Global pharma giants escape US regulation while testing drugs in China’s Xinjiang: Report
New Delhi, April 14 (IANS/WISHAVWARTA) Multinational pharmaceutical giants — with R&D investments and human trials running in China’s Xinjiang region and at Chinese military hospitals — are escaping US regulation that prohibits drug development or clinical testing, according to an article in The Wire, a New York-headquartered global digital magazine.
Data put together by The Wire China and WireScreen from ClinicalTrials.gov, a medical trial database maintained by the US National Library of Medicine, shows that multinational companies have for years actively been sponsoring medical trials taking place in Xinjiang and at People’s Liberation Army-affiliated sites.
The true scope of this testing is difficult to measure. ClinicalTrials.gov requires registered trials to conform to regulations from regional authorities, but some trials only list the city where the test is held, not the hospital. PLA hospitals also do not always openly identify their military affiliation. China has 165 PLA hospitals across each of its provinces, according to WireScreen data.
Testing at multiple locations allows companies to collect data on how medicine impacts a variety of people under different conditions. The results are used by companies seeking approval from regulatory agencies to market the final product.
The report cites the example of a Covid-era treatment, developed by UK-headquartered AstraZeneca, which illustrates the role Xinjiang played in the testing of a medicine that received regulatory approval in the United States. The treatment, which was eventually sold under the name Evusheld, was trialed at a hospital in Xinjiang and at other sites across China, the United States, Europe, Latin America, and Japan.
Evusheld’s Xinjiang clinical trial was just one of hundreds sponsored by AstraZeneca between 2021 and 2023. Yet, its example illustrates how the pharmaceutical industry can operate in Xinjiang and bring products to market in the United States without facing regulatory requirements addressing forced labour concerns in the region. Several foreign governments and the United Nations (UN) have said that human rights violations are rife in Xinjiang, the article states.
Unlike agricultural and technology firms operating in the region, drug manufacturers were exempt from sanctions under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, according to a 2024 report from the Washington-based research group Center for Advanced Defense Studies. The act, passed in 2021, prevents the import of all goods mined, produced, or manufactured in Xinjiang unless a forced labour-free supply chain is otherwise proven.
As a result, the industry has been able to continue testing medicines on patients in Xinjiang and at military hospitals. Data identified by the report shows the top multinational sponsors of trials over the past fifteen years.
The article highlights that the lack of oversight prompted the House of Representatives’ bipartisan Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party to address the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2024 and call for more information on pharmaceutical trials conducted in Xinjiang and at PLA hospitals.
“China runs trials at PLA military hospitals and in Xinjiang, where there has been a documented history of people being coerced into medical studies amid the Chinese Communist Party’s genocide targeting Uyghur Muslims and other minorities,” the select committee’s chairman John Moolenaar (R-MI) said in a March 18 hearing on the generic drug supply chain, according to the article.
“In spite of this forced testing, the FDA currently allows companies to use data from uninspected Chinese trial sites to advance drug applications in the United States,” he added.
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