The Beijing Genomics Institute, also known as BGI Genomics, launched an initiative in late June to lure American biotechnology companies into partnerships with it after a rapid succession of announcements of deals with U.S. companies.
Reuters published an extensive report on Wednesday accusing BGI – which specializes in genetic testing for pregnant women and their babies as well as diagnostic testing, including for Chinese coronavirus infections – of developing genetic testing technology with China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Reuters claimed to be privy to extensive documentation that shows BGI shared fetal and maternal DNA data with the PLA and used the data for genetic experiments. The DNA data allegedly came from non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT), a blood test early during pregnancy that can tell mothers if their child is at high risk for chromosomal abnormalities and genetic disorders, as well as the child’s sex.
Reuters also reported that BGI helps maintain a national DNA database within China and that it has reason to believe DNA belonging to foreign women subject to BGI prenatal tests and their children appears in that database.
China considers DNA data a matter of national security and Chinese law requires all companies to comply with any data request by the government in the name of national security, Reuters emphasized.
BGI has previously come under similar scrutiny. Reuters reported in January that BGI had engaged in extensive research with the PLA, some of it apparently seeking to improve the ability of soldiers to withstand difficult Himalayan terrain. China shares a Himalayan border with India that both sides dispute, leading to a fatal clash in June 2020. NPR warned in a report a month later that BGI’s sudden, sweeping campaign to sell its Chinese coronavirus testing technology to U.S. states may result in the exposure of American biological material to Chinese government entities.
The administration of President Donald Trump sanctioned two BGI subsidiaries, Beijing Liuhe BGI and Xinjiang Silk Road BGI, in July 2020 for allegedly “conducting genetic analyses used to further the repression of Muslim minority groups in the XUAR [Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region].” Human rights organizations and multiple federal governments, including that of the United States, consider the campaign to erase the ethnic Uyghur minority of the Xinjiang region a genocide. A year later, genetic testing to study what distinguishes Tibetan and Uyghur people’s DNA from others is among the list of accusations in the Reuters report.
BGI has repeatedly denied sharing any sensitive DNA data – and, in cases outside of its fetal testing, even collecting it – with the Chinese government or the PLA, despite Reuters asserting on multiple occasions that it had documented evidence of such sharing. BGI denied engaging in any human rights abuses at the time Washington imposed sanctions on its subsidiaries last year.
BGI does not sell NIPT kits in the United States, though millions of women around the world do use its products for their children. It has instead – through its subsidiary BGI Americas – increasingly become a major player in the country through partnerships with American firms that sell diagnostic tests of all varieties. BGI presents itself as a gateway to the Chinese market for companies without the resources to navigate the onerous Chinese Communist Party legal system or to build corporate infrastructure in the world’s second-largest economy.
On June 29, BGI Americas announced the launch of DX Partnerships, which it described as “a hub for diagnostics companies seeking partnerships through licensing, original equipment manufacturer (OEM) or distribution agreements.”
“In the U.S., BGI has a strict focus on building partnerships around novel technologies that will take health care to the next level,” the DX Partnerships website reads. “This focus, combined with our highly targeted U.S. portfolio, allows BGI to provide the scientific support and commercial focus required to help your technology become a success.”
The Shenzhen-based BGI offers potential partners access to the Chinese market through a nationwide network of laboratories that can help distribute American technology, “proven commercialization experience in every corner of the planet and direct experience with regulatory bodies across the globe,” and “access to cost-effective and scalable manufacturing.”
BGI appeared to be aggressively seeking out cooperation with American companies before the launch of DX Partnerships. The same that it launched DX Partnerships, BGI announced a deal with the Pennsylvania company Advaite that would allow BGI to help globally distribute Advaite’s coronavirus antibody test kit. BGI announced two other deals with American companies in June. A week before the Advaite deal, BGI announced it signed an agreement with the American company Champions Oncology.
“As part of the collaboration, BGI’s Mass Spectrometry Center in San Jose, California, will be responsible for sample preparation as well as generation and analysis of proteomics and metabolomics data using the laboratory’s cutting-edge mass spectrometers,” a BGI press release explained. “BGI’s customers will have access to Champions’ Lumin Bioinformatics platform, a unique and sophisticated data visualization software featuring over 25,000 multiomic datasets, to visualize and process their proteomics data and leverage large proteomics datasets available throughout the platform in order to perform advanced analytics.”
BGI also confirmed the fulfillment of a deal initially announced in 2019 with the Texas company Natera to distribute its early-detection cancer test in China, available for Chinese patients as of June.
The known agreements, in theory, would not expose any American patients to BGI and thus, potentially, the Chinese military. A genetic testing industry representative explained to Breitbart News that companies that collect biological data on patients implement strict controls on access to that data and that BGI would have no need to access the data that is not ultimately destroyed after services are provided. The risk for these companies appears low in comparison to the potential benefit of giving millions of Chinese patients access to what is in many cases life-saving technology.
Concern over any potential risk to Americans highlighted by national security experts does not address concerns regarding BGI’s alleged genomic experimentation on the Uyghur population. In its Thursday exposé, Reuters stated that BGI used “a military supercomputer” for studies on prenatal DNA that sought to “single out Tibetan and Uyghur minorities to find links between their genes and their characteristics.” Another study allegedly explored “how ‘significantly different’ genetic variations in Uyghurs affected their response to drugs, a 2019 scientific paper shows.”
China began building concentration camps for Uyghur people and other Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang in 2017, human rights experts believe. By 2019, the U.S. government estimated that as many as 3 million people were trapped in the camps. Survivors of the camps have testified to being subject to torture, forced sterilization, routine gang rapes, and other atrocities. Notably, multiple survivors have testified to concentration camp guards subjecting them to extensive medical testing, which experts believe suggests that the Chinese government is preparing some inmates for live organ harvesting.
Uyghur groups have noted that the campaign to eradicate their ethnic group differs from genocides of the past in that Beijing relies on extremely advanced technology for surveillance and repression of group members. According to the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), Uyghur people face “systematic destruction of Uyghur culture and religion, forced sterilizations, abortions, and other birth prevention measures, State-corporate nexus in the exploitation of Uyghur forced labour, and large-scale use of digital surveillance and big data – so much so that the Uyghur genocide can safely be described as the first technology-enabled genocide.”
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