Editor's note: Adriel Kasonta, a special commentator for CGTN, is a London-based foreign affairs analyst. He is the founder of AK Consultancy and former chairman of the International Affairs Committee at Bow Group, the oldest conservative think tank in the UK. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

The US decision to add three genomics firms affiliated to the Beijing Genomics Institute to its ban on imports made with "forced labor" is significant. DNA sequencing is becoming cheaper, faster and more scalable, reshaping the economics of an industry that is increasingly strategically important. The question is whether governments can distinguish genuine human-rights enforcement from technological competition when the two increasingly overlap.

On Wednesday, Washington added BGI Genomics, MGI Tech and Shenzhen BGI Technology to the so-called Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List. The Department of Homeland Security says BGI Genomics conducted "genetic testing" in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China alongside regional authorities and that such activities facilitated forced labor involving Uygurs and other persecuted groups. It also says MGI supplied equipment and support.

By invoking forced-labor concerns to impose restrictions on Chinese biotechnology companies, the US is in essence turning a human-rights issue into an instrument of geopolitical and technological rivalry, undermining the principles of fair competition and free trade in an apparent effort to curb China's growing competitiveness in the sector. The allegations of forced labor in Xinjiang are unfounded, and they should not be used to justify the suppression of Chinese enterprises. BGI Group and MGI have rejected the allegations, while China has dismissed the US claims and accused Washington of suppressing Chinese companies.

The legal mechanism is important. The designation creates a rebuttable presumption that goods produced or manufactured by the listed entities use forced labor, enabling US Customs and Border Protection to block their entry unless importers overcome that presumption. It’s an administrative trade action, not a judicial finding that all the products manufactured by these companies are made with forced labor.

Yet, the economic significance extends beyond the immediate trade restriction. MGI has built a competing sequencing platform around its DNBSEQ technology. Its DNBSEQ-T20×2 system is marketed as capable of bringing the cost of sequencing a human genome below $100 under high-volume conditions. This is a company benchmark rather than the total cost of a clinical genomic test, but is still an indication of how rapidly sequencing economics is changing.

That matters because the sequencing business is not simply a contest over who sells the cheapest machine. American biotechnology company Illumina's 2025 annual report shows that consumables accounted for 74% of its revenue in 2025, compared with 11% for instruments. Its installed base, reagents, software and services create an ecosystem in which switching technologies is not costless. Illumina reported core revenue of about $4.34 billion and an installed base of roughly 21,000 systems. The company expects competition to intensify and new competitors to emerge.

That’s the strategic interest of the BGI-MGI challenge. A cheaper or more competitive sequencing platform can pressure an incumbent beyond the point of sale, across the broader value chain. As sequencing gets faster and cheaper, more value can be pushed downstream into bioinformatics, artificial intelligence (AI), genomic databases, clinical interpretation and precision medicine. The real fight is increasingly for control of the ecosystem that translates genetic information into usable knowledge.

None of this proves that Washington's decision was driven by commercial protectionism. The rationale given is forced labor and human rights, and the evidence should decide those questions. If a company has "enabled forced labor or serious abuses," it is responsible, regardless of nationality. But the measure now sits inside a much broader US-China technology rivalry; here biotechnology is increasingly treated as a strategic capability. Once commercial technologies become entangled with national security, data sovereignty and geopolitical power, ordinary competition becomes harder to distinguish from strategic containment.

Washington and Beijing don't have to decouple to reshape the industry fully. Restrictions can push suppliers to diversify, customers to look for alternatives and governments to build domestic capabilities. Over time, risk management can become an industrial separation, with different standards, supply chains and technology ecosystems growing up around the same scientific foundations.

For genomics, the costs of that fragmentation would extend beyond corporate balance sheets. DNA sequencing is at the heart of biomedical research, cancer studies, rare-disease investigation and precision medicine. If platforms, data systems and research networks are less interoperable, costs may rise, and scientific discoveries may take longer to cross borders.

The next phase of competition will therefore extend beyond sequencing hardware. US and Chinese companies are likely to compete across the full stack – instruments, reagents, software, AI, genomic data and clinical applications – while governments seek greater control over the supply chains and information infrastructure behind them.

Washington should keep two questions separate: Has a company enabled forced labor or other serious abuses? If the evidence establishes that, there should be consequences. Can its technology compete on price, performance and innovation? That is a market question, and markets answer it best through competition.

The two propositions are not contradictory. The real test is whether governments can enforce legitimate human rights and security standards without automatically treating every successful foreign competitor as a strategic threat. Genomics is too consequential to become another zero-sum arena where geopolitical rivalry determines who gets to innovate, collaborate and benefit.

The question is not whether genomics will become strategic. It already has. The question is whether strategic competition will improve the technology better – or make it harder for the world to use.

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