US Pharma's Critical Dependency on Chinese Supply Chains Exposed

An article in The National Interest, a US-based online publication cites the example of Heparin, a blood thinner, on which US patients have to excessively depend on supplies from China.

About 70 per cent of the US supply of the drug originates from the heartland of China. The two US-based plants that produce heparin APIs -- SPL in Wisconsin and Smithfield BioScience in Ohio -- are now subsidiaries of Chinese parent companies. No commercial-scale, independently American-owned producer exists, the article points out.

It highlights that in 2007 and 2008, contaminated Chinese-origin heparin killed at least 149 Americans, and that contaminated supply reached 11 different countries. The contaminant was traced to Changzhou, Jiangsu. Chinese officials denied that the contamination originated in China and refused the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) access to conduct a criminal investigation. No one was held accountable. Thus, this complete dependence on China makes the US more vulnerable.

The article laments that the 2008 fatalities did result in any change, and neither has the current wave of supply shortages as companies in US are exiting the production of this drug.

"Sources of production are thinning, not diversifying. Every exit narrows the field that Chinese API producers must satisfy and raises the share of American patients whose treatment depends on a supply chain Washington does not control," the article points out.

The article further points out that in a May 2026 analysis of China's 15th Five-Year Plan, the Rhodium Group concluded that Beijing "is actively reinforcing its control over value chains using regulations and economic coercion to pre-empt de-risking and lock in its dominance across critical supply chains," and finds that the number of products in which China is "highly dominant" rose precipitously between 2021 and 2024, from 192 to 315.

The 15th Five-Year Plan, issued in March 2026, names biomanufacturing as one of the sectors targeted for "decisive breakthroughs"-meaning Beijing intends to move further up, not retreat from, the pharmaceutical value chain even as American supply diversification stalls.

The article highlights how China is using its dominance in the rare earth and fertiliser sectors to arm-twist its trade partners which has resulted in soaring prices.

A manufacturing quality failure, or a diplomatic dispute could result in heparin supplies being cut off from China, with dire consequences for dialysis patients, the article points out.

The August 2025 executive order establishing a Strategic Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Reserve (SAPIR) directs the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response to stockpile six months' worth of APIs for roughly two dozen critical drugs, with a preference for domestic manufacturing. The flagship federal investment in pharmaceutical resilience, the Phlow-BARDA program, is built around continuous-flow chemistry-a technology that works for small-molecule drugs but cannot produce heparin, a biologically derived polysaccharide extracted from animal tissue, the article further states.

- IANS