I strongly believe that biotech and pharma are different and nowhere is that clearer than in how the United States is responding to China in biotechnology. Biotech is increasingly being treated as strategic infrastructure, spanning manufacturing, data, platforms, and know-how. Pharma, meanwhile, still behaves as if pipelines are geography neutral. Innovation is innovation, the thinking goes, wherever it can be sourced fastest and cheapest. That gap is no longer theoretical. It is widening.
In recent years, licensing agreements for Chinese-discovered drug candidates have surged. U.S. and European companies are increasingly filling their portfolios with assets born in Chinese biotech companies. Analyses of large-company in-licensing show that a meaningful share of global upfront payments now flows to Chinese biotechs, and that Chinese originators have become preferred partners, particularly across oncology and immunology. The message is unmistakable. When large companies talk about “biopharma,” biotech innovation is treated as a global commodity, something to be bought wherever it is efficient and available, including from competitors’ national champions.
Recent deal activity makes this tangible. AbbVie licensed a PD-1 VEGF bispecific from RemeGen, paying $650 million upfront and committing up to $4.95 billion in milestones, while RemeGen retained Greater China rights. Abbvie’s rationale, “our partnership with RemeGen reflects AbbVie’s commitment to not only advance novel oncology treatments, but also to build strong collaborations with biopharmaceutical innovators globally as an increasingly important source of scientific and clinical progress.” Novartis paid $50 million upfront for a peptide radioligand therapy from PepLib Biotech, taking worldwide rights and leaving the Chinese biotech with milestone economics. Pfizer preceded both Abbvie and Novartis in May 2025 with a separate PD-1 VEGF bispecific deal with 3SBio, a $1.25 billion transaction for ex-China rights. Each of these deals is rational when viewed in isolation. Step back, however, and they look far less rational when viewed through the lens of long-term national and industrial competitiveness.
At the same time, Washington is moving in the opposite direction. Policymakers are increasingly framing biotechnology interdependence with China as a strategic risk, not simply a question of supply chain efficiency. Proposed legislation and national security assessments now place biotechnology alongside semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and advanced manufacturing in a broader technology race. Beijing has committed large, state-backed investments across these domains for more than a decade and biology is not an exception.
This is where the language starts to matter here in this US centric landscape. By collapsing everything into the comfortable umbrella of “biopharma,” we erase what makes biotechnology fundamentally different. We start managing it like a collection of assets instead of a strategic capability. Molecules become interchangeable. Platforms become optional. Manufacturing and data are treated as downstream considerations rather than sources of durable advantage. That framing does not just blur distinctions. It actively undermines them.
If biotechnology is strategic infrastructure, and it is, then it must be named, valued, and governed as such. Reclaiming biotech means recognizing that platforms, talent, manufacturing depth, and data ecosystems are not side effects of success. They are the source of it. It means measuring progress not only by deals closed and assets acquired, but by capabilities built, sustained, and retained. And it means acknowledging that global efficiency, while seductive, is not the same thing as long-term leadership.
This is the moment for the biotech industry to reclaim its own identity. Not by rejecting collaboration or global science, but by refusing to hide behind a label that no longer serves us. “Biopharma” may be a useful shorthand. “Biotech” is a strategic choice. Until we start treating it that way, we should not be surprised when others do.