Congress has put Pfizer, Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb and AbbVie on the spot over China clinical trial sites in Xinjiang, including ones tied to the People's Liberation Army. Investors are split.
Congress has put four of the biggest U.S.-headquartered drugmakers on the spot over where exactly they run clinical trials in China. The pressure is spreading from one lawmaker's letters to a multi-track Washington response aimed at the broader pipeline of U.S. clinical capital that has helped build Chinese biotech.
Rep. John Moolenaar, the Michigan Republican who chairs the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, sent oversight letters the week of June 29, 2026 to Pfizer, Merck & Co., Bristol Myers Squibb and AbbVie. The committee cited the federal clinical trials database to allege all four companies operate trials in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a northwest corner of China where the U.S. government has documented mass internment and forced labor targeting Uyghur Muslims and other minorities. Some sites sit at medical centers and hospitals affiliated with the People's Liberation Army, the committee wrote, raising the prospect that trial data could feed the Chinese Communist Party's military biotechnology research, experimentation, and capability development. The same letter described Xinjiang as the "epicenter of the [Chinese government's] genocide targeting Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities."
Congress extended a similar human-rights regime to Xinjiang-made goods in 2021, blocking them from U.S. shelves under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. These letters apply the same standard to clinical data and site selection. That widening is what investors and operators are watching.
Alongside the letters, the House Select Committee and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) introduced H.R. 9102, the BINSA Act, a bill that would restrict U.S. outbound investment and offshoring into Chinese biotech. The bill carries a COINS Act-style amendment targeting deal flow into the same Chinese firms that have been out-licensing candidates to U.S. partners.
A 2025 deal shows what the policy would actually touch. Bristol Myers Squibb's alliance with Hengrui Pharma, worth up to about $15.2 billion in milestones, is the kind of partnership those provisions would reach. It is also the kind investors cite when they defend their China exposure.
Fierce Biotech captured the split: investors are split between valuing the speed of running first-in-human studies in China and worrying about the long-term competitive cost of seeding Chinese capability. "Every investor I've talked to has been wrestling with it," the outlet reported.
The FY26 National Defense Authorization Act's outbound-investment package, per a Covington analysis, paired with U.S. Treasury screening of inbound investment into Chinese biotech, signals a multi-agency escalation rather than a one-letter press cycle. Together they cover both sides of the U.S.-China biotech relationship: Treasury on inbound capital, the NDAA package on outbound capital, and the BINSA Act on pharma-specific deal flow.
What the four named companies do in Xinjiang, and what they say on the record, will determine the next phase. The committee letters have not yet produced public company responses, and that silence is itself information. The next tell will be whether BINSA advances to a markup hearing, or whether another committee moves first on the FY26 NDAA outbound-investment language.