Two graduate students are studying chemical products on December 26, 2023 at the Institute in Xiwangzhuang Town, Zaozhuang City, Shandong Province, China.
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Beijing – All attention on US-China competition in artificial intelligence, new research points to the rapid rise in China’s biotechnology, particularly for drug and agricultural development.
Of the five key technology sectors, “China has the most pressing opportunity to overtake the US in biotechnology,” Harvard University’s Center for International Science and International Affairs said Thursday in the release of the “Critical and Emerging Technology Index,” covering AI, biotechnology, semiconductors, space and quantum.
The US is still the leader of all five, but the “narrow US-China gap” [in biotech] ” Future developments suggest that the global balance of global power can be rapidly changed,” the report said.
This assessment reflects growing concern in Washington. In fact, the US National Security Committee on Emerging Biotechnology gained more urgent tone in its April report, citing two years of research.
“There’s a chatgupt moment for biotechnology. If China first gets there, no matter how fast we run, we’ll never catch up,” the bipartisan Congressional committee said in its report, referring to the transformative chatbot released by US-based Openai.
“The windows of action are closed. We need a two-track strategy. It’s about innovating America faster and slowing China,” the committee said. The US government recommends spending at least $15 billion over the next five years to support the domestic biotech sector.
China’s biotechnology industry has evolved to the point that in the past few months, US and European drug giants have spent billions on obtaining drugs that China can develop that can treat cancer if commercialized with regulatory approval. In March, British drug giant AstraZeneca announced that it would invest $2.5 billion in research and development centres in Beijing.
The Harvard Belfer Center pointed out that China’s biotechnology strengths stem from its “domination of drug production and manufacturing,” in addition to having more human talent than the US.
China also has a “more flexible regulatory system and the ability to drive things out faster,” Cynthia Y. Tong, one of the authors of the Harvard Report, told CNBC in an interview Thursday. She noted that the US has a longer approval process and tends to bring out more research and development periods.
And just as China is developing the biotech sector, reports from the US Biotechnology Hubs in Cambridge and Boston reveal layoffs and empty labs.
Big strategy
China has long used multi-year planning and priority national policy to encourage the development of key technologies. Biotechnology is the same, with a high level of support in 2007.
“The US government currently does not have a cohesive, deliberate biotechnology strategy, but China is grounded thanks to its aggressive, carefully coordinated, state-led initiative,” the US Security Committee said.
The concern is that just as China’s restrictions on rare earths began to collide with automakers, China’s domination in biotechnology could become yet another form of leverage in Beijing than in the US and other countries.
“The possibilities there will cooperate with you. [between the] Eric Rosenbach, director of the Belfer Center defense, emerging technology and strategy programs at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, said the US and China are below everything, “for Congress’ reporting.” He was the chief of staff at the US Department of Defense from 2015 to 2017.
He expects more of our pressure on China.
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Some say that the future of biotechnology development is inherently global, but we still don’t know what that actually means.
According to founder and CEO Alex Zhavoronkov, Insilico Medicine, a startup that uses AI to reduce drug discovery costs, relies on a global team spread across China, North America and the Middle East. On Tuesday, the company announced in a natural medicine paper that it was the first person to successfully test a clinical test using an AI-detective drug.
Insilico AI work is usually done in Canada and Abu Dhabi, but chemical testing and experiments are done in China, Zhavoronkov said, adding that the head of clinical development is in Boston. He declined to comment on the commercialization timeline in light of conversations with regulators.
Other data show that China outperforms the US in the number of clinical trials conducted and boasts the world’s largest number of life science construction activities, seeing significant patent growth.
Yang Fan, a China-based Capital O Venture partner who previously worked in the pharmaceutical industry, said he hopes to navigate regulations from different countries and use resources from around the world, taking into account the different requirements and costs of arbitration, taking into account the opportunities and costs of arbitration.
“The Chinese market is like a big supermarket of things that can be commoditized, AI or biotechnology,” he said, adding that new Chinese startups must be “really good” to stand out. As AI cuts the costs of innovation, fans predict that in biotech, “the real deepshek moment will probably happen in five years.”
