The gap has narrowed
Chinese biotech and pharmaceutical industry is no longer a small industry. Now, China develops 25% of new drugs, while the United States develops 40%, and last year’s licensing transactions exceeded $40 billion. Gary Rieschel, founder of Qiming Venture Partners, said: 10 years ago, China lagged behind the United States in the development of first-in-class drugs by 20 years. Today, it is only two to three years behind.
In just ten years, this is an amazing time compression.Data shows that China has surpassed the United States in the number of clinical trials, with significant patent growth and the world’s largest investment in the field of life sciences.
This assessment echoes Washington’s growing concerns. The National Safety Commission on Emerging Biotechnologies (NSCEB) issued a more severe warning in its April report, “Biotechnology will have a ChatGPT moment. If China reaches this milestone first, no matter how fast we run, we will never catch up.”
Chinese biotech has greatly improved
The number of biotech clinical trials in China has surpassed that of the United States. More and more Chinese experimental drugs have been authorized and attracted Western pharmaceutical companies to increase their investment. Now, in the field of life science research and development, the United States is about to be caught up by China. A report from GlobalData pointed out that China has surpassed the United States in drug clinical trials and has become a key turning point in the global life science competition.
Axios News Network reported that China has become a key hub for global drug research and development, which is the result of the national strategy of promoting the biotech and pharmaceutical industry in the past 10 years. Scholars from the think tank “Center for Strategic and International Studies” (CSIS) pointed out in an article in March this year that the breakthrough of China’s biotech and pharmaceutical industry is not accidental. With the surge in the number of clinical trials, the number of new drugs under development has also continued to increase.
Situation has begun to reverse
Drug research and development is shifting from the United States to China due to lower labor costs and fewer regulatory restrictions. Investment bank Stifel predicts that as many as 37% of the authorized drugs of large pharmaceutical companies in 2025 will come from China.
Chinese biotech has shifted from mainly copying American technology to developing innovative therapies, and is expected to gain a leading position in areas such as cancer and autoimmune diseases; more and more Chinese experimental drugs have been authorized, and pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Sanofi and Novartis have also increased their investment.
It may soon surpass the United States
China now accounts for nearly 30% of global drug research and development, while the United States’ share of global research and development has fallen by 1% to about 48%, according to a March 2025 report by pharmaceutical data provider Citeline.
Chinese companies have licensed experimental drugs that can be used to treat obesity, heart disease and cancer to American drugmakers, reflecting the Chinese government’s heavy investment in pharmaceutical and biotech research and development.
Brian Gleason, head of biotech investment banking at Raymond James, said that by 2024, about a third of the assets licensed by large pharmaceutical companies will come from China. He estimated that the proportion of such licensing transactions will increase to 40% to 50%, “and I think this trend will only accelerate.”
U.S. is getting nervous
An independent bipartisan commission told the U.S. Congress last month that China is ahead of the United States in advanced biotech, and if it wants to catch up, policymakers will need to invest a lot of resources in the next five years. Some experts believe that the Trump administration’s cuts in biomedical research funding at the NIH and universities at a time when it should support the development of cancer drugs, other diseases and epidemics such as avian influenza will undoubtedly make the United States lag further behind.
Some reports
A report by global real estate brokerage company CBRE in April this year pointed out that by the end of 2024, Beijing and Shanghai will have more related laboratories and R&D centers under construction than other markets in the world. Boston, the third largest city, has a gap in number behind Beijing and Shanghai.
The CBRE report also said that China’s pharmaceutical and medical technology patents have increased by 379% in the past 10 years.
US drugmakers have signed 14 deals to license drugs from Chinese companies with a potential value of $18.3 billion by June 2025. That compares with just two such deals in the same period last year, according to GlobalData.
According to GlobalData, the total cost of licensing agreements in the United States averaged $84.8 billion over the past five years, while in China it was just $31.3 billion.
A watershed event
Last fall, an event that could be called a watershed in the biotech industry occurred. At that time, Summit Therapeutics announced that the cancer immunotherapy they licensed from a Chinese biotech company performed better than the star drug Keytruda of Merck & Co. (MSD) in treating patients with advanced lung cancer. Some people likened this to a biotech version of the event in which China’s generative artificial intelligence (AI) DeepSeek shocked Silicon Valley.
ex-FDA head: All drugs may be made in China in the future
Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), also recently wrote an article reminding the U.S. government to simplify the FDA’s regulatory procedures to reduce the cost of drug research and development in the United States in order to maintain the United States’ global biopharmaceutical leadership. He also said, “If we are not careful, every drug in the future may be made in China.”
Chinese biotech pharmaceuticals begin to license to the United States
According to GlobalData, the value of licensing deals between global multinational companies and Chinese biotech companies will reach $41.5 billion in 2024, up 66% year-on-year, setting a new record. Bilateral deals between China and the United States alone account for $21.3 billion.
