Chinese biological weapons program

The People's Republic of China (PRC) was reported to have operated a biological weapons program during the Cold War. The United States Department of State stated that two facilities in Beijing and Lingbao City, from the 1950s to 1987, weaponized large quantities of ricin, botulinum toxin, anthrax, plague, cholera, and tularemia. Some security analysts believe the program remains covertly active, and involves dual-use technology. The PRC ratified the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and Chinese officials have claimed that the country has never engaged in biological activities with offensive military applications. Members of the US intelligence community strongly suspect that the PRC has, as of 2015, at least 42 facilities that may be involved in research, development, production, or testing of biological agents.

Most biological weapons experts believe that currently China can produce a wide range of biological threat agents and sophisticated delivery systems on very short notice. Many life science researchers in Chinese academia and industry serve as People's Liberation Army (PLA) officers, and the latest 2020 revision of The Science of Military Strategy, a cornerstone doctrinal text for PLA officers, states that China anticipates that biotechnology, including biological weapons, will dominate the modern battlefield.

Senior PLA officials have expressed a distinct interest in ethnic bioweapons, agents which can be targeted at a particular genetic makeup. In 2017, former president of PLA National Defense University (PLA NDU), General Zhang Shibo, suggested that “biotechnology is gradually showing strong signs characteristic of an offensive capability, including the possibility that specific ethnic genetic attacks could be employed." In 2020, another professor at PLA NDU spoke of the "huge war effectiveness" of a "targeted attack that destroys a race, or a specific group of people." Some believe this interest is borne partly of concern for the vulnerabilities inherent in the monoethnicity of China's population, which is 91 percent Han Chinese. Others believe the PLA's interest extends to offensive capabilities.

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