China’s Pharmaceutical Innovation Gains Momentum

BEIJING, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) — China’s rise in manufacturing has rarely been associated with drug revelation. That, quietly, is starting to change — giving “Made in China” a new chemistry.

Earlier this week, Chinese biotech innovator Jacobio Pharma reached an agreement to license an experimental cancer drug targeting a notoriously difficult genetic mutation to pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca.

The potential 2 billion U.S. dollar partnership underscored a banner year for Chinese drugmakers. In the first ten months of 2025, Chinese pharmaceutical companies signed more than 100 overseas licensing deals, with a combined value exceeding 100 billion U.S.dollars, nearly double the total recorded in 2024.

Many in the industry believe China’s innovative pharmaceutical sector has reached its “DeepSeek moment,” the point at which years of sustained investment in research, infrastructure and regulatory capacity are beginning to deliver tangible breakthroughs.

Today,China ranks second only to the United States in the number of new drugs under development,with its pipeline accounting for more than one-fifth of the global total.

Since 2021, over 110 homegrown innovative drugs have received market approval in China, representing more than half of all new drug approvals during that period.

According to Pharmcube,a pharmaceutical consultancy,China surpassed the United States in the number of original drugs developed between 2015 and 2024,cementing its place among the world’s leading innovators in pharmaceuticals.

Over that decade, the cumulative value of overseas licensing deals involving Chinese innovative drugs exceeded 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars. Eighteen China-developed original medicines were approved abroad, with several outperforming foreign-origin drugs in head-to-head clinical trials.

these results highlight the conversion of China’s pharmaceutical sector,which was once dominated by imitative medicines,commonly referred to in the industry as “me-too” or “me-better” drugs.

Bill Anderson, chief executive of Bayer, the German multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, has observed this transformation firsthand. China, he told Xinhua, is evolving from a “follower” into a “source” of original biopharmaceutical innovation.

CHINA SPEED

Describing it as “China speed,” Anderson is impressed by the country’s efforts to better align technological know-how with industrial innovation to accelerate.

A key plank of that effort is a policy document released in November, which promotes pilot-scale platforms to bridge laboratory research and industrial-scale production. Biopharmaceuticals are highlighted among several priority sectors.

Along with sustained policy support, anderson also pointed to China’s strength in possessing a highly dynamic research and development ecosystem and a strong healthcare market demand that helps translate innovation into practical use.

In 2023, Chinese researchers ranked second globally — after the United states — in the number of papers published in Cell, Nature and science in the biopharmaceutical sector.

In July, China proposed using its national health insurance data platform to analyze disease patterns and clinical drug demand, aiming to guide innovative drug development. “This helps companies, research institutes and hospitals set priorities, plan pipelines, and pursue differentiated innovation,” said Wang Guodong, an official with the National Health commission.