Two Worlds, Two Bioeconomies: The Impacts of Decoupling US-China Trade and Technology Transfer

ABSTRACT

Biotechnology, the engineering and application of the science of biology to meet human goals, is critical to economic success in the twenty-first century. In the United States, revenues generated by biotechnology (principally drugs, crops, and chemicals) are already larger than 2 percent of gross domestic product and are growing approximately twice as fast as the economy as a whole. Individuals and news articles from China describe similarly sized biotechnology revenues there, but in both nations, the accuracy and precision of estimates is limited by the paucity of data. Revenues to date have been achieved using first-generation technologies. Second-generation technologies will be more powerful and could supply up to 60 percent of physical inputs to the global economy, with a direct economic impact of $4 trillion a year. Chinese leaders have identified biotechnology in writings and in pronouncements as critical to their vision of China as a dominant global economic power. To that end, they are pursuing a long-term strategy of climbing up the value chain and using a familiar set of tactics that includes the following financial support for industry champions, intellectual property licensing from abroad, infrastructure spending (laboratories, technology parks, academic research), as well as IT hacking and industrial espionage. By contrast, the United States has adopted a laissez-faire approach and has little strategy or policy regarding biotechnology.