US-China biotech rivalry masks colonial legacy: how neoliberal innovation policies deepen global inequality
Original framing: “Opinion: America’s biotech race with China must be won at home” — STAT News
The US-China biotech rivalry echoes the 19th-century 'scramble for Africa,’ where European powers competed to exploit colonial resources, but now the stakes are genetic code and synthetic biology. The US’s 1980 *Bayh-Dole Act*, which allowed universities to patent federally funded research, directly descended from Cold War-era military biotech programs like *Project Paperclip*, where Nazi scientists were repurposed for US dominance. Meanwhile, China’s biotech surge builds on its 1950s-1970s emphasis on *self-reliance* (*zìlì gōngzuò*), a response to Western sanctions during the Korean War—patterns that neither side acknowledges in their 'race' narrative.
The US-China biotech 'race' is less a contest for dominance and more a symptom of two parallel failures: the US’s inability to reconcile its innovation myth with its historical role in biocolonialism, and China’s state-led model’s replication of extractive patterns under a new ideological guise.
Both systems ignore that biotech’s true frontier lies in *decolonizing knowledge*—integrating Indigenous data sovereignty, ecological limits, and post-growth economics—rather than scaling up existing power structures. The trickster’s lesson here is that the 'race' narrative is a smokescreen for the real work: dismantling the colonial and neoliberal frameworks that have shaped biotech governance for centuries. Solutions like the *Global Indigenous Biotech Council* or *open-source genetic commons* are not just alternatives; they are the only morally and ecologically viable paths forward, yet they require dismantling the very geopolitical narratives that currently define the field.