Gavekal Technologies

China’s two “Wuxi” biotech firms—AppTec and Biologics—are key partners for the US pharmaceutical industry, as contract developers and manufacturers of hundreds of thousands of chemical compounds. Washington lawmakers are increasingly uneasy about rising American reliance on the Wuxi firms. But their efforts to curb Wuxi’s access to the US market have been blocked, thanks to strong lobbying by the US pharma and biotech industries.

An unverified claim that over half of China’s domestic tokens are used for video and micro drama generation has sparked a heated online debate. Critics contrast China’s supposed use of scarce compute resources for entertainment with an alleged US focus on coding and productivity. While the data remain unconfirmed, the debate reveals the potential disconnect between Beijing’s ambitions for economy-wide AI transformation and the commercial realities of Chinese AI companies.