. approval. The vaccine is designed to activate patients’ immune system to target their specific cancer and attack it. It is swiftly moving through the Chinese regulatory process and has recently become available to select patients in part of Hainan Province.
The kicker? Likang is planning to offer this product for around $21,000 — a small fraction of the price that Western companies like Merck or Moderna would offer for similar products. (For its part, the United States just canceled nearly half a billion dollars of federal funding for mRNA vaccine research targeting respiratory infections.) An investor in Likang that I spoke to isn’t optimistic that the treatment will be made available to Americans, given the current U.S. hostility toward Chinese businesses and their products. (Look no further than the Biosecure Act, the uncertain status of TikTok and existing restrictions that companies like Huawei and BYD face when attempting to do business in the United States.)
China isn’t alone in taking up the slack caused by the snake oil cranks at HHS who are destroying America’s biotech industry but it does appear that they are super-charging their own industry. It’s a big country with a vast amount of talent and resources and it’s ready to take the mantle and run with it.
We have long heard the trope that this would be the China Century and it appears that the United States is now devoted to making that come true. That’s nice. It’s very sad for Americans and the world which will continue to be at the mercy of a military giant run by weirdos and fascists unless we decide to sober up and at least return to civilized behavior.