The United States retains its lead over China in biotechnology, but that lead is narrowing and could be erased by 2030, according to a new Biotech Scorecard from the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), a nonprofit and nonpartisan initiative that advises on strengthening America's long-term competitiveness in artificial intelligence. The report, released by (NewsUSA), assesses the two countries across five dimensions: Innovation Leadership, Market Ecosystem, Talent Pipeline, Industrial Capacity, and National Leverage. The U.S. leads in the first three, but China is ahead in Industrial Capacity and National Leverage.
That split matters because the biotech competition is not confined to any single field. Supply chains, manufacturing capacity, data holdings, and regulatory speed all shape who can turn scientific discoveries into approved products and market them first. The SCSP report emphasizes that China's advantage is the product of two decades of deliberate national strategy, while the American position is described as "a return on research investments made decades ago, sustained by a capital market that rewards its strongest performers."
The report focuses on biopharmaceuticals to illustrate China's acceleration. In the United States, most government funding for biotechnology goes to basic research, and the report notes a persistent lack of urgency in expanding government support for commercializing drug products. "Approval timelines for drugs entering clinical trials and going to domestic markets are driven by government policy, and can help accelerate, or slow down, the pipeline of innovation," the SCSP authors write. China, by contrast, actively supports biotech startups through the capital acquisition process—building pilot capacity, scaling production, and reaching markets—without waiting for a definitive return on those investments. Its tools include preferential taxation, below-market lending, and direct subsidies, whereas the U.S. tends to leave this stage to the private sector.
The implications extend beyond economics. If China overtakes the U.S. in biotechnology, it could reshape global supply chains for medicines and set regulatory standards that favor its own industry. The report also highlights how artificial intelligence is changing the competitive landscape: as AI allows scientists to predict molecular activity, the expensive early stages of drug discovery are likely to become cheaper, shifting advantage to testing, manufacturing, and commercializing a promising drug candidate. "Whether the United States retains its edge depends both on model quality and how quickly it can move a computationally generated candidate through trials, approval, and manufacture before a competitor improves on it," the report states.
For policymakers, the scorecard serves as a warning that past research investment alone may not sustain leadership. The report's full findings and recommendations are available at scsp.ai.
