BEIJING – As a fledgling researcher in US, Zhang Li was struck by the efficiency of extracting human tissue in the morning and mining it for data the same afternoon.
Such a streamlined process had been missing from his years of training as a bio data scientist in China. Inspired, he returned home to Beijing to join the Chinese Institute for Brain Research and launch a national database that will collect blood and DNA samples from 33,000 children to help identify patterns of brain disease and their risk factors.
“Biomedical data is extremely valuable and is fundamental for us to find solutions to diseases and to delay aging,” said Mr Zhang.
His lab is part of a rapidly growing network of biobanks – huge repositories of biomedical data and biological samples like blood, saliva and cells that form the backbone of drugs research.
The sector has emerged as a new front in geopolitical rivalry, with many biobanks backed by the Chinese government as it attempts to challenge Western dominance of the global bioresearch economy set to be worth trillions of dollars.
For Chinese scientists, having access to homegrown biobanks could accelerate the advance of biotechnology companies and cement the country’s place as a global innovation powerhouse, but it is a complex process that could take several years to come to fruition.
The infrastructure push has taken on greater urgency since the United States and other Western nations began excluding Chinese scientists from accessing some of its most sensitive databases for research and limited its participation in international collaborations. Once widely and freely shared among scientists around the world, biomedical data is increasingly treated like semiconductor technology or advanced artificial intelligence – a matter of national security that governments are hesitant to let rivals access.
The result is a gradual shift from open scientific exchange toward a more fragmented, competitive landscape.
“The concept of biodata as sort of a strategic resource has definitely been growing in the US, especially as the recognition of the competition with China over biotechnology and bioeconomy has grown,” said Vikram Venkatram, research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.
In 2025, Washington blocked researchers from China and five other countries from accessing 21 biomedical datasets maintained by the National Institutes of Health and restricted some Chinese biotechnology companies from government-funded contracts. US officials argued that some of the world’s most advanced genetic information could be exploited to threaten national security, public health, or provide military advantages.
Among them is a comprehensive dataset on cancer that covers 46 per cent of the US population and which has spawned at least 17,000 research papers. The Department of Justice said such bulk data sets could be used by foreign adversaries for economic benefit and provide intelligence services with information to blackmail individuals.
The repudiation has spread: in the UK, politicians have raised concerns about the use of its biobank data by Chinese researchers and in February the European Union barred Chinese organisations from participating in Horizon Europe, a €93.5 billion (S$139.6 billion) funding programme.
Beijing has equally begun to protect its own nascent databases, passing a biosecurity law in 2020 that placed stricter controls over the collection, storage and overseas transfer of genetic data.
China’s efforts in developing an integrated biobank system began later than most other major economies, leaving it heavily dependent on Western data for its recent scientific discoveries, such as ways to predict dementia with a simple drop of blood, drugs to treat strokes and early diagnostic tools for colorectal cancer.
Recent progress in biobank infrastructure is underpinned by the Chinese Communist Party’s aggressive pursuit of self-reliance in science and technology, increasingly gaining ground in strategic fields including artificial intelligence, semiconductors, energy and materials science.
“China wants to achieve a self-reliance of biomedical dataset, as part of China’s efforts achieving what Xi Jinping called holistic security,” said Huang Yanzhong, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. “China doesn’t want to be subject to control by other countries, especially those they have geopolitical tensions with”.
As a country of 1.4 billion people, China does not lack data. But its biobank system has long been fragmented, with different institutions using varying standards for data collection and storage. Chinese hospitals, universities and government-backed research centres are now in the complex process of collecting, consolidating and digitalizing millions of samples to create a powerful engine for biotech innovation.
China’s flagship project, the National Biobank, has grown into one of the world’s largest since launching in Shenzhen in 2016 and Beijing is pushing to make it the biggest. Known in local media as ‘China’s Noah’s Ark,’ it houses 10 million blood and cell samples from humans, animals, plants and marine organisms, and last year began to further integrate 10 biological databases from around the country.
Likewise, the National Genomics Data Center has more than doubled the total size of its data files and integrated eight major databases from across the country over the past two years.
The stakes are high. The detailed biomedical data stored in biobanks underpins key frontiers in the global biotechnology race. For example, by analyzing the environmental and genetic drivers of disease, researchers can aid the development of precision medicine which uses a patient’s biomarkers to determine what drugs they are likely to respond to.
Around 80 per cent of China’s bioscience still depends on US-based databases, according to a scientist at the government-affiliated Chinese Academy of Sciences. The US move to guard some of its most sensitive data is already impacting some colleagues, who have sought workarounds including collaborating with scientists in countries with free access, said the person, who estimates it could take between five and 10 years for China to be able to rely on its own databases. BLOOMBERG
