Better cancer treatments, increased longevity, ground-breaking drugs and vaccinations are just a few of the possible rewards up for grabs in the rapidly-emerging international competition to develop the biosciences.
And considering that its enormous population of 1.4 billion people can supply a goldmine of data, China has been investing enormous sums of money in its quest to become the dominant power.
The government is now conducting a “national genetic survey” to gather data about and exercise more authority over these resources, say experts. Vast amounts of this data already exist in biobanks and research centres around the nation.
In contrast to the numerous Western countries that have vowed to give up information for global exchange, authorities have also tightened limitations on international access to this data in recent years.
The country’s genetic resources are now governed by new laws that went into effect in July. These laws include the national survey and limitations on access from abroad.
Some scientists have cautioned that this genetic hoarding, however, may make international scientific collaboration more challenging and may even work against China.
“The government realises there is tremendous economic potential in this region, so they want to have a very tight grip on it, but… Joy Y. Zhang, the director of the Centre for Global Science and Epistemic Justice, stated that for China to reach its full potential, international cooperation is necessary. Throughout the creation of the new regulations, Zhang attended consultation sessions.
She said, “Right now, a gold mine is right outside your door, but you don’t know how to mine it.
There is a lot at stake: the genetic building blocks that make up our bodies could lead to discoveries that have an impact on everything from national defence and biosafety to health care and the economy.
Chinese scientists and authorities have emphasised recently how genetic information could be helpful in studying and treating diseases, developing pharmaceuticals and medical devices, and understanding how genes affect longevity or how birth defects are formed. This is especially important given China’s impending demographic crisis as its workforce ages and its birth rate declines.
Due to the large number of people and its “healthy and long-lived populations,” the nation’s DNA might also be a “strategic resource and a treasure trove,” according to officials. However, scientists caution that each country’s genetic population is valuable in its own manner.
With publicly traded biopharma businesses worth hundreds of billions of dollars, new research centres have sprung up all around China, reflecting this increased concentration. According to Chinese scholars, the government claimed that their database, which had about 44 million entries, was the largest in the world in 2015.
In its most recent five-year strategy plan, the government named biotechnology as one of the “strategic emerging industries” the nation will concentrate on developing. The ruling Communist Party has thrown its support behind the boom.
In 2021, Anna Puglisi, head of biotechnology programmes at Georgetown’s Centre for Security and Emerging Technology, said before a US Senate hearing on national security that “China has amassed the largest genomic holdings of anywhere in the world.”
Understanding what genes do is “one of the most important questions in the next generation of both medicine and also biological research,” Puglisi continued. They have an advantage in solving some of those challenges because they have access to that kind of data, both from within their own country and from other parts of the globe.
There are indications that the United States, who has long been China’s opponent in terms of technology, regional sway, military might, and economic might, is beginning to feel the squeeze. Think tanks and research organisations have issued a number of publications warning that the US may lose its competitive advantage.
Others, though, say that closing that gap might take years. Additionally, Zhang noted that China’s current databases are dispersed and disorganised, which presents a problem that the government is currently striving to solve.
According to Zhang, China’s biobanking, or the gathering of biological samples, is still in its “embryonic stage” and is “very fragmented.”
To begin with, she added, it’s challenging to transfer data even within the country, such as when attempting to access data banks in several provinces with various legal frameworks. Additionally, a lot of smaller institutions lack the infrastructure needed to collect, catalogue, and preserve genetic material in a form that makes it “useful in scientific research.”
“Running a biobank costs a lot of money, and it’s a waste of resources not to be able to use the data or material that has been collected,” she added.
With the recently passed laws, which build upon a prior set of regulations announced in 2019, China hopes to better assess this data. One of the most significant breakthroughs is the description of a “national survey of human genetic resources,” which, according to Zhang, intends to standardise and centralise the data already collected from institutions and research centres.
According to the new regulations, the survey will be conducted every five years, with provincial officials gathering data in respective districts and presenting it to the national scientific ministry. The regulations give special consideration to “important genetic families” and inhabitants of “specific regions,” such as those with inherited illnesses or “special physical characteristics or adaptive traits.”
The published regulations, however, are ambiguous and provide few details about the survey’s methodology or scope, including the institutions or data that would be used.
