For senior life sciences leaders, China-related exposure is no longer a narrow supply chain or policy concern. It is a leadership issue that can affect partnerships, clinical development, data, investment strategy, manufacturing, and reputation. As scrutiny intensifies, companies need to understand where they are exposed before routine business decisions become public problems. Communications counsel should be involved early to test how those decisions will be interpreted and to prepare a credible response before pressure arrives.
China-related risk across life sciences has changed quickly. What was often treated as a narrow policy or supply chain concern is now a business, regulatory, investor, and reputational issue.
The issue now touches the sourcing of innovation, global partnerships, clinical trials, data, and commercial strategy.
A common mistake is treating China-related risk as the responsibility of one function, usually supply chain, manufacturing, legal, or government affairs.
My experience in the pharmaceutical industry during the development of the BIOSECURE Act reinforced the opposite lesson: China-related risk is rarely isolated. It exposes how tightly business decisions, policy risk, and public scrutiny are now linked.
Working with global manufacturing and other business teams also showed why communications cannot be an afterthought. Internal teams need to understand how decisions may be perceived, how they should be explained, and why they matter as the policy environment shifts.
A vendor decision can become a federal procurement issue. A licensing agreement can raise national security questions. A joint venture, platform partnership, or equity investment can trigger concern that capital, data, intellectual property, or know-how is strengthening a strategic competitor. A clinical trial strategy can create oversight and transparency concerns.
Policymakers, reporters, investors, and industry stakeholders are examining biotechnology relationships with China through a national security lens. Their focus now includes manufacturing, partnerships, licensing, investment, data, and commercial arrangements with Chinese counterparties.
Scrutiny is also moving into clinical development. Recent reporting on deaths in China’s investigator-initiated trial system, along with U.S. lawmakers’ calls for FDA review of Chinese clinical data, shows how quickly oversight questions can become U.S. regulatory and reputational issues.
Global companies with a meaningful U.S. presence need U.S. and global teams aligned on China-related exposure. Without that alignment, U.S. teams may be forced to defend decisions they did not shape and do not fully understand.
Communicators are too often brought in after a congressional letter, media inquiry, partner designation, investor question, or stakeholder concern has already surfaced. By then, the company may be reacting to a national security narrative it did not anticipate and is not ready to explain.
Communications counsel adds value before that point. It helps leadership see how business decisions may look to policymakers, investors, employees, partners, patients, and the media, especially when those decisions are viewed through a national security, economic competitiveness, or U.S. investment lens.
The right internal conversation should include legal, government affairs, regulatory, compliance, manufacturing and supply chain, business development, market access, investor relations, and communications, with clear coordination between U.S. and global teams.
Those teams should be asking:
Where are we exposed, directly or indirectly?
Which relationships could become politically visible?
Could any relationship be viewed as transferring strategic capability?
What would we say if one of these relationships became public tomorrow?
The companies best positioned for what comes next will identify these interdependencies early, build working channels across functions and geographies, and make communications part of risk assessment from the beginning. That is how companies avoid being caught off guard by a China narrative that is moving faster than many internal decision processes.
Companies that wait for a congressional letter, media inquiry, investor question, or regulatory review before organizing around China risk will already be behind. Leadership should establish cross-functional China risk planning now through a task force, working group, or forecasting process that tests business decisions before they become external issues. Communications must be treated as an enterprise risk function, not a response function. The companies that do this well will make faster decisions, protect credibility, strengthen their investment story, and avoid being defined by a China narrative they failed to anticipate.
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Meredith Isola is a Managing Director at Narrative, advising companies, associations, and nonprofit organizations on health policy, regulatory, and reputational issues. She brings more than 20 years of experience across the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. She also previously held roles at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. To connect with Meredith, reach out at misola@narrativestrategies.com. |