China has Accelerating Ambitions in Biotechnology – Time for the U.S. & E.U. Bio-Economies to Evolve – Together

By Hendrik Waegeman, PhD, Head of Business Operations, Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant
Special to The Digest

As a frequent traveler to the U.S., I’m struck by how many biotech companies now ask me about partnerships and financing in Europe. In response, I often feel like I’m somewhere between Tocqueville and Borat — impressed by American innovation, but puzzled by the anti-science politics that seem to hold it back.  Europe, meanwhile, is often viewed as a distant and vague ally — when, in fact, it has accessible and complimentary state of the art infrastructure and expertise.  At the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant, we see urgent need for U.S. and European biotech to work together.

The State of Play

The foundational companies of modern industrial biotech — from Beyond Meat to Ginkgo, Geno, Amyris, Evolva and LanzaTech — have blazed a trail we all follow. But translating this world-changing science into commercial scale businesses remains painfully difficult and slow. The hype-cycle-failure-retry loop exhausts investors and founders alike. If we’re serious about growing beyond niche status, we need to accelerate scale-up, speed products to market, and maintain momentum. Start/stop progress drains bank accounts and kills entrepreneurial energy faster than anything else.  Even now, we watch young companies make avoidable mistakes — sticking with the wrong molecule or market long after the data tells them to pivot.  On both sides of the Atlantic we need to do better or someone else will seize leadership.  That someone is already here.

The China Challenge

If you’ve followed China’s rise in biotechnology, you know how serious this competition has become. Beijing has poured enormous state funding into production infrastructure and startups. Western investors, drawn by R&D costs one-seventh of those in the U.S., have helped fuel a surge in Chinese biotech patents, licenses, and clinical trials.  And yet, even as layoffs mount, the implications haven’t fully sunk in. Industrial biotechnology shouldn’t feel immune. Whether you’re in drug discovery, enzyme optimization, biobased chemicals, alternative proteins, biopesticides, or colorants — we all face the same rising tide and that tide is red.

Lessons from the Front Line

My own career — from technology-oriented PhD to market-oriented business director — has been a white-knuckle ride.  Among many projects, I’m most proud of helping bring REG/Genomatica’s fatty acids and Arcelor Mittal/LanzaTech syngas to ethanol-technology to industrial scale. At the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant, near Brussels — NATO’s backyard — I’m often asked to speak about the global bioeconomy and when I do these days, I also hear another kind of conversation regarding China. Much U.S. strategic thinking now assumes a direct U.S.– China military conflict within the next five years. That sounds extreme, but it’s rooted in economic dependency.

China already dominates the production of antibiotics and amino acids — creating a strategic choke point for the West. Few realize that China is rapidly expanding into industrial enzymes, alternative proteins, and biobased polymers. Years of Western ambivalence combined with a reluctance to permit new industrial facilities have eroded our know-how and capacity. As reports from the U.S. National Security Committee on Emerging Biotechnology and Schmidt Futures make clear, biotechnology is now on the front line of global competitiveness.

A Country of Engineers

In his book Breakneck, Dan Wang describes the U.S. as a nation of lawyers and China as a nation of engineers. Xi Jinping himself has a degree in chemical engineering. Engineers solve problems — and China has plenty of them. Combine that mindset with a relaxed attitude toward intellectual property and you get a country willing to “borrow” whatever it needs. Many of us have seen Western microbial strains or agricultural technologies mysteriously reappear in China.

Even after 30 years of explosive growth, China still has hundreds of millions of people living in poverty. And with 1.4 million new engineering graduates each year, it must keep building — not just to grow, but to maintain stability. China is effectively exporting its unemployment problem. Better to pay people to build factories and flood global markets with product than to risk unrest at home.  But that strategy is straining. Growth has slowed, youth unemployment is rising, and the once-celebrated “996” work culture (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., 6 days a week) is losing appeal.  Political instability remains Beijing’s deepest fear.

Diverging Western Responses

Europe and the U.S. have handled China’s rise differently. The EU, with its many member states, often struggles to take a unified stance The U.S., burned by China’s product dumping policies, has grown more protectionist. Tariffs, trade wars, and reshoring efforts followed — some smart, others misguided.  Meanwhile, Chinese electric vehicles are flooding Europe. Without coordinated defenses, European automakers are at risk. Policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic need to distinguish between healthy competition and self-inflicted vulnerability.  But the Chinese model of overbuilding capacity and dumping goods below cost remains a problem.

Industrial Biotechnology: The Next Front

While the public spotlight stays on pharma and EVs, China’s industrial biotechnology quietly advances. Take amino acids, an important segment of industrial biotechnology.  In this multibillion-dollar business, China has built substantial production capacity, acquired additional regional capacity, and now dominates.

Or look at Cathay Biotech, once a struggling fermentation company. After burning through $200 million on ABE fermentation, it pivoted to long-chain diacids and diamines — and is now forward integrating into construction and auto composites. Publicly traded and profitable, Cathay may have become the world’s most successful standalone industrial biotech company.

China’s overbuild in polylactic acid capacity is well documented and it is now investing heavily in fermentation for plant-based proteins. It’s important to remember China lacks the U.S.’s vast agricultural resources, and it faces growing demand from a rising middle class.  Alternative proteins aren’t just innovation for China — they’re a necessity.

The next Chinese five-year plan (2026–2030) has a strong focus on biotechnology and will likely pour even more investment into industrial biotech. Unless the U.S. and E.U. work together efficiently, China will beat us on speed and scale.

What Collaboration Could Look Like

Consider Vivici, a Dutch startup commercializing the whey protein beta-lactoglobulin — without cows. DSM developed the strain in the Netherlands. Ginkgo Bioworks optimized it in the U.S. The process was scaled to 75,000 liters at the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant in Belgium, producing tons of protein for initial market introduction. Next year, Liberation Bioindustries will begin commercial manufacture of Vivici’s Vivitein™ product in Indiana.

From concept to large-scale production in three years — that’s fast. Vivici’s transatlantic partnership divided risk across the value chain, maintained momentum, and built investor confidence. That’s a successful model of collaboration that we need more examples of.

Stronger together

Not every company has Vivici’s pedigree or can move at Vivici’s speed, but momentum matters — for morale, investment, and impact. The U.S. leads in research and innovation; Europe excels in scale-up. By working together, we can match China’s efficiency while preserving the openness and creativity that drives true progress.

At the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant, we advise startups to solve important problems, build diverse portfolios, and scale through partnerships. Manufacturing takes more than one company. We tell founders: divide the risks, focus on time to market, and avoid the distraction of owning facilities too soon.

When they visit the Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant and see what we can do, they get it. We’ve helped many U.S. companies to scale up their process, and we’re considering establishing a Pilot Plant in the US to boost our collaboration with US partners and to merge the best of both continents.

The future of the bioeconomy depends on many factors, but collaboration is one of the main ingredients. Nobody can do it all alone. As the saying goes: “if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” In biotechnology, it’s time for the U.S. and Europe to acknowledge the competitive advantages of the other and to work together.