Moderna is gambling on China as other US companies pull back

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. When Moderna reached a deal in 2023 to bring its medicines to China, the news got out before the biotechnology company said anything. It was a Chinese media outlet that reported that Chief Executive Stéphane Bancel was visiting Shanghai to sign a pact with local authorities for Moderna to research, develop and manufacture medicines for China using the same messenger RNA technology that produced the Covid-19 vaccine.

“We never communicated about China," Bancel recalled in an interview. “The Chinese government did." While many Western companies are picking up stakes in China, U.S.-based drugmakers are planting roots. The sales opportunity is huge and growing.

But to capitalize on it, firms must navigate fraught relations between the two countries, as well as complicated dynamics inside China and tense politics back home. Among the knotty issues confronting pharmaceutical companies seeking a valuable piece of the $311 billion market are political pushback in the U.S. and the risk of intellectual-property theft in China.

Bancel said the company doesn’t plan to transfer its proprietary mRNA technology to the Chinese, who he said haven’t made that a condition of Moderna doing business there. But he said Moderna has put in place extra layers of protection against hackers in a number of countries including China. “Some of it we even have on a piece of paper because we know it’s easier to steal data online than a piece of paper in somebody’s closet with a good lock," Bancel said.