‘My worry is that anger and disengagement from China ultimately is going to be caught up in protectionism.’
On Tuesday, I reported on Senator Rand Paul’s objections to provisions of a bill to ban Chinese military-linked biotech companies that would name specific firms.
In January, he derailed plans to bring the bill for consideration before the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, on which he serves as the top Republican. Paul was concerned that naming specific Chinese military-linked firms violated free-market principles, a view that his team voiced in talks about the bill.
Until a HSGAC meeting yesterday, though, Paul had not yet made that case in public. During yesterday’s session, the bill passed by a vote of eleven to one. Paul, the sole vote against it, confirmed my reporting in a speech laying out those concerns in detail.
Paul started by reiterating his longstanding concerns about the possibility that Covid-19 originated from a lab leak: “So there’s no love lost for some of these companies from my perspective.”
But the problem, he said, is that U.S. firms are taking advantage of anger at China to push protectionist policies. “There’s an American company that also does business in China that really loves this bill because it bans their competition,” he said, proceeding to cite a few other examples in which he believes American firms weaponized national-security concerns against generally benign foreign competitors. He did not name the American company to which he referred. “What’s happening is that people are taking advantage of anger towards China to do sort of parochial protectionist things for their particular state,” he said.
He added that he’s worried that banning one of the companies targeted by the bill will have consequences for the medical-supply chain that Congress hasn’t studied.
“My worry is that anger and disengagement from China ultimately is going to be caught up in protectionism and ultimately will lead to higher prices for the American consumer,” Paul concluded.
While Paul didn’t specify the company whose exclusion from the U.S. he believes would be damaging, the four firms targeted by the legislation all have extensively documented ties to the Chinese military.
One of those firms is BGI Group. In 2022, the Pentagon added the company to its blacklist of Chinese military companies, citing its work with the People’s Liberation Army. The Commerce Department has blacklisted several BGI subsidiaries over their role in Chinese regime surveillance and Beijing’s abuses against Uyghurs. Other firms named by the bill are MGI, which is a former BGI subsidiary that was spun off in 2022, and Complete Genomics, its U.S. subsidiary.
The bill also names WuXi AppTec, which is not on any of the U.S. government’s blacklists. But independent researchers and the House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party have identified those companies’ extensive ties to the PLA and the CCP. Representatives Mike Gallagher and Raja Krishnamoorthi — the committee’s top lawmakers and the House sponsors of the BIOSECURE Act — asked the Biden administration to blacklist the firm last month.