For anyone listening closely to Illumina’s earnings calls, one question keeps resurfacing, explicitly or implicitly:
Can China ever return as a meaningful growth engine?
On paper, the case looks compelling. China remains the world’s largest and fastest-growing sequencing market, with sustained demand across clinical diagnostics, early cancer screening, population genomics, and an expanding focus on longevity and healthy aging. Illumina’s technology continues to set global performance benchmarks. And since November 2025, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) has lifted the export ban on Illumina, formally reopening the door for Chinese customers to purchase its instruments.
But in our conversations with several Chinese biotechnology and sequencing service companies a very different reality emerges, one where Illumina’s challenge is no longer purely technical or even regulatory, but structural and trust-based.
From Preferred Platform to Operational Risk
Several years ago, Illumina would have been the default platform for high-end clinical and research sequencing in China. Today, that assumption no longer holds.
One China-based clinical sequencing provider we spoke with now runs its methylation-based cancer screening services entirely on a domestic SBS platform. Illumina, while still respected technically, was excluded early in the procurement process.
As one interviewee put it:
“Even if Illumina performs well, it’s no longer worth the operational uncertainty.”
Illumina’s placement on China’s Unreliable Entities List in early 2025 fundamentally changed the calculus. Platform choice shifted from a performance discussion to a risk-management decision.
Another interviewee was blunt:
“In clinical operations, stability matters more than marginal accuracy gains.”
For providers responsible for high-throughput clinical services, uncertainty around reagents, service access, or software updates is simply not acceptable.
Buying Illumina in China Today: Possible, but Painful
While import restrictions have partially eased, Illumina remains on the MOFCOM Unreliable Entities List (UEL), requiring government approval for instrument purchases. Purchasing Illumina systems in China remains slow and unpredictable.
Providers described approval pathways involving MOFCOM filings, NMPA certifications, customs inspections, and hospital-level compliance reviews, often stretching procurement timelines by months.
One respondent summarised the situation succinctly:
“You can buy it, but you don’t know when you’ll get it, or what conditions will change next.”
By contrast, domestic platforms move through procurement channels with far greater speed, regulatory clarity, and guaranteed reagent supply.
Platform Choice Has Moved Up the Organisation
One of the most under-appreciated shifts in China’s sequencing market is who makes the buying decision.
Historically, platform selection was often driven by individual labs or principal investigators. Today, decisions are increasingly made at the institutional or governmental level, shaped by national policy alignment, centralised procurement, and geopolitical risk management.
As one interviewee explained:
“Sequencing platforms are no longer just lab tools. They’re infrastructure.”
In this environment, vendor alignment with policy and supply-chain resilience now matters as much as read length or accuracy.
Domestic Platforms Have Closed the Gap-Enough
Another uncomfortable truth for Illumina watchers: Chinese platforms are no longer “catching up”, they are already competitive where it counts.
Fengxiang Bi, the Product Marketing Manager at HaploX, a provider of genetic testing solutions and big data analytics, noted:
“We have validated all our clinical testing products across multiple platforms (including Illumina and MGI, but not limited to these two). Currently, the actual differences in data quality are becoming increasingly smaller, and customer needs are becoming more diversified.”
Across uptime, reagent availability, service responsiveness, and total cost of ownership, domestic SBS platforms and MGI systems are now broadly comparable for most clinical workflows.
In some applications, particularly cfDNA and methylation sequencing, users reported domestic platforms performing better operationally due to tighter local optimisation.
Trust, Not Technology, Is the Real Barrier
Perhaps the most durable challenge for Illumina is not reopening sales channels, but rebuilding trust.
Even if regulatory conditions improve, Chinese institutions remain wary of future disruptions. Platform decisions are now framed around what could break under stress, not what performs best in ideal conditions.
One interviewee captured this mindset clearly:
“We already learned what happens when a supplier becomes politically sensitive. We won’t repeat that mistake.”
This helps explain why many expect China’s sequencing ecosystem to become more domestically anchored over the next 3-5 years, with selective diversification among Chinese vendors, not a return to a single dominant international supplier.
What This Means for Illumina’s China Narrative
China is unlikely to disappear entirely from Illumina’s footprint. Legacy installations and niche research use cases will remain. But the idea of a broad-based rebound driving material earnings growth looks increasingly fragile.
The market has structurally re-oriented around:
- Domestic supply-chain resilience
- Regulatory certainty
- Institutional procurement logic
- Trust built under pressure
These dynamics do not reverse quickly, even if political conditions soften.
For investors, partners, and competitors, the implication is clear:
China’s sequencing market hasn’t paused during Illumina’s absence. It has evolved. And re-entering a market that has learned to operate without you is far harder than regaining access on paper.
*Thank you to HaploX, and the many other companies that spoke with us, but who preferred to remain anonymous.