新闻来源:www.bloomberg.com
原文地址:China Tech Firms at Risk as US Lawmakers Rebuff Lobbying Efforts
新闻日期:2024-09-19
由于华盛顿选举结果未定,美国对中国经济的压力将持续扩大。就在最近的一周,美国众议院跨党派成员投票否决了对中国多家生物技术企业的黑名单,这些企业将无法获得从事有利可图的美国研究资金。中国科技巨头们的游说努力最终以失败告终。
这项法案现在将转送美国参议院审议,据Bloomberg Intelligence预测,该法案很可能会成为法律。影响的企业包括:BGI Group、MGI、BioSecure以及BGI的子公司和BioSecure的其他业务伙伴。
除了这些企业,还会有更多类似的新法案出台。中国科技巨头们已面临多个挑战。最新的一项是美国众议院中国小组报告指出,WuXi Biologics及其名单上的另一家企业在2023年参加活动以加强中国共产党对供应链的控制。这家公司在马格文议员所在选区计划开设一个工厂,预计将创造200个工作岗位。但马格文议员表示,如果有不良行为证据,他愿意关闭包括该企业在内的所有公司。
原文摘要:
US lawmakers are signaling to China that the world’s second-largest economy and its companies face a tough slog in America for the foreseeable future, regardless of who controls Washington after the November election. At a divisive point in the country’s campaign cycle, House members overcame partisan tensions to vote resoundingly last week to blacklist several Chinese biotech firms from lucrative US-funded research. It was a rare moment of accord that roundly neutralized Chinese lobbying efforts.Bloomberg Intelligence says that the Biosecure Act, affecting five companies to start, has a “high likelihood” of becoming law as it now moves to the US Senate. BGI Group, BGI spinoffs and MGI’s US subsidiary , , and are the companies that would be impacted.More bills are likely to follow.One influential Democratic senator, Intelligence Chairman , opened the door to broader legislation setting rules for Chinese technology companies rather what he calls a “Whac-a-Mole” approach targeting specific firms.Strategic industries like artificial intelligence and advanced computing may be next, other lawmakers in both parties said. Temu, the online shopping giant, and other Chinese exporters face bipartisan efforts to eliminate a tariff exemption that has helped fuel their US business.Read More: The House has also passed numerous other bills aimed at China, including ones targeting Chinese drones and the country’s dominance of the supply chain for electric vehicles.The current decade has been marked by the economic race between the world’s two largest economies, with the US than China in terms of nominal gross domestic product. The competition between the two powers is a major component of the economic platforms of both US presidential candidates, Vice President and former President , who waged a tit-for-tat trade war with Beijing.“You’re going to see a lot more legislation like this in the next Congress regardless of who wins the majority,” said Representative , a Kentucky Republican who was key to the Biosecure Act’s passage.There’s a direct and immediate effect on businesses in both the US and China — even if much of that legislation never becomes law, said Lily McElwee, deputy director of the China studies program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “This creates, of course, a pretty uncertain environment for Chinese businesses seeking to sustain or expand partnerships with American firms,” McElwee said.The Biosecure vote comes on the heels of another legislative success: April’s passage of legislation — now being contested in court — forcing to divest TikTok or face a US ban.In both cases, Chinese firms and their lobbyists in Washington asserted that their US outposts posed no threat to US citizens or security and were unnecessarily and unfairly targeted. TikTok has more than users in the US, and Trump has vowed to save the app.Representative , the top Democrat on the House’s China panel, said the firms affected by the Biosecure Act took a page out of the “TikTok playbook” of influence campaigns — and, like Bytedance, failed to persuade the vast majority of lawmakers. Read More: Krishnamoorthi said companies like China’s BGI Group — one of the targets in the House-passed bill — also use a complicated ownership structure to protect their US operations while maintaining ties to Beijing.“They operate in one company, it gets sanctioned; they set up another company, it gets sanctioned,” Krishnamoorthi said. China argues its companies are being unfairly targeted, saying the US is using a broad definition of national security to suppress foreign businesses and undermine fair competition.. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said China “will continue to firmly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of its own companies.” The saga of Complete Genomics, a San Jose-based company, shows just how much — and how quickly — relations with China have shifted.The Obama administration in 2013 approved BGI’s purchase of the maker of high-end DNA sequencing machines. As the US became increasingly concerned about China, BGI spun off MGI Tech, and with it Complete Genomics. The Department of Defense later put BGI, but not MGI, on its official list of Chinese military companies.Complete Genomics has insisted it’s no longer part of BGI, does not collect sensitive genetic data on Americans, and was committed to “American innovation.” The company dismissed concerns about data collection as a bogus “sci-fi narrative.”But while the companies are separate entities, the connections run deep.BGI Group’s co-founder and chairman, geneticist , also serves as chairman of MGI and owns 52% of MGI’s stock through affiliated groups, according to a report published by Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology .“Observing the growth of and MGI Tech is watching China’s industrial policies unfold in real time,” wrote analysts Anna Puglisi and Chryssa Rask. Most of the companies’ other shareholders, they said, have direct or indirect ties to the Chinese government.The House’s China panel recently pointed to a new study indicating and urged the Pentagon to add MGI to its list of Chinese military companies. A BGI spokesman said Wang Jian’s shares in both companies don’t indicate they are the same company. The company’s spokesman also said BGI is not government controlled and its work is for civilian and scientific use only.BGI and MGI both contested the study’s conclusions via their lawyers. Puglisi, meanwhile, is testifying before the House China Committee Thursday on Beijing’s efforts “to silence critics.”Puglisi in her prepared remarks accused the companies of “threatening to bring the weight of our own legal system down on me” in what she called lawfare.The committee chairman, Republican , said Puglisi’s story is part of a pattern the committee has seen of Chinese companies exploiting the US legal system with frivolous complaints to intimidate American critics, and said the committee would look for ways to stop it.Complete Genomics, which has called the House-passed bill unconstitutional, warned that it would create a monopoly for the market leader for DNA sequencing equipment in the US, San Diego-based That, the company warned, would lead to higher prices, slow research and put the US at a disadvantage.Massachusetts Democrat , who typically is a China hawk and has been sanctioned by the country, pushed to hold off on blacklisting the firms targeted in the House bill until the US government investigates the companies. The bill, McGovern argued, lacked due process and was more reminiscent of how China acts than the US government. His argument worked with some colleagues, like fellow Democrat of Maryland, but only 81 lawmakers ultimately opposed the measure.For McGovern, there was a hometown connection. WuXi Biologics, whose products are an important part of the global supply chain for prescription drugs, would be blacklisted just as it expands a factory in McGovern’s district that would add an estimated 200 jobs.McGovern said he’d be prepared to shut down companies, even the one in his district, if there was evidence of bad behavior. But first, he wants a probe. The bill’s backers, however, said there was already ample evidence. Wuxi Biologics’ executives, according to the China committee, participated in a 2023 event to “build and strengthen” the Chinese Communist Party’s control over supply chains.The company, meanwhile, is connected to another on the bill’s blacklist, . Like BGI and MGI, they purport to be separate companies but share a chairman, , an American citizen and billionaire founder of Wuxi Apptec.A Wuxi Apptec spokesperson said Li Ge, its chairman and CEO, is the non-executive chairman of Wuxi Biologics but has no role in its day-to-day workings.