Fears grow over US drug supply’s rising dependence on Chinese ingredients

Beijing’s global pharmaceutical push is following a playbook seen in rare earths, semiconductors and electric vehicles, US lawmakers said on Wednesday, as concerns grow over the United States’ reliance on Chinese drug ingredients.

“China is cornering the market on our medicines – from the supply of generic drugs that Americans depend on every day, to the cutting-edge biotech pipeline that will determine who leads medicine in the years and decades ahead,” said John Moolenaar, the chair of the House Select Committee on China.

The hearing, titled “From the Science Lab to the Medicine Cabinet: How China is Cornering the Market on Our Medicines,” examined the United States’ growing supply chain dependence on China’s pharmaceutical industry.

Florida Republican Neal Dunn on Wednesday accused China of executing a deliberate, long-term strategy to move up the pharmaceutical value chain.

“They’ve done this with rare earths, solar energy, batteries, electric vehicles, all these critical sectors they dominate and they subsidise,” he told the hearing, adding, “they move up the supply chain until they own the whole stack of the supply chain”.

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China’s ageing population and global expansion are behind projections that the pharmaceutical industry’s revenue would rise by 50 per cent between 2024 and 2030. According to UBS estimates, the country’s drug and medical device businesses were forecast to generate more than US$2.1 trillion in revenue by 2030.

South China Morning Post