Is WuXi AppTec a ‘Chinese military company’ as the Pentagon alleges?

For more than two years, members of Congress have been claiming that WuXi AppTec, a contract research, development, and manufacturing organization (CRDMO) headquartered in China, is “closely affiliated” with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and has public ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In December 2025, nine Republican congressional leaders wrote a letter to the Department of Defense (DoD) urging the Pentagon to designate WuXi AppTec as a “Chinese military company” by adding it to DoD’s 1260H list. This week, the lawmakers got their wish as the updated 1260H list now includes the CRDMO.

The DoD announcement states that WuXi AppTec is “indirectly owned” by China’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, and “indirectly affiliated” with the PLA and the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

However, WuXi AppTec vehemently denies the allegation. On Thursday, the company filed a legal complaint with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the designation by DoD.

In an open letter to its customers, the CRDMO claims DoD has “incorrectly designated WuXi AppTec as a ‘Chinese military company’ on its Section 1260H list,” a designation that it contends is “not based on an objective review of the facts, and not under the statutory designation criteria for the Section 1260H list under U.S. law.”

Still, members of Congress claim that WuXi’s management committee “has included representatives from the PLA’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences and the Fourth Military Medical University, and the company has received investment from the Aviation Industry Corporation of China Military-Civic Fusion Selected Hybrid Securities Investment Fund, a military-civil fusion fund explicitly created to support military-production enterprises.”

WuXi AppTec in its open letter to customers stated that none of its board members or senior executive team has military or political party affiliations and the “independent, publicly traded company” is not owned or controlled by or affiliated with any government or military organization. The CRDMO added that it is not associated with any defense industrial base or military-civil fusion programs in any country.

The company has vowed to “correct this erroneous designation” by DoD and demonstrate that it does not meet the statutory criteria, with WuXi AppTec’s stated goal of “removal through due process” from the 1260H list.

In an emailed statement to Pharma Manufacturing, a WuXi AppTec spokesperson said the company “fully addressed and rebutted these allegations” with DoD when they first arose in 2024 and “we were subsequently not placed on the 1260H list in 2025.” The spokesperson added that the company is not part of, controlled by, or affiliated with any government organization or entity, including the Chinese government, CCP, or PLA.

WuXi AppTec minimizes impact of BIOSECURE Act

In the meantime, WuXi AppTec potentially falls under the provenance of the BIOSECURE Act — signed into law in December by President Donald Trump — which bans U.S. government agencies from contracting with organizations that use services from companies on the list. 

Nonetheless, WuXi AppTec appears unfazed by the BIOSECURE Act. As the company points out, the law “only imposes restrictions on work performed under future U.S. government (USG) contracts or otherwise involving USG funding.”

Even in those cases, WuXi AppTec said the BIOSECURE Act “provides a grandfather period of five years that is expected to start in mid-2028” as well as “significant exemptions, including for Medicare, Medicaid, and Veterans Administration-administered medications that are not subject to the Federal Acquisition Regulation.”

Still, members of Congress such as Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Select Committee on China, are continuing to put pressure on WuXi AppTec and other Chinese companies added to DoD’s 1260H list — calling on U.S. companies to cut ties with them.

“These Chinese companies are working with the Chinese military against our national interests,” Moolenaar said in a statement. “Any of them that are publicly traded on U.S. exchanges should be immediately delisted and their products should be removed from supply chains our country depends on. American companies must stop doing business with these threats to our national security, otherwise they are enabling China’s military ascendance.” 

However, an April 2025 report to Congress from the bipartisan National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB) said WuXi AppTec is “so entrenched in American biopharmaceutical supply chains that American firms estimate they would need at least eight years to develop alternative sources for its services.”