Katherine Wang, a partner at the international law firm Ropes & Grey who specialises in bio sciences, claimed the science ministry hadn’t yet identified the “contents or areas of focus of this exercise.”
But she also noted that the poll would probably “involve analysis of data already captured by the (ministry),” such as details on significant genetic pedigrees provided by “organisations and individuals” – as well as “newly collected data.”
According to Wang, the ministry would probably compile a “catalogue of significant genetic pedigrees” and examine the security of outgoing data transfers that are pertinent.
The adoption of the regulations is accompanied by concerns about how to safeguard people’s privacy in the biodata era, particularly in a nation with extensive digital surveillance.
According to the rules, genetic resource collection in China must abide by an ethical evaluation, have “written informed consent,” and protect the “privacy rights” of donors.
However, a number of recent events have brought attention to the danger of data breaches.
For example, a sizable online database containing the private data of up to one billion Chinese residents was left exposed and available to the public for more than a year before an anonymous user proposed to sell the information in 2022.
The international community has long expressed concern about China’s use of genetic information in law enforcement, particularly in the wake of revelations that authorities were gathering DNA samples and other biometric information from millions of residents in the far-western region of Xinijang, which is home to the Muslim Uyghur community and other ethnic minorities. China has long been accused of violating human rights in Xinjiang, a claim it has vehemently refuted.
However, these worries are not new, and several experts acknowledged that the national genetic survey appears to be more focused on scientific research than other objectives.
According to Wang, “the government has long wanted to have better awareness over significant genetic pedigrees and significant genetic resources about minority races. Therefore, in this situation, I believe the survey is attempting to give the government a tool or method by which to demonstrate that visibility.
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To the consternation of some scientists who fear the loss of global collaboration, China is eager to protect its people’s genes as DNA is increasingly viewed as a valuable natural resource like oil or land.
To prevent them from exploiting it for “typical commercial purposes” like genome sequencing services, Wang said, the first 2019 laws barred foreign firms from obtaining Chinese genetic material or transmitting such material abroad.
Clinical studies and other research collaborations are still permitted, but they are subject to much stricter regulations, requiring “foreign parties” and their Chinese partners to notify the authorities and obtain government approval. The new regulations also stipulate that security reviews may be required in certain situations.
The adjustments coincide with a rise in national security emphasis under Chinese President Xi Jinping, with Beijing tightening legislation on a number of priority issues, from counter-espionage to biosecurity.
The method to managing human genetic resources is so strict that it “basically grants Chinese nationals based in China exclusive access to conduct this research,” according to Zhang, the director of the global science centre.
This strategy is justified for a number of reasons.
Tighter regulations are required, according to officials, to stop “the illegal outflow” of Chinese genetic material. This may be a result of the infamous case involving a Harvard scientist who was accused of taking genetic samples from poor Chinese farmers without their informed consent around the turn of the century, Zhang said.
Chinese authorities also highlight He Jiankui as an example of unethical behaviour. He was highly criticised for making the first gene-edited infants in the world in China in 2018.
China also wants to achieve what some experts refer to as “genomic sovereignty,” or total control over the genetic resources in their nation.
There are rules governing the use and transfer of genetic material in many other nations, but few are as stringent as China’s.
For instance, the UK Biobank, a government-backed database, offers anonymized genetic information from UK citizens to “researchers around the world who use it to make new scientific discoveries,” according to the biobank’s website.
Similar to this, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the US government maintains a database of genomic data produced by NIH-funded research, to which qualified scientists from across the world can apply. On its website, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) refers to genomic data as a “critical shared resource,” noting that “timely sharing of research results can accelerate discoveries” that are advantageous to the greater scientific community.
Zhang noted that China seemed to have taken the complete opposite tack. China is shutting down because it only wants to focus inward and keep things home.
This may have larger effects on scientists’ capacity to collaborate with global peers, given the decline in US-China cooperation brought on by escalating political tensions and the isolation of Chinese researchers during the Covid-19 outbreak. All of this might ultimately undermine China’s efforts to push boundaries and outperform rivals.
Chinese life sciences are a significant global force, but they are not yet a superpower. It still depends on international collaborations in many cutting-edge fields, said Zhang.
She continued, “Today, scientific progress looks extremely different from what it did only a few decades ago. We’re talking about huge data, we’re talking about mining the data. Furthermore, limiting access in this situation would be detrimental to China.