The US-China Business Council complains that the Chinese government has also dragged its feet in improving the transparency and predictability of regulatory approval for importing genetically modified US agricultural products produced by Monsanto, Syngenta and other firms. And that the benefit to US pharmaceutical firms by improvements in China’s patent approval process has been offset by an apparently deliberate rapid increase in patent approvals for generic competitors of branded US products. “There is definitely an argument to be made that Chinese industrial policy might be undercutting some of the improvements in intellectual property rights that we had anticipated,” said Craig Allen, US-China Business Council president.