Con­gress' Chi­na hawks seek to add biotech sup­pli­ers to Pen­ta­gon warn­ing list

Law­mak­ers in Con­gress are al­leg­ing that the Chi­nese ge­nomics gi­ant BGI set up sub­sidiaries in the US to try and avoid reg­u­la­to­ry and po­lit­i­cal scruti­ny, and in a let­ter pushed for those sub­sidiaries to be added to a Pen­ta­gon list of firms that al­leged­ly work with the Chi­nese mil­i­tary.

The March 29 let­ter to the Pen­ta­gon was sent by Reps. Mike Gal­lagher (R-WI) and Ra­ja Kr­ish­namoor­thi (D-IL), who led the House’s Se­lect Com­mit­tee on the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty. The law­mak­ers in re­cent months have made biotech and phar­ma a par­tic­u­lar fo­cus of their over­sight ef­forts, ar­gu­ing that sev­er­al Chi­nese and Chi­na-af­fil­i­at­ed com­pa­nies should be lim­it­ed in what busi­ness they can do with US bio­phar­mas.

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