Exclusive: Gallagher Exposes Group That Lobbied against Chinese Biotech Ban, Urges DOJ Review

House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party chairman Mike Gallagher today urged the Justice Department to launch a review of a beltway organization that he says lobbied on behalf of a Chinese military-linked biotech firm and therefore advanced Beijing’s interests.

The allegations in a letter from Gallagher to Attorney General Merrick Garland, obtained exclusively by National Review, center on the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), a D.C.-based trade group representing biotech companies, including WuXi AppTec. BIO launched an effort last month to tank the BIOSECURE Act, a bill that would bar WuXi AppTec — a member of the group — from receiving federal contracts. The text of the legislation names WuXi AppTec and three other Chinese biotech firms.

“BIO’s advocacy on behalf of WuXi AppTec raises concerns that it is operating as an unregistered agent of a foreign principal while advancing the interests of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” Gallagher wrote this afternoon.

He said that BIO CEO Rachel King wrote to Senators Gary Peters and Rand Paul, the top lawmakers on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, in February to oppose the bill.

Gallagher led the introduction of the BIOSECURE Act in the House, and it has received support from lawmakers in the Senate and on both sides of the aisle.

WuXi AppTec is not currently on any U.S. government registries for Chinese military firms, though Gallagher has urged the Biden administration to blacklist it.

In his letter today, Gallagher pointed to WuXi AppTec’s extensively documented role in Chinese military-backed genetic testing used in Beijing’s genocidal campaign against Uyghurs. A recent investigation by his committee also found that the company has a “management committee” staffed with CCP and People’s Liberation Army officials.

A report issued by the Jamestown Foundation last month found that WuXi AppTec has “deep connections with the CCP,” including through an internal party committee, frequent meetings with CCP officials, and a “party building” agreement it signed with some of its Chinese competitors last year.

In her letter to Peters and Paul last month, King gave short shrift to those concerns. She characterized the legislation as “punitive” and accused the bill’s authors of demonstrating a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the biotech industry.

King also wrote that language in the bill naming specific companies “establishes a precedent whereby companies can, in certain cases, be punished without necessary and appropriate review” and therefore damage medical-supply chains.  She argued that naming the companies could make it difficult to respond to future global pandemics.

“In sidestepping the substantive concerns raised by a group of bipartisan, bicameral lawmakers regarding WuXi Apptec and its extensive foreign adversary government and military ties, Ms. King is attempting to misrepresent WuXi Apptec as a benign entity,” Gallagher wrote.

Gallagher asked the DOJ to brief his committee within 30 days as to how the Foreign Agents Registration Act  applies to WuXi AppTec’s lobbying and possible legislative fixes that would force firms that advocate on behalf of Chinese military-linked companies to register as foreign agents.

BIO did not respond to a request for comment this afternoon.

The unusual decision to name BIO comes amid a broader reckoning with K Street’s contracts with Chinese military-linked firms. Over the past month, several top lobbying shops have cut ties with such companies as the reputational cost of dealing with China’s military-civil fusion system has grown.

The BIOSECURE Act will undergo a markup in the Senate tomorrow, after which it could receive a committee vote.