Why I worry (differently) about China’s biobanks
I wrote a commentary piece for the Progress Educational Trust last November. Below is an excerpt:
China’s fast rise in the biobanking sector has spurred international concerns.
One prominent example is the Chinese company BGI Group, which manages China National GeneBank. In 2021, Reuters warned that BGI might be accumulating data for military advantages from millions of women around the world through its prenatal test (see BioNews 1103).
More recently, a Washington Post article characterised BGI’s purported genetic data collection in Serbia via its portable COVID testing facilities as adding to the fear of ‘a DNA arms race’.
These worries are further complicated by souring relations between China and the West, and China’s increased restriction over foreign researchers’ access to its own genetic databases. In fact, in 2022, the UK Biobank was urged to reevaluate China’s access to genetic data of UK citizens, due to concerns of misuse and non-reciprocal data-sharing.
Having studied China’s life science governance for two decades, I am also concerned about China’s biobanking sector. Yet, I find the dominant military rhetoric trivialises the challenges China’s biobanks present, it oversimplifies the expanding field as controlled by a single omnipotent actor (ie, the Chinese central government or its front, such as the BGI). It also diverts attention from more urgent issues that could help reduce, if not prevent, misuse.
Compared to other major scientific powers, there are four key characteristics of China’s biobanking sector:
- China’s biobanks had a relatively late start, but experienced a rapid growth spurt over the past decade, driven by national directives.
- Far from being uniform, the landscape of biobanking in China is unevenly developed, driven by entangled, sometimes conflicting local, national, public and private interests.
- A significant capacity-building gap renders many biobanks dysfunctional and susceptible to ethics violations and data security breaches.
- A lag in regulation adds difficulties to quality control and administrative oversight.
Read the full article here: https://www.progress.org.uk/why-i-worry-differently-about-chinas-biobanks/
Joy Zhang 