A few days ago, WuXi PharmaTech, one of China’s largest clinical research outsourcers, agreed to pay $151 million for AppTec Laboratory Services, which provides research and testing services to drug and device makers. But the deal may test WuXi’s strategy, which essentially rests on making available inexpensive Chinese scientists, The Wall Street Journal writes.

That’s because the American scientists that WuXi gets in the deal will likely come at a much higher cost. The Shanghai company has done well partly thanks to the cost of a Chinese scientist, which is about $30,000 a year. That’s about one-tenth the $250,000 to $300,000 annual cost of an American researcher, according to a report by Jinsong Du, a health-care analyst with Credit Suisse in Hong Kong.

Big drugmakers, of course, want to cut the surging cost of developing drugs. But given that Wuxi has so far thrived using that business model, Du tells the paper that its foray into the US market is “not optimal” and “will definitely have a drag on the margins.” Unless, perhaps, more work is transferred to, say, China?