Vivek Ramaswamy partnered with the Chinese government to advance 'Chinese biopharmaceutical research abroad,' but changed tune when much-hyped endeavors went belly up

Since announcing his candidacy for President of the United States, Vivek Ramaswamy has branded himself as a fierce China hawk, going as far as to declare that he would ban American companies from doing business with the Chinese government.

But not so long ago, Mr Ramaswamy was singing a very different tune.

The career biopharma boss has made a hasty 180 degree turn away from his pro-China advocacy and corporate fundraising in recent years.

The Dossier reviewed Vivek Ramaswamy’s business ties in China and found that he aggressively sought to partner with the Chinese government on multiple endeavors throughout the country.

It began in 2017. As the CEO and founder of the biotech company Roivant, Ramaswamy partnered with the CIVIC Group, the state-run investment company of the Chinese government, to form a corporation called Sinovant, which would serve as Roivant’s Chinese (Sino means Chinese or relating to China) “vant” arm.

[the first three letters of Roivant stand for return on investment]

The Chinese government and private investors excitedly deployed tens of millions of dollars into the Sinovant project, rhetorically advancing the company as a soft power arm of Chinese industry.

One year later, in 2018, Ramaswamy delivered the keynote speech at the US-China Biopharma Innovation and Investment Summit in Shanghai.

“Vivek Ramaswamy gave one of the most provocative speeches of the summit,” Endpoints news reported, adding that he made a “bold call that biopharma will have figured out all of its ‘collective action problems’ by 2035.”

“Local Chinese investors and entrepreneurs that I spoke with were keenly aware of the $4 billion Vivek has raised for his Vants and the 34 programs they’ve got in the clinic,” the report added. “Later on in the day I saw him around the Four Seasons, having lunch with several delegates and being interrogated about his plans for Sinovant and Datavant.”

[Datavant is a Roivant-spawned effort to create a universal patient records database]

During a fireside chat at the conference, Ramaswamy declared that he sees “no natural limit to the number of vants we can launch,” adding that “it's part of a broader movement ... We are building the Alphabet [Google] of healthcare."

In press releases from Sinovant, the company described itself as “founded by Chinese scientists and physicians, including Chinese ‘Returnees’” and capable of bringing “transformative Chinese medical innovation to the world.”

[Returnees refers to Chinese people who returned to the mainland.]

The mission statement for the Ramaswamy-China corporation (which is now referred to as Roivant China Holdings in SEC documents) was as follows:

"To develop & commercialize new medicines that address the most pressing public health challenges in China while simultaneously advancing Chinese biopharmaceutical research abroad."

Sinovant is no longer accessible on the internet, but The Dossier found the site through the Wayback Machine archive.

“Sinovant Sciences is an innovative biopharmaceutical company based in Shanghai, Beijing and Hongkong. We are dedicated to creating unique value for the Chinese biopharma industry,” the company website said.

Sinovant advertised being in good standing with several Chinese government agencies, allowing for it to become an Advanced Technology Service Enterprise (ATSE). In exchange for their compliance with the government, Sinovant received a reduction in their corporate tax rate.

Sinovant was not the only “vant” spinoff based in China during Ramaswamy’s tenure at Roivant. In 2019, he launched the Shanghai-based Cytovant, which raised tens of millions of dollars on the promise of various pharmaceuticals.

Despite the relentless marketing efforts declaring that they had possessed world changing drug candidates, Mr Ramaswamy’s success in China would not last long.

Roivant, the first of the vant companies, raised its initial haul (over one billion dollars) on the supposed promise of an Alzheimers drug that would later fail trials, leaving investors with nothing to show for their massive capital infusion into the corporation.

Ramaswamy’s China pursuit followed a very similar framework.

Roivant raised countless millions from eager investors and the Chinese government, but neither Sinovant nor Cytovant appear to exist as functioning companies today. In June 2022, Cytovant discontinued work on its much hyped cell therapy products. The website for Cytovant went offline at around the same time. Sinovant, for its part, hasn’t released any news in over a year. In SEC filings, Roivant now refers to Sinovant as Roivant China Holdings Ltd. In just five years time, the Chinese Roivant extension companies appear to have failed.

Not so long ago, Vivek Ramaswamy declared unbelievable enthusiasm for Chinese enterprise. Now he’s singing a very different tune on China. When he announced his run for the presidency, Ramaswamy departed from the board of the company he founded, but he reportedly still retains most of his illiquid wealth in Roivant stock. It begs the question: would Ramaswamy be saying the same things if his Chinese endeavors had succeeded?