OTTAWA | China not only influences our electoral system. It places its army at the heart of our research laboratories, which collaborate naively or in complete ignorance with it. Our aborted partnership with a Chinese vaccine manufacturer in the midst of a pandemic is a clear example of this.
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“We have to make sure our innovations don’t fall into the hands of the Chinese military. They are not our friends and will use our innovations against us if they deem it necessary,” warns Margaret McCuaig-Johnston, an expert on China-Canada relations at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa. .
Canada has already paid the price. At the heart of the pandemic when lives depended on it, China held back samples of a candidate COVID-19 vaccine that was to be tested here and produced in Montreal.
The Ad5-nCoV vaccine had been developed by the Chinese pharmaceutical company CanSino thanks to a Canadian innovation.
Announced with great fanfare in May 2020 by Justin Trudeau, the agreement fell through in a few weeks without fanfare.
The pharmaceutical has never delivered anything back to Canada. Instead, it tested and distributed its vaccine primarily to the Chinese military and China’s allies, including Russia.
Technology from here free
It did so thanks to Canada since the basis of the Ad5-nCoV vaccine is the HEK293SF-3F6 cell line, a Canadian innovation.
The National Research Center of Canada (NRC), a federal agency, granted a non-exclusive license to use it to CanSino completely free of charge and without any consideration in 2014.
This cell line immediately fell into the hands of the Chinese army. CanSino worked with Major General Chen Wei, formerly director of the biotechnology sector at the China Military Academy of Medical Sciences, to develop an Ebola vaccine in 2017.
“Any company in China must cooperate with the military. It’s very dangerous. This means that military researchers can redirect any civilian innovation for the benefit of defence,” said Ms.me McCuaig-Johnston.
Military-civilian fusion
This is the result of China’s strategy of military-civilian fusion. Developed in the 90s, then accelerated when Xi Jinping came to power in 2013, it aims to boost the capabilities of the Chinese army.
But in 2014, when the NRC sold its technology to CanSino, “most Canadian research agencies did not have the knowledge to be able to perceive the risk of this type of collaboration,” says Benjamin Fung, relationship expert Chinese-Canadian scientists and Canada Research Chair in Data Mining for Cybersecurity, McGill University.
In 2020, on the other hand, the risk was hard to ignore, Fung notes. Especially since at that time Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were in Chinese jails, while the financial director of Huawei Meng Wanzhou was detained in Canada, adds Ms.me Cuaig-Johnston.
For her, there is no doubt that China has used the development of vaccines as a weapon to avenge the detention of Mr.me Wanzhou and put pressure on Ottawa.
Still money for CanSino after the fiasco
Shortly after the failed partnership with CanSino in the summer of 2020, Ottawa paid $18.2 million to a Vancouver company to develop another vaccine with the same Chinese company.
The announcement was made on November 17, 2020, less than three months after Prime Minister Trudeau said he was “disappointed” that the deal between CanSino and Canada’s National Research Center fell through.
The money was paid to Precision NanoSystems, a Vancouver company, which partnered with CanSino in May 2020, just as the Chinese company and the NRC signed a partnership.
The sum from the Strategic Innovation Fund was to be used for clinical trials of another vaccine against COVID-19, this time at ANRm.
For Benjamin Fung, of McGill University, “it makes no sense” that the government supported this project after the fiasco of the previous summer.
Precision NanoSystems, which has since been acquired in June 2021 by the American multinational Danaher Corporation, did not respond to questions from the Log.
For Mr. Fung, this investment is an example that the new regulations announced last month by the Minister of Innovation, François Philippe Champagne, on research funding are insufficient.
The minister announced that any “application for a research grant in a sensitive area will be refused if any of the researchers working on the project” is affiliated with a “foreign state actor who poses a risk to our national security”.
Not the only ones
But the federal research funds are not the only ones to fund science in the country, underlines Mr. Fung, who recommends much stricter rules.
According to him, the federal register of foreign agents that Ottawa is currently studying should not only political lobbyists, but also foreign agents in the science and technology sector, so that the research community knows what hold when considering a partnership with foreign researchers.
Election interference
The Trudeau government is rocked by serious allegations of Chinese interference. Mostly liberal but also conservative politicians reportedly unknowingly benefited from the support of Chinese agents in order to be elected, while others lost their seats because they were deemed hostile to Beijing. The opposition parties are all calling for a public inquiry commission.
2009
CanSino Biologics is founded in Tianjin, China by Chinese-Canadian researchers who studied and worked in Canada, Xuefeng Yu and Tao Zhu. They are part of the “1000 Talents” recruitment program which targets overseas Chinese scientists and entrepreneurs to bring them back to China to serve the country’s economy and military.
2014
NRC grants a non-exclusive license to use the HEK293SF-3F6 cell line to CanSino. The same year, the organization fell victim to a Chinese cyberattack. To date, the NRC refuses to provide details on this cyberintrusion and the government’s response, because it is a question of “national security”, indicates to the Journal a spokesperson for the organization.
2017
CanSino is developing a vaccine against Ebola with the HEK293SF-3F6 cell line. Among the researchers who participated in the development: Major General Chen Wei of the Chinese army.
May 2020
Justin Trudeau, the NRC and CanSino announce that they will accelerate the bioprocessing and clinical development in Canada of a candidate vaccine against COVID-19, Ad5-nCoV. Vaccine seeds for human testing are to be shipped from China on May 27. The same day, Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou lost his appeal in court to obtain his release. The package from CanSino is blocked at Chinese customs.
June 2020
On the 19th, Michael Kovrik and Michael Spavor in prison in China for more than 500 days are accused of espionage. On the 26th, the NRC is informed that the package from CanSino is still blocked.
August 2020
The NRC announces that it is drawing a line under its agreement with CanSino, which is then testing its vaccine in Russia and Pakistan, in particular, rather than here. But neither the NRC nor the Prime Minister provide an explanation. Mr. Trudeau is content to say he is “disappointed”.