‘Money has spoken’: Why Chinese biotech CEOs tell Fierce they’re unfazed about rising US tensions

Biotech ‘Money has spoken’: Why Chinese biotech CEOs tell Fierce they’re unfazed about rising US tensions By Leslie Zhen Liang Aug 20, 2026 8:20am China Evaluate Pharma Jacobio Pharmaceuticals Licensing deals Capitol Hill lawmakers and the Trump administration have been ramping up the scrutiny of Chinese biotechs as U.S. companies increasingly turn to China as a source of biopharma innovation. Last year, Trump’s “America First Investment Policy” branded China as a main rival and biotechnology as a sector requiring more regulation.

Since then, adding biotechnology to the implementation of the Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security (COINS) Act has become a mission for certain members of Congress and—more recently—the Senate. The ultimate aim is to restrict or even block the burgeoning licensing deals between the two countries in the name of protecting U.S. leadership in biotech innovation and national security.

But so far, the market is telling a different story. “We see the opposite,” Puru Gaur, director at market intelligence firm Evaluate, told Fierce. “For licensing, this is diligence drag, not a wall.” According to Evaluate’s analysis, Chinese assets are positioned to make up more than two-thirds of total licensing deal value this year, up from about half in 2025 and under 5% five years ago.

In the first six months of 2026, 81 out-licensing deals from Chinese biotechs to foreign buyers reached $110 billion in value, accounting for 80% of 2025’s full-year total, according to Reuters’ reporting of data from China’s National Medical Products ​Administration. The U.S. remains the most common origin of buyers.

You might assume that executives at Chinese biotechs are enduring sleepless nights worrying about whether the ramping up of rhetoric in the U.S. is putting these new financial gains in peril. But the companies Fierce spoke to for this piece remained unconcerned.

“Within the industry, a cohesive ecosystem of facilitating licensing deals has materialized despite what’s going on politically,” said Andrea Wang-Gillam, M.D., Ph.D., co-CEO and global R&D head of Hong Kong-listed Jacobio Pharma. “Money has spoken,” Wang-Gillam told Fierce in an interview. “If a Chinese asset is truly worth something, everybody who sees it will grab it.” At January’s J.P.

Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, Wang-Gillam said interest in Chinese biotechs from their American counterparts remained strong. These U.S. companies were more concerned about getting the deals they wanted done, rather than focusing on the politics, as she recalled.

The founder and CEO of another Chinese biotech—who requested anonymity as they plan to file an IPO in Hong Kong—also appeared relaxed about the geopolitical climate. “If the Americans don’t want it, I’m sure we’ll find other buyers,” the CEO said of the company’s pipeline. “They will end up in a disadvantageous position.” Sam Lou, co-founder of Hope Medicine, a women’s health-focused biotech headquartered in Nanjing, acknowledged that geopolitical tensions will add greater uncertainties around investment, pricing and collaborations within the industry.

But he was skeptical that it would impact the high demand from the U.S. for innovative drugs in the long-term. “Contain[ing] China’s development is bipartisan and may help some politicians gain more votes,” Lou told Fierce in an interview.

“But it’s still a free market and they can’t fight the power of demand and supply.” This echoes a sentiment expressed by various Chinese biotech CEOs who Fierce spoke to—that their U.S. counterparts already get the better end of the deals. As they see it, if relations deteriorate, then both sides will get hurt, but mostly the U.S.

It’s true that early drug development in China is structurally faster and cheaper than Western peers. In non-small cell lung cancer, for example, Evaluate’s data showed that the average U.S. trial costs about $296,000 per patient against roughly $165,000 in China, which equates to a saving of 44%.

“It’s the whole reason the assets are flowing west,” Gaur told Fierce. A new trend that’s emerging is a preference for tapping a company’s platform technology, rather than buying a single drug candidate. The idea is that the buyer gets more shots on goal for their money.

In Evaluate’s tracking, these platform deals are now about three times bigger than a typical single-asset license in the past. “American buyers have gone from ordering the entrée to ordering the combo meal,” Gaur said. Another noticeable trend is ballooning upfront payments for deals with Chinese biotechs, which have risen from an average of about $52 million in 2022 to $172 million in early 2026, according to Evaluate’s data.

At the same time, Chinese drug developers have become more sophisticated negotiators. It’s now an “equal partner, equal trade” case, explained Wang-Gillam, which means Chinese companies are less likely to compromise in deal negotiations. According to Lou, fewer Chinese biotechs are in the “life-or-death situation” to secure funding that they found themselves in at the tail-end of the pandemic era.

This is combined with the fact that, because Chinese companies can run trials quicker and cheaper than their Western peers, they often have access to the data required to back up the potential of their assets. The rise in upfront payments indicates that international buyers are also beginning to agree on “a fair market value” with their Chinese partners, Lou said. The funding situation may not be as dire as previous years, but Chinese biotechs are still laser-focused on securing funding for their pipelines.

While the financing environment in China is warming up a little as the Hong Kong stock market regains its interest in drug developers, it remains very tough, according to the CEOs that Fierce spoke to. It’s here that the geopolitical situation may be having an impact, with Chinese media already reporting a backlog of IPOs as the Chinese authorities increase their own scrutiny of overseas investment. The heightened tensions are also changing how both parties approach dealmaking.

U.S. buyers are running deeper diligence on the early-data trail, writing in off-ramps, and lining up ex-China or dual-sourced manufacturing. For their part, Chinese sellers are pushing for bigger upfront payments and diversifying toward Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia so potential U.S.

restrictions can’t strand their assets, according to Gaur. This desire for control is also one factor in the shift toward platform and co-development deals. These wider-ranging agreements allow U.S.

Big Pharma companies to get involved in early phases of development and spread the transferability risk across a portfolio rather than betting on one molecule, Gaur said. “Both sides now are actually very risk-averse,” said Lou, who cited geopolitical tension as one of the reasons he paused a plan to found a second biotech company. Cui Cui, head of Asia Healthcare Research at Jefferies, suggested it is “premature to view China as a meaningful threat to U.S.

biotech leadership.” The investment firm sees “limited national security concerns in typical China-U.S. biotech partnerships,” Cui told Fierce, as clinical trials and sensitive patient data are generally conducted and managed by U.S. partners without the involvement of the Chinese biotechs themselves.

Based on the conversations that Fierce has had to date, CEOs like Wang-Gillam remain similarly unfazed by the political turbulence swirling around the Chinese biotech industry. “Both sides are screening more, but it can’t stop us exchanging assets,” Wang-Gillam said. “We just need to follow the law and be more careful.” China Evaluate Pharma Jacobio Pharmaceuticals Licensing deals Biotech