Advertisement
US-China relations
OpinionComment
Zha Daojiong
Zha Daojiong

Opinion | No reason US and China can’t renew cooperation in health sciences and combating opioid misuse

  • China’s vast population makes it a rich source of medicinal and medical data for researchers and developers in the US
  • Meanwhile, knowledge gained about America’s challenges on opioid regulation and treatment can be valuable for Chinese public health authorities

Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
4
A US Drug Enforcement Administration chemist checks confiscated pills containing fentanyl at a laboratory in New York. Future discussions among Chinese and Americans concerned about the state of relations should make opioids – fentanyl in particular – a focus. Photo: AFP
Zha Daojiong

Resumption of cooperation in public health was not highlighted as a deliverable following the recent meeting in Beijing between US and Chinese diplomats, but it deserves a concerted effort from both sides to keep up the momentum.

Advertisement
Days before US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s trip, senior officials from American and Chinese drug regulatory authorities met in Beijing and “exchanged views on cooperation for 2023 and in the future”. That meeting marked an end to the suspension of contacts between the two agencies.
Two issues stand out in promoting public health cooperation between the two societies. The first is the fate of the science cooperation agreement.

Over the past four decades, collaborative projects among health scientists, universities and research laboratories in the US and China were underpinned by the 1979 bilateral Umbrella Science and Technology Agreement. Citizens of the two countries benefited as the medicinal and healthcare industries grew more intertwined.

Renewal of the agreement, set for this August, is being debated in the United States. The debate has been in the news because the last renewal, in 2018, slipped through the “maximum pressure” campaign of Donald Trump’s administration.
Advertisement
In the more recent years, however, government-endorsed health science cooperation has suffered from a drastic curtailment. Part of the cause is that, in the 2000s, increasing levels of US procurement of medicine – generic drugs and active pharmaceutical ingredients – from China grew to be a political issue. Ascertaining the degree of US dependence is a complex task in and of itself.
Advertisement