Congress is nearing an effective ban on a China-based genomics company accused of stealing Americans’ DNA and exploiting Covid to collect genetic data.
The Beijing Genomics Institute, now known as BGI Group, is one of the largest genomic sequencing companies in the world and is listed by the Pentagon as a “Chinese Military Company.”
Republicans launched an effort in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the legislation that Congress must pass that sets military policy for this year, to ban the company from doing business with companies that take government contracts, in a major shock could be for the American economy. the global biotech market.
The sweeping action by Congress would shake up a more than $25 billion market and reshape the current geopolitical relationship between the world’s two superpowers.
The Shenzhen-based company, known as BGI Group, has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party – and is legally required to share the data it collects with the CCP.
Congress moves closer to effectively banning US from doing business with China-based genomics company, lab pictured above, accused of stealing US DNA and exploiting Covid to collect genetic data
And yet it has been active in the US for years; its regional headquarters are in San Jose, California.
“They are like Huawei for biotechnology,” Anna Puglisi, a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, told BGI’s DailyMail.com. “They are not a neutral actor.”
The US last year banned the sale and import of new equipment from the Chinese telecom giant due to spying concerns.
Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., chairman of the China Competition Select Subcommittee, led the effort with an amendment to effectively ban the company in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., led the effort in the House, offering a motion to the Senate-passed motion to have the ban included in the final version of the NDAA that the House and Senate meet together .
The Gallagher amendment bans the purchase of all biotech equipment from U.S. adversaries, including North Korea, Russia, Iran and China, but controls the name of BGI Group and its subsidiaries.
It is believed that BGI and its activities in the US and around the world could give China an edge in the so-called DNA arms race – raising alarms that that data could one day be used for a bioweapon.
BGI must share its genetic data with the Chinese Communist Party, led by Xi Jinping
Labtech works in one of BGI’s coronavirus testing labs
U.S. officials have noted that BGI was selected by the Chinese government to manage the China National GeneBank, a government-owned repository that now holds the genetic data of millions of people around the world. A 2021 intelligence report linked the company to Beijing’s directive to obtain more human DNA, especially from the United States.
Chinese academics and military scientists are known to debate the possibility of creating bioweapons that can target populations based on their genes. But the US has seen no evidence that Chinese companies are using foreign DNA for anything other than research.
“It’s very possible,” Puglisi said of the possibility that China could use genomic data from the US and other countries for biological warfare.
“When you understand what genes do, you start to understand the interactions with host pathogens, you can understand what makes things more dangerous and more transmissible.”
Winning the technology and research race could be enough of a threat to give China dominance over the nascent biotech market. Central to China’s plan to become the global economic powerhouse of the 21st century is controlling the human genome.
Chinese hackers have already been accused in separate cases of illegally accessing patient databases of about 80 million Americans through four major U.S. healthcare companies.
In recent years, BGI has transformed from a little-known research institute that had decoded the DNA sequence of rice plants and pandas to a global company active in animal cloning and other forms of genome and health research.
BGI’s healthcare technology is often priced below market because the company is compensated by heavy funding from the Chinese government.
But at the same time, China is collecting genetic data from all over the world, and has banned the export of gene data from its own country.
“It’s not like we’re sharing data back and forth,” Puglisi said.
The intelligence community fired warning signals about BGI’s aggressive efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic to set up labs in 18 countries and sell test kits in 180 countries, in what could be used to bring genetic data back to China .
Two BGI subsidiaries were placed on the US trade blacklist in 2020 for alleged human rights abuses involving genetic research they conducted in Xinjiang province, home to China’s Uyghur Muslim minority. Two more subsidiaries operating in the US were placed on the list this year due to the “significant risk” of contributing to Chinese government surveillance.
‘A few years ago we were talking about Huawei. Today we’re talking about BGI. Tomorrow there will be another company, but the core of it is: how do we deal with a nation state that has a completely different system than ours,” Puglisi explained.
“What China is doing is it is using subsidies in its own market to improve its position,” she continued. “It’s about defense, it’s about economic security – they really see biotechnology as the next industrial revolution.”
