China’s evolving biosafety/biosecurity legislations

Abstract

Abstract This paper represents a systematic effort to describe and assess China’s evolving biosafety/biosecurity legislative and regulatory regime. It catalogs and analyzes laws, regulations, and measures, including the newly passed Biosafety/Biosecurity Law. Various reasons are underlying China’s recently accelerating legislative process for such a law, from international attention increasingly turning biosafety/biosecurity governance into a more regular fixture; the emergence of infectious diseases and even pandemics linked with zoonosis; advances in the global frontier of the life sciences and biotechnology and their integration with other technologies, which, while holding great promise for advancements in global health, raises biosafety/biosecurity concerns; to the strengthening of biosafety/biosecurity governance in many countries. Chinese leadership’s ‘holistic view of national security’ encompasses broad areas of concerns of national security with biosafety/biosecurity being an integral part. However, having progressed alongside its development of the life sciences and biotechnology, China’s current biosafety/biosecurity legislative and regulatory regime is far from rising to the challenges and even the newly enacted Biosafety/Biosecurity law still has room for improvement. The paper’s findings have significant policy implications for further enhancing China’s biosafety/biosecurity legislation and governance and making them better serve domestic interests while converging with international norms.