China’s Biotech Surge: Speed, Scale, and Global Challenges

China develops medicines faster and cheaper. Through collaborations and company headquarters in Basel, manufacturers are navigating the pitfalls of the European pharmaceutical market.

Following photovoltaics, smartphones, e-mobility, battery storage and AI systems, Chinese pharmaceutical companies are now conquering the world market with increasing success.

While industrial development in the 1990s was concentrated in coastal areas, where migrant workers from the interior served as cheap labor, China’s industry is now migrating to workers whose qualifications are steadily increasing.

China has so far been known primarily as a cheaper and, compared to India, also safer supplier of active pharmaceutical ingredients and a production location for Big Pharma, with Beijing having established a special cluster for the production of generic drugs in the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia.

Following the production of the active pharmaceutical ingredient, the generic versions themselves were also manufactured. Initially, these were blister-packed and supplied with package inserts in Europe. Since the package inserts will be replaced by a QR code on the packaging in the future, the only remaining step in the supply chain in Germany is the printing of the securPharm code. This documents the supply chain from the German distributor to the pharmacy.

Billion-dollar deals with Takeda: China’s new cancer drugs in focus

Biotech companies in China are now rapidly developing into serious rivals to Pfizer and AstraZeneca. These Chinese firms are working at a significantly faster pace of development and entering into multi-billion-dollar licensing deals with manufacturers such as the Japanese pharmaceutical company Takeda, which collaborates with the Chinese manufacturer Innovent.

The partnership between the two companies, which was finalized at the end of 2025, includes, among other things, two advanced experimental cancer drugs against solid tumors.

For Takeda, this collaboration provides access to a Chinese research pipeline without having to discover all the active ingredients itself and guide them through early development. Another example of collaboration is Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals and Bristol Myers Squibb, who announced agreements in spring 2026 for a total of 13 research programs in oncology, hematology, and immunology.

While drug production and development in China are significantly faster and more cost-effective than in the West, Far Eastern companies are still suffering from considerable start-up difficulties in marketing their products in the European healthcare system.

Despite EU harmonization, healthcare systems and reimbursement processes in Europe differ from country to country. To obtain approval, production, reimbursement, and marketing for a drug in multiple countries simultaneously, companies from China need international regulatory experts, medical distribution organizations, and reliable contacts with hospitals, insurance companies, and government agencies.

This has been achieved, for example, with the cancer drug Fruzaqla, containing the active ingredient fruquintinib, which received EU-wide marketing authorization on June 20, 2024. The active ingredient was originally developed by Hutchmed and is marketed outside of China by Takeda.

BeOne Medicines took a different approach. The former name BeiGene was replaced by BeOne Medicines in 2025, and the company’s legal headquarters were moved to Basel, where medical professionals are traditionally readily available.

The Biosecure Act: How the US is slowing down Chinese biotech companies

Although US pharmaceutical companies are now relying on China’s drug developments to have replacement products in the pipeline when patent protection for their own drugs expires, US policymakers want to curb Chinese competition and are using the revised version of the Biosecure Act , which has been part of the defense budget law for fiscal year 2026 since December 18, 2025.

This restricts certain government contracts and subsidies if they involve the use of products or services from biotechnology companies that Washington considers problematic. However, it does not constitute a general ban on Chinese medicines or all cooperation with Chinese companies.

However, for internationally operating companies, the law increases the auditing and documentation burden. Ownership structures, supply chains, data access, and connections to government institutions will be examined even more closely in the future.

For manufacturers in China, it is therefore becoming more important to build transparent corporate structures and to organize research, data collection and production in such a way that they meet not only the requirements of their domestic market, but also the requirements of other legal jurisdictions.

Relocating headquarters to Basel: China’s strategy against EU sales barriers

The know-how still lacking for the successful marketing of Chinese pharmaceutical research in Europe can be acquired in various ways. These include the aforementioned collaborations and relocations of headquarters, as well as company acquisitions, which, however, might be subject to antitrust review.

Since the beginning of this century, companies in China have impressively demonstrated in various sectors how quickly they can conquer European markets through their technological advantages, and their catch-up efforts in the pharmaceutical sector have also been underway for more than a decade.

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(Featured image by Jesus Esteban via Unsplash)

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First published in TELEPOLIS. A third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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