The United States continues to hold an overall advantage in biotechnology innovation, but China is quickly catching up — and some industry leaders say the gap is narrowing faster than many realize, according to a newly released survey of senior U.S. figures in the biotech industry and higher education.
The poll, carried out by the Cure Innovation Index, evaluated both countries across six key areas of the biotech sector. China came out on top in two of those categories: clinical drug development and supply chain operations. The United States led in technology transfer, access to capital, commercialization, and talent. In the area of scientific discovery, the two nations were considered essentially equal.
“The U.S. is still leading, but confidence is eroding. Most said they see China as an existential threat,” said Seema Kumar, CEO at Cure, which operates as an affiliate of the investment firm Deerfield Management.
The survey results were shared publicly on Monday in San Diego at the annual gathering of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization.
In recent years, major pharmaceutical companies around the world have increasingly turned to drug candidates developed in China, drawn by lower costs, a more streamlined regulatory environment, and what some describe as an uneven playing field created by government subsidies.
Data from a Georgetown University study shows how dramatically the landscape has shifted. By 2024, the United States’ share of early-stage drug development had fallen to roughly 37%, down from 48% in 2015. Over that same period, China’s share of global drug development climbed from just 8% to more than 32%.
Pharmaceutical companies are now licensing drug compounds from China at an increasing rate, hoping to transform upfront investments of as little as $80 million into treatments worth billions of dollars.
The shift has raised alarms within the U.S. government. A December report from the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology cautioned that “China has systematically built a vertically integrated biotechnology ecosystem that is now in prime position to challenge U.S. leadership.”
In response, the Biosecure Act — signed into law by President Donald Trump late last year — now restricts federal agencies from doing business with biotechnology companies based outside the United States.
Kumar outlined the contrasting strengths of each country: “China has speed, scale, manufacturing, development, execution, and the U.S. is better at scientific quality, talent, some work on the tech transfer, and most important of all, it has the access to the world’s most valuable healthcare market. Commercialization is America’s superpower. … The buyer is in the U.S.”
That market advantage is significant. According to data from Iqvia, the U.S. accounted for 53% of the global pharmaceutical market in 2025, up from 49% in 2021. Europe’s share held steady at 24%, while the Asia-Pacific region’s portion dipped slightly from 13% to 11%.
Perhaps the most striking finding from the Cure survey, Kumar noted, is that many respondents ranked potential cuts to U.S. research funding as a more pressing concern than competition from China.
“The U.S. has all of the right ingredients, but the way we have been funding probably needs to change,” Kumar said. She called for stronger financial support for the National Institutes of Health and for modernizing the country’s clinical development infrastructure — an area she noted has not been meaningfully updated since the passage of the nearly 50-year-old Bayh-Dole Act.
