While shouting “avoid risks,” the body is actually moving truthfully toward “China.” According to a report by the Nihon Keizai Asia website on June 13th, Japanese pharmaceutical companies are ignoring so-called geopolitical risks and investing more heavily in China, the world’s second-largest medical market. They hope to leverage China’s partner’s rapid drug discovery capabilities to identify promising new candidate drugs. A Japanese company CEO admitted that China’s new drug development level is rapidly approaching that of the United States, and it also has advantages such as low costs and fast clinical trial processes.
Astellas Pharma will establish a research and development center in Beijing—this will be the company's first such center in China, which is expected to open as early as this year.
The company has sales and clinical trial facilities in Beijing and Shanghai, as well as a production base in Shenyang. The R&D center in Beijing will be responsible for drug discovery.
Daiichi Sankyo is investing approximately 1.1 billion yuan to expand its production capacity in China by building pharmaceutical production facilities in Shanghai. These facilities are expected to begin operating in the fiscal year of 2030.
The factory is expected to produce First Jun Pharmaceuticals’ flagship anti-cancer drug, Enhertu, as well as Datroway, a new anti-cancer drug that the company has high hopes of developing into a blockbuster product. These two antibody-drug conjugates (ADC) have been approved in China for the treatment of certain types of stomach cancer and breast cancer. China will become the fourth country where First Jun has ADC production facilities, following Japan, the United States, and Germany.
In April 2023, in the laboratory of a biopharmaceutical company in Wuhan, Hubei, staff were conducting experiments. IC Photo
According to reports, despite the geopolitical and economic security “risks,” these pharmaceutical companies are doubling their efforts to seek new breakthroughs in China. Chinese companies have made rapid progress in the field of new drug discovery. The Chinese government has designated new drug research as a national strategic priority and is investing heavily in this area. Cancer drugs are a major focus. According to data from the US healthcare research company IQVIA, China ranked first in the world in the number of clinical trials for cancer treatment for the second consecutive year in 2024.
Takeda Pharmaceutical and Eisai have reached a partnership with a Chinese biotech company to expand their respective pools of new drug candidates. Takeda's President and CEO, Christophe Weber, said that China's level of new drug development is rapidly catching up with that of the United States, and it also has advantages such as low costs and faster clinical trial processes.
According to IQVIA data, the scale of China's pharmaceutical market surpassed that of Japan in 2013, and currently it is second only to the United States. By 2024, China's spending on pharmaceuticals is expected to reach $16.6 billion, accounting for 10% of the global market. With the aging population and increasing number of patients, spending on medications continues to grow. A senior executive from a major Japanese pharmaceutical company said, "As Chinese people's eating habits become more Westernized and the number of patients with lifestyle-related diseases increases, medications that were once popular in developed countries are now also becoming popular in China."
Weill Medicine and Fuji Yakuhin have reached a licensing agreement, and in July 2025, they will launch a drug in China for the treatment of gout. According to the company's data, there are approximately 23 million patients with gout in China.
"In terms of medical materials, [the statement] "states that due to changes in lifestyle and dietary preferences brought about by social and economic development, the number of patients is expected to continue to increase."
The changes in medical policies in the world's largest pharmaceutical market, the United States, are also driving pharmaceutical companies to expand their presence in the Chinese market.
The Trump administration has introduced a “most-favored-nation pricing” policy, aiming to bring American drug prices down to the lowest levels of developed countries, which has a cascading impact on the global market. The government also announced that domestic drugs will be subject to 100% tariffs, making the policy outlook even more uncertain.
In October last year, China National Biologics reached a cooperation agreement with Takeda Pharmaceutical of Japan worth up to $11.4 billion. Under this agreement, Takeda was granted the right to develop and commercialize another oncology drug outside the Greater China region.
In addition to Japanese companies, global pharmaceutical giants are also increasing their investments in China. For example, AstraZeneca plans to invest $15 billion by 2030 to expand its research and development facilities and production bases in China; Pfizer is collaborating with Chinese pharmaceutical companies to develop anti-cancer drugs.
Global pharmaceutical companies are actively leveraging China's flourishing biopharmaceutical R&D pipelines. Reuters analysis has noted that the overall volume of foreign licensing agreements for Chinese biological medicine is surging, prompting global pharmaceutical giants to intensify their efforts in China to source locally developed drugs in development.
According to the industry database NextPharma, the total value of transactions for Chinese innovative drugs to be exported overseas in 2025 reached $135.655 billion, making China the leading country in this regard. This figure is nearly ten times larger compared to 2021.
According to statistics from the National Medical Products Administration and relevant industry databases, in the first quarter of 2026, the total amount of foreign licensing transactions for innovative drugs in China exceeded 60 billion US dollars, nearly half of the total amount for the entire year of 2025.
"The rise of biotechnology in China is forcing the United States to catch up," the American Axios news website also noted. Recent data shows that China has become a key force in global drug research and development. Not only does its annual number of drug clinical trials exceed that of the United States, but the scale of laboratories it operates also far exceeds those in the United States.
The American entrepreneur Cyriac Roeding, who has been focusing on the Chinese biotechnology industry for the past 10 years, told Axios: "China is not already a superpower in biotechnology, but we must remain highly vigilant."
