A subtle new step in China’s economic security approach
China’s actions on beef and bioreactors reveal new tools and targets in its economic security strategy.
Key takeaways
China’s economic security is quietly expanding into a wider range of areas, including bio, with greater granularity.
China’s recent actions on beef and bioreactors demonstrate new approaches and new areas for China’s economic security
The national bioreactor plan - a centrally released plan involving nearly 100 orgs - looks like someone in the commerce department pulled data identifying vulnerabilities on US and EU imports.
A subtle new step in China’s economic security approach
China is in the middle of multi-decade program to simultaneously lead in innovative manufacturing and reduce reliance on the US and its partners (even if Trump is stretching those partnerships).
Two Beijing-led activities in the last couple of months show how this program seems to have found a broader mandate.
China got beef
In January, Beijing raised tariffs on beef imports above a certain quota. The fanfare around it died quickly, as jaded China watchers rolled their eyes and wrote it off as China-being-China.
This was different though. Beijing often withheld approval for food imports from certain countries and frequently used its food market as a tool for biateral punishments. But it has rarely (never?) essentially capped imports from all countries for a food it supplies 70% domestically, and one in which domestic supply is growing rapidly.
There was no political transgression, no foreign domination, no emerging technology competition, just unadulterated economic securitisation of food. China has long been sensitive about food security, but it has not - in recent times - limited foreign supplies to achieve that security.
My read then (and now) remains that China wants to ensure that new growth in Chinese beef consumption is met by domestic production. If China continues down this path, it will limit opportunity for foreign producers in the China market.
It also asks uncormfortable questions about why now?
The bioreactor battleground
In 2025, in a completely different part of the bio-sphere, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences were crafting a “High-Performance Bioreactor Innovation Challenge” (高性能生物反应器创新任务). In January of this year, we reported on the first tranche of nearly 100 winners spread accross 28 projects.
At first blush, taken alongside multiple other high-level biomanufacturing plans and early signals that biomanufacturing will be a top priority in the next five-year plan, our team argued this appears to be an effort to reimagine the bioreactor. For many bio-based processes, bioreactor costs do need to drop.
After futher consideration, this appears to have as much an economic security angle as an innovation lead-from-the-front approach. The project names themselves are fairly vague but the areas they are working on: advanced bioreactors, sensors, and intelligent industrial systems are dominated by US and EU companies. There are lots of alternatives available, but the really high end stuff remains in US-EU companies.
It feels as though someone from the Chinese government went through a list of China’s biggest bioreactor vulnerabilities, and drew up a plan to create alternatives. By doing this, the government has chosen preferred companies to help solve these problems. In general, the chosen companies work in the same space as the international leaders but usually with lower quality.
To be fair, I am trying to read the tea leaves here - the published plans do not articulate such an angle.
If I am right, this level of economic security activity for bioreactors which have alternatives - albeit lower quality - speaks to granularity and broadness in China’s economic security efforts that have not been there. China’s Little Giants program - small companies targetting indiviual items of vulnerability - is perhaps analogous, but even that program did not enlist nearly 100 companies to solve potential vulnerabilities for one narrow suite of technologies that have not yet been exploited by the US and EU.
Why now?
No one knows for sure. It would be easy to say this is an early indicator of Taiwan preparations, or that Chinese companies are tired of reliance on US and EU bioreactors and they effectively lobbied for change. Or Beijing genuinely believes - as it seems to - that biomanufacturing is core future industry and as such foreign vulnerability is not acceptable. Or maybe this is a natural next step in the economic journey. Or all of the above.
This is, of course, a highly dissastifying answer to the question. But it is the reality.
Either way, we will likely see consistent and broadening attempts to limit vulnerability in food and critical tech.