Jim McGovern is not only opposing the legislation; he is urging his colleagues to join him in voting against it.
The biggest mystery of “China Week” — a stretch of votes in the House on legislation designed to counter the Chinese Communist Party beginning today — is why an influential Democratic lawmaker has decided to whip against an effective ban of several Chinese biotech firms linked to the Chinese military and the CCP’s genocide of Uyghurs.
That bill, the BIOSECURE Act, is a popular measure that sailed through the committees of jurisdiction in the House and the Senate. But now, one of the Democratic caucus’s most prominent members is working to torpedo it.
“The bottom line is, this is a lousy bill,” Representative Jim McGovern told Reuters in an interview that ran Friday evening just before midnight. McGovern is the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee and an influential figure in the House. He’s not only opposing the legislation; he is urging his colleagues to join him in voting against it, he told Reuters.
If anything can derail the bipartisan effort to get the BIOSECURE Act through, it’s McGovern’s opposition to it. China Week votes will take place according to a rule that requires a two-thirds supermajority to pass, so he might just be able to bring enough Democratic members with him to tank the bill’s prospects.
In short, BIOSECURE bans federal contracts with companies that purchase goods or services from four Chinese biotech firms — BGI, MGI, Complete Genomics, WuXi Apptec, WuXi Biologics — and their corporate affiliates. This makes it an effective U.S. government ban of these companies’ operations in the U.S., as the kinds of institutions that work with these firms are also the kind that rely heavily on federal contracts.
It counts among its sponsors many leading Republicans and Democrats, including Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking member of the House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and Senator Gary Peters (who came around to the idea after initially opposing it).
McGovern’s stance is noteworthy because he is no apologist for Beijing’s human-rights abuses. The Massachusetts lawmaker has co-sponsored legislation cracking down on Uyghur forced labor, taken a tough line against U.S. financial institutions’ complicity in China’s authoritarianism, and sat as a co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China — a government panel that focuses on human rights in China.
So why does McGovern oppose it? Reuters summarized his stated concerns: “McGovern said there was no process for how companies were included in the legislation, and that he could not get a straight answer for why Wuxi Biologics was added.”
But there are good reasons why it enjoys such broad support, and why the targeted companies were included in the bill. BGI (of which MGI and Complete Genomics are spinoffs of dubious independence) has been blacklisted by the U.S. government over its extensive ties to China’s military. It hoovers up genetic data via pregnancy tests that are available worldwide, and uses the information for dystopian race-science research to understand the genetics of Uyghurs and Tibetans. BGI has also worked with the People’s Liberation Army to develop medicines that improve physical performance at high altitudes.
WuXi AppTec and its subsidiaries, such as WuXi Biologics, are not on any government blacklists. But new research indicates that WuXi is no less worthy of inclusion. The bill’s sponsors wrote to top Biden administration officials earlier this year to request that it be added to the lists, pointing to its work with the General Logistics Department of the PLA in Xinjiang and with the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps — a CCP paramilitary unit sanctioned by the Treasury Department for its role in the abuses. Separately, the Jamestown Foundation think tank found an extensive, long-running symbiotic relationship between WuXi AppTec and various offices within the People’s Liberation Army.
If McGovern’s complaint sounds hollow, another explanation could be one that he did not state in that interview with Reuters (but which the newswire service noted): that WuXi Biologics is building a manufacturing facility in his district.
McGovern was personally involved in efforts to attract investment for a biotech manufacturing facility in his district, on the site of an old hospital. In May, it put construction for the $300 million project on hold, as it evaluated different design options, according to the Worcester Guardian. The company claimed that the pause had nothing to do with the legislation. McGovern might hope that killing off this bill would make WuXi Biologics reconsider the pause.
McGovern’s office responded to this post after publication with a statement elaborating on his concerns that the BIOSECURE Act arbitrarily names certain companies. “CCP politicians can just decide which companies they don’t like and blacklist them, but in the United States, we believe in due process and a fair investigation. If a US government investigation finds that an entity in his district, or any entity in the country, is a threat to our national security, Congressman McGovern will be first in line to say shut it down,” said Matt Bonaccorsi, a spokesman for the lawmaker.
He added that the bill bypasses existing interagency processes to blacklist companies of concern, and that U.S. officials should make such decisions according to that process “not some Members of Congress doing a Google search and deciding what companies they like, and which ones they don’t.” Bonaccorsi said: “I don’t think any of these criticisms are hollow, parochial, or strange—in fact, I’ve heard some of the same exact concerns from Republicans like Senator Rand Paul.”