In recent years, the mainland biopharmaceutical industry has actively developed overseas markets, and the license-out model has become the main model for mainland innovative drugs to go overseas. Statistics show that from the beginning of 2025 to date, the total amount of mainland innovative drug license-out transactions has reached US$45.5 billion, and the whole year is expected to set a new high.
In 2024, mainland China’s innovative drugs completed 125 overseas authorizations, a year-on-year increase of 16.8%. The total authorization amount reached US$52.57 billion, a year-on-year increase of 27.4%. Mainland China’s domestically produced innovative drugs have been recognized by major overseas pharmaceutical companies, and overseas authorization is expected to become normalized in the future.
DealForma data shows that as of 2025, Chinese companies have accounted for 42% of licensing transactions with down payments of more than US$50 million, and their structural advantages are becoming increasingly apparent.
The show cases
NSCEB specifically named companies such as WuXi AppTec and BGI as the “biotech version of Huawei” that have already taken the lead in the global supply chain.
The transactions between Akeso and Summit Therapeutics, 3SBio and Pfizer, and BeiGene and Merck all show that bilateral cooperation is moving from licensing to co-research and co-production. It has reversed the situation in which the United States dominated technology in the past few decades to China exporting technology to the largest pharmaceutical companies in the United States.
Mainland pharmaceutical companies such as Hengrui Medicine, Innovent Biologics, and Harbour Pharmaceuticals also announced in the first half of the year that they had reached licensing cooperation with overseas pharmaceutical companies.
Hot transactions include Chinese innovative pharmaceutical companies such as Akeso, BeiGene, and Hengrui Medicine, covering popular therapeutic areas such as ADC, bispecific antibodies, cardiovascular RNAi, and metabolic diseases.
Chinese companies such as BeiGene (BTK inhibitor), Akeso Biopharmaceuticals (PD-1/VEGF dual antibody), and Zai Lab are already able to independently develop therapies and enter the US market, while Chinese contract development manufacturers such as WuXi AppTec, Sigma-Aldrich, and STA Pharmaceuticals have become an important part of the global biotech supply chain.
CSPC
After 3SBio Pharmaceutical and Pfizer reached a global exclusive development rights agreement of up to more than US$6 billion, setting a record for mainland domestic innovative drug licenses; Shijiazhuang Pharmaceutical Group (CSPC) recently announced that its epidermal growth factor receptor antibody drug conjugate (EGFR-ADC) and other products are expected to reach three potential business development cooperations, with a potential transaction total of nearly US$5 billion.
AstraZeneca said it has signed an artificial intelligence (AI)-led research deal worth up to $5.3 billion with China Shijiazhuang Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. (CSPC) that will help the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker develop treatments for chronic diseases.
Biocytogen
On June 5, 2025, Biocytogen announced that its independently developed RenMab fully human antibody mouse platform has obtained an invention patent certificate issued by the Japan Patent Office (JPO). Biocytogen used its independently developed super-large fragment chromosome engineering technology (SUPCE) to achieve the humanized replacement of the entire segment of the mouse antibody variable region gene.
This high-barrier underlying technological innovation directly solves the key humanization transformation problem in antibody drug development, while effectively reducing immunogenicity and significantly improving the efficiency and success rate of new drug research and development. This technology platform has been widely concerned and recognized in the international market in just a few years since its launch. At present, Biocytogen has reached platform licensing cooperation with a number of leading companies at home and abroad, including Merck of Germany and Johnson & Johnson BeiGene.
Sino Biopharmaceutical
Sino Biopharmaceutical revealed at the 46th Goldman Sachs Global Healthcare Conference held in Miami, the United States, that it had received cooperation intentions for multiple products since the beginning of the year, and at least one heavyweight out-license transaction will be completed this year.
On June 11, at the 46th Goldman Sachs Global Healthcare Annual Meeting held in Miami, the United States, Lei Ming, head of China Biopharmaceutical Capital Markets, announced that since the beginning of this year, outbound licensing transactions have become one of the company’s key strategic goals. Currently, many of the company’s assets have the potential for outbound licensing, and it is expected to further expand “international revenue” and start the second growth curve. He said: “In the near future, a landmark blockbuster outbound licensing transaction will be generated among these assets, and we are very much looking forward to disclosing relevant progress to the market.”
Hansoh Pharmaceuticals
In June 2025, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN) paid $80 million upfront to acquire an experimental weight loss drug from China’s Hansoh Pharmaceutical for $2 billion.
Hengrui Medicine
On July 28, 2025, Hengrui Medicine, a Chinese pharmaceutical giant, announced that it had reached a patent licensing agreement with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), a well-known British pharmaceutical company, with a total potential amount of up to US$12.5 billion, covering an innovative respiratory system drug in the clinical stage and up to 11 candidate projects in the non-clinical stage. Hengrui Medicine’s H shares therefore closed up 24.5%, setting a new record since its listing.
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