A concept photo of the research and development of drugs Illustration: VCG

Some US lawmakers hyped at a hearing on Wednesday local time that there are growing concerns over the US' reliance on Chinese drug ingredients and that China is moving aggressively into the development of innovative new drugs. The remarks once again reflect a politically motivated mindset among certain US lawmakers, Chinese analysts said, noting that the development of the pharmaceutical sector is driven by market forces and global industrial cooperation rather than any attempts at control or dominance.

The Select Committee on China, a select committee of the US House of Representatives, held a hearing on the generic drug supply chain on Wednesday local time. The Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar claimed that "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," according to a press release by the committee on Wednesday local time.

Moolenaar also claimed that "We have seen this playbook before — in steel, in solar, and in rare earths." He also claimed that "If China restricted active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) exports tomorrow in the same way it has restricted rare earth exports, then American hospitals and pharmacies would begin running short on essential medicines." 

Some US lawmakers' remarks are neither fact-based nor aligned with the fundamental logic of global pharmaceutical industry development. The claim of "cornering the market" is entirely baseless. Chinese pharmaceutical companies supply APIs and generic drugs worldwide because this is an objective outcome of global industrial division of labor. Far from being a threat, China serves as a stabilizer for the global pharmaceutical supply chain, an industry practitioner of a Chinese medical company, who refused to be named, told the Global Times on Thursday.

"Chinese companies participate in this field not because they possess any form of 'monopoly,' but because they respond to the potential of market demand," Zhou Mi, a senior research fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Zhou said the lawmaker's assessment is "highly unreasonable" as it fails to recognize the fundamental drivers of this development and overlooks the role of companies in the process. "Chinese firms have no intention of controlling specific industries. Rather, they aim to create more space for economic development and improve living standards," the expert said.

US lawmakers also claimed to "de-risking generic drug supply chain dependence on China."

During the hearing, Ranking Member Ro Khanna claimed that the US has become dependent on China for critical pharmaceutical supply chains, while claiming that "if this trajectory continues and we do not act, the world could face dependence on China not only for raw materials, for medicines, but also for new and innovative drugs."

Regarding this, Zhou noted that any attempt to "decouple" from China in this field would be very difficult and costly for American businesses and consumers. "China is not only an important producer of active pharmaceutical ingredients and innovative drugs, but also a major supplier of medical devices and protective equipment. Countries around the world benefit to varying degrees from China's supply chains, and it would be difficult to find fully comparable substitutes elsewhere."

The anonymous industry insider also pointed out that Chinese pharmaceutical companies supply the US market with a large volume of high-quality, affordable medicines, significantly reducing healthcare costs for American citizens and helping stabilize the US public health system. "This is a classic complementary relationship. Attempts to sever such market-driven supply chains will ultimately harm the life and health interests of ordinary American patients."

Apart from supply chain, US lawmakers also hyped that China is "moving aggressively into the development of innovative new drugs," as claimed by Moolenaar.

Darin LaHood, member of Select Committee on China, also claimed at the hearing that "China's rapid advancements in biotechnology are increasingly concerning. America's leadership in developing cutting-edge, life-saving pharmaceuticals must continue."

The Chinese industry practitioner said that the assertion that China "dominates the cutting-edge biotech pipeline" both overstates China's position and ignores the reality of global biotechnology development. "Biotech progress is highly collaborative. From basic research and clinical trials to commercial-scale production, companies and research institutions across countries are deeply interconnected."

The practitioner noted that technological innovation thrives on openness. Breakthroughs in frontier biotechnology depend on worldwide knowledge sharing, capital flows, and talent exchange. China remains committed to open cooperation. Many foreign pharmaceutical companies operate R&D centers in China, and the country is sharing the benefits of technological progress with multinational partners, the practitioner said. 

This was not the first time that the US targeted China's drug and biotechnology sector.

Last week, the US Senate Special Committee on Aging held a hearing entitled "foreign dependence: how China captured America's drug supply," which also hyped "dependence" on imports of pharmaceutical raw materials and generic drugs from China and politicized this as "national security," according to information on the committee's website.  

Prior to this, the US on December 18 signed into law a 901-billion-dollar defense policy bill, known as the "National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026," which Bloomberg reported that "includes a revised version of the Biosecure Act, which could restrict federal contracts with Chinese biotech firms. 

Zhou said in a previous interview with the Global Times that the real US goal behind the investment restriction is simple: Washington believes American capital flowing into China has been a key driver of China's rapid technological rise in sensitive sectors, so it wants to choke that flow to slow China down and preserve US dominance, especially in biotechnology. That logic is flawed.

"China's progress in these fields is primarily driven by its massive domestic market, rapid real-world iteration, and the innovation capacity of Chinese companies - not by US investment, which is only a supporting factor," said Zhou.