When you or your child next take a dose of antibiotics, consider that 90 percent of its raw ingredients were likely manufactured in China using biotechnologies. China has captured production of portions of the global biotechnology supply chain to accomplish President Xi Jinping’s goal to “develop effective deterrent against attempts by other countries to sever our supply chains.”

What if China decided to sever American access to the drug ingredients your sick kid depends on? But America’s losing position in the biotechnology race with China has broader implications than just pharmaceutical choke points.

Signs of China’s ascendance in biotechnology are everywhere. Chinese researchers publish over 60 percent of high-impact research papers in synthetic biology. The New York Times cited an estimate that the Chinese firm WuXi is involved in a quarter of all drugs used in the U.S. WuXi, like other contract research organizations, conducts all stages of clinical trials and makes key ingredients in critical drugs, such as those used to treat cancers. This not only gives a Chinese company direct knowledge into how drugs work on our bodies and why they fail, but it means that our supply chain of drugs for obesity and leukemia have come to depend on WuXi.

Likely not by coincidence, the Chinese government has more than doubled its publicly declared subsidies to WuXi to $48 million in 2023, up from $21 million in 2019. The Chinese........

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