China Targets 36 Biomanufactured Products
No other country has this level of ambition. We expect the target list to expand into the hundreds in 2026.
Key Points
The list of target products is the next stage in a rapidly developing masterplan for leading the world in biomanufacturing.
China is targeting new and novel processes, not merely recreating what has happened elsewhere in the world.
This is only the first tranche of target products. There will be further lists released.
Food (incl additives and animal feed) + pharma are viewed as the first wave of potentially commercially viable bio-based products.
Article
In August 2025, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published it “List of Signature Biomanufacturing Products (First Batch).” As the name suggests, it is the first tranche of 36 NEW target products to be made via biomanufacturing. (The full list of target products is available at end of article)
By NEW, I mean two things:
This is separate to the 2023 target list of “32 molecules to make from non-food biomass”. Many of those were already commonly biomanufactured products but China was looking to move the feedstock from sugar to a non-food source.
Most of the products on the 2025 list are NOT commercially available via biomanufacturing (there are exceptions like PHA). So, Beijing is trying change mature petrochemical processes (or other mature processes) to a biomanufactured one.
All systems are go
This is a big deal. It reaffirms China’s commitment to biomanufacturing which is a fundamentally new way to make stuff. So it will reduce China’s reliance on imported fossil fuels, it will increase reliance on China as they lead in this technology.
It seems no amount of domestic economic pain is going to stand in the way of government effort.
Many of the processes are novel. The list of 36 products comes with vague but helpful explainers on each process (See list at end of article. I got ChatGPT to do the translation because I do not have time to do them myself. Editor’s note: I had to rework the table after readers pointed out translation errors). The notes on each process articulate the novelty.
For example, Beijing PHAbuilder which manufactures PHA - a biodegradable plastic. The release states that PHAbuilder has propriety microorganism strains and a seawater fermentation process which reduces costs. (I do not know if that it is really novel. But policy thought has gone into the novelty of each process).
Most of the products are food/food additives, animal feed, and biopharmaceuticals areas. It is a fair assumption that those are seen as the ones with the most immediate potential. This aligns with other evidence. Food additive companies are also the most common in China’s plan to build 43 biomanufacturing pilot plants.
Finally, there is no explicit feedstock requirement here. That suggests China will accept food-based feedstocks like sugar and starch - at least in this stage of development.
The masterplan
We will have more to say in the coming weeks about this being part of a bigger master plan. But our team has already reported on Chinese efforts to identify and develop:
The pipeline. A first tranche of 43 biomanufacturing pilot plants is in the works with more to come.
The products. This tranche of 36 products is the first of likely hundreds of products to be identified and delivered
The tools. China is trying to reduce US lead in computational, design, editing, sequencing and synthesis tools by making them commodities.
The narrative. China has highly prioritised biomanufacturing in every key technology policy document in the last two years, including preparations for the next Five Year Plan.
The non-strategic strategic areas
There is a choice here for other countries. Biopharmaceuticals, feed and food additives by themselves are rarely viewed in liberal democracies as particularly strategic. Medicine is not usually weaponised and food is plentiful.
Who cares if a few food additive companies switch from petro- to bio- processes? Well we should care because if Beijing can make this work financially, then processes which are currently available in many countries collapse down to one. The products on this list are just the tip of the iceberg.
Moreover, this technology will be central to weaning fossil fuels for all products that are not easily electrified (fertilisers, chemicals, food additives, food, steel, cements, dyes among many others)
The usual caveats - China is not 10-foot tall and bulletproof
Many countries and companies have tried and failed to develop bio-industrial sectors. China’s effort is the most ambitious of them all. But there are many failures littered along the way.
Of course, there will be garbage and waste in these 36 products. A few of these companies have been around for a while and may have been doing this work anyway. Or maybe the reason they still need government help is because their business model does not work or their process is not as novel as they claim.
And as the 2025 U.S-China Economic and Security Review Commission report (pg 348) reminds us:
“The Chinese government’s support for biotechnology has not been consistently matched by China’s private sector. Specific government and private-sector support for China’s synthetic biology subsector is more difficult to track; investment in China’s ostensibly private synthetic biology industry appears to have peaked in 2022 with RMB 2.82 billion ($390 million) in disclosed value and 17 financing events.212 In 2024, these investments were down to RMB 412 million ($57.3 million) in disclosed value and 15 financing events.213 These numbers mirror the private sector investment trends in China for the broader biotechnology sector, which fell to a seven-year low of $4.2 billion in 2024.”
But, all these caveats aside, my view remains China will get there. They have a good record of delivering industrial disruption when they really care about an emerging technology, even when many other countries have failed.