The Chinese Communist Party Wants Americans’ Health Data. Congress Must Fight Back

T he Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) quest for global dominance continues. What began with the control of trade routes and telecommunication systems has now expanded to something more personal and dangerous — control of Americans’ genetic and health data.

Since at least 2008, China has launched a global campaign to acquire and control critical infrastructure such as ports, bridges, roads, and telecommunications technology across Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the South Asia.

In 2017, the CCP adopted the National Intelligence Law, which requires all government-affiliated companies to “support, assist, and cooperate” with the state’s intelligence services.

This threat became real when CCP-affiliated telecommunications company Huawei spread like wildfire across Latin America and Europe and even attempted to do so in the United States in 2019.

Wisely, in May 2019, the Trump administration banned Huawei in the United States to protect our national-security infrastructure and individual digital data from the CCP’s grasp.

More recently, the CCP tried another tactic — this time on social media, with TikTok, a seemingly benign social-media app that is owned by CCP-affiliated parent company Bytedance.

Downloaded on millions of American phones, this app can act both as a funnel for users’ phone data back to CCP databases and as a broadcast tool steering public conversation toward CCP goals. TikTok also serves as a bountiful infrastructure tool for the CCP’s psychological-warfare apparatus.

In April 2024, the U.S. Congress took the much-needed step of passing the TikTok-divestiture bill with massive bipartisan support, giving ByteDance until next spring to sell TikTok or face being banned in the United States.

Before passing the bill, TikTok prompted all users in the U.S. to call their member of Congress to object to the bill, even providing users their congressional office’s phone number.

Americans are waking up to the fact that we cannot not let foreign governments manipulate our infrastructure or our children, in any domain. Unfortunately, the CCP will not stop at infiltrating global infrastructure and telecommunications technology. Their target is also our DNA.

A 2021 CCP planning document reveals how its next frontier for conquest — by 2035 — would be the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Using homegrown businesses, the party is quickly amassing a global monopoly on gene therapies, generic prescription drugs, and more.

CCP biotechnology companies have collected DNA from millions in China and around the world, including in the U.S. For example, the Beijing Genomics Institute has contracts and partnerships with health systems across the United States. Yet this same company has been sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Commerce for providing genetic analysis used in the CCP’s campaign against the oppressed Uyghur population in China’s Xinjiang region.

These biotechnology companies have demonstrated that they are willing and able to do the bidding of the CCP and cannot be trusted with American patients’ sensitive information.

Just like our government responded to the threats represented by Huawei and ByteDance, Congress is ready to better secure our national health security with the BIOSECURE Act. The bill would prohibit American taxpayer dollars from flowing to biotechnology companies of concern, predominantly headquartered in or controlled by mainland China.

This bill would help protect American patients, hospital systems, military service members, federal agencies, and our private biotechnology industry from coercion and threats from the CCP, and it would stop American dollars from fueling the CCP’s advancement of dual-use biotechnology programs.

We cannot allow the CCP to use our own tax dollars to harvest U.S. genomic data and other health data, knowing these companies of concern must hand over said data should the Chinese central government deem it a “national-security necessity.” Taking action is our own “national-security necessity.”

This legislation is a first step in protecting our biotechnology ecosystem and Americans’ health security.

Congress must couple this effort with legislation to revitalize America’s domestic pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries to ensure our supply chains are safe and to provide the best care, treatments, and therapies for all Americans.

We saw these domestic gaps firsthand in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic with personal protective equipment and medication shortages as Americans waited for shipments from overseas. It is past time for the U.S. Congress to address these shortcomings.

Subsequently, we, along with Representatives Blake Moore (R., Utah) and August Pfluger (R., Texas), are soliciting ideas from biotechnology and health-care companies and organizations on the best ways to help bring back domestic manufacturing to the U.S. after years of outsourcing to the CCP.

This effort will ensure that Congress is ready to act to secure our critical medical supply chains in 2025 and beyond.

By passing the BIOSECURE Act and investing in the domestic production of essential medical products, we can protect our national health security from a very real adversarial threat.

Congressman Brad Wenstrup is a physician and surgeon combat veteran of the Iraq War, 2005–06. He operated on convicted genocide specialist Ali Hassan al-Majid, a.k.a. Chemical Ali. He is the chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, and he serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and on the Ways and Means Committee. Congressman Mark Green is a physician and combat veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, where he served three tours. He interviewed Saddam Hussein for six hours on the night of his capture. He is the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Both authors are multilaterally trained in chemical, biological, radiologic, nuclear, and explosive countermeasures.