BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese biotech firm WuXi AppTec said on Sunday that it posed no national security risks to the United States, following calls by U.S. lawmakers for sanctions on the Shanghai-listed company.
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers told top officials of President Joe Biden’s administration recently that WuXi AppTec’s links to the Chinese Communist Party and military threatened U.S. national security.
The U.S. Congress has introduced a bill that would restrict federally-funded medical providers from allowing biotech firms including WuXi AppTec to access genetic information about individual Americans.
WuXi AppTec has previously said it was not a security risk to any country.
“Our company firmly believes that WuXi AppTec has not, does not, and will not pose a national security threat to the United States,” WuXi AppTec said in a statement.
“Even if the U.S. government reviews the company again, it will come to the same conclusion,” the firm said.
In a separate statement on Sunday, WuXi AppTec reiterated that it did not have any human genomics business, and that its existing businesses did not collect human genome data.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo; Editing by Susan Fenton)
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