The US should review Chinese biotech firm WuXi AppTec (藥明康德) and its affiliate WuXi Biologics (Cayman) Inc (藥明生物) for sanctions, a bipartisan group of lawmakers told top officials of the US President Joe Biden’s administration on Monday.
In a letter dated Monday and seen by Reuters, the lawmakers told US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo that the global pharmaceutical giant’s links to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and military threatened US national security.
The letter, signed by the Republican chair and Democratic ranking member of the House Select Committee on China, Representatives Mike Gallagher and Raja Krishnamoorthi, and Senators Gary Peters and Bill Hagerty, is Congress’ latest effort to highlight what it says are risks posed by China’s biotech leaders.
Photo: Reuters
Congress has introduced legislation that would restrict federally-funded medical providers from allowing China’s BGI Group (華大集團), WuXi AppTec and other biotech firms from getting genetic information about Americans.
WuXi AppTec did not respond immediately to a request for comment, but has repeatedly said that it is not a national security risk to any country.
“We are concerned by a misguided US legislative initiative to target our company without a fair and transparent review of the facts,” WuXi AppTec said previously in a statement still on its Web site home page.
The four lawmakers — citing public Chinese government documents, Chinese university Web sites and media articles — outlined what they called WuXi AppTec’s clear military ties, as well as support for China’s policies in Xinjiang, a region where Washington has accused Beijing of committing genocide against Muslim minorities.
They said WuXi AppTec had received investment from numerous Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) funds, including the AVIC Military-Civil Integration Selected Hybrid Securities Investment Fund.
They also cited a resume for WuXi Biologics CEO Chen Zhisheng (陳智勝), posted in 2018 to a Tsinghua University Web site, that listed him as a visiting professor at China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences, which was added to the US Department of Commerce’s export control list in 2021.
“Given WuXi AppTec’s clear ties to the CCP and the PLA and its likely role in enabling the genocide in Xinjiang, we urge your departments to consider the inclusion of WuXi AppTec and its subsidiaries on your respective control lists,” they said in the letter.
Those should include sanctions under Treasury’s Non-SDN Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies List, the Commerce list restricting US sales to named entities and the Pentagon’s “1260H” list, which carries implicit warnings about US cooperation with certain firms.
“WuXi AppTec and WuXi Biologics have obscured their ties to the CCP and PLA and, as a result, are rapidly integrating themselves into US supply chains by signing agreements with prominent US biotech entities,” the lawmakers wrote.
The two companies have counted Pfizer Inc, AstraZeneca PLC, GlaxoSmithKline PLC and US national labs as partners.
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