Domestic drugmakers take center stage in development, innovation

Biotech power

China now accounts for about 30 percent of global novel drug development, ranking second behind the United States, according to official estimates.

The National Medical Products Administration, or NMPA, approved 76 innovative drugs in 2025, a record high and up from 48 in 2024, data released by the administration this month showed.

Among the newly approved novel drugs are 47 chemical drugs, 23 biological products and six traditional Chinese medicine products. About 80 percent of these chemical drugs and over 90 percent of the biological drugs are manufactured by domestic companies.

Meanwhile, a total of 76 innovative medical devices, of which 80 percent were domestically developed, were granted market approval in China last year. The devices cover frontier fields such as artificial intelligence, cancer radiotherapy and biomedicine. The number of devices marked a new high, up from 65 in 2024 and 61 in 2023.

"The number of new approvals issued last year was the highest globally and surpassed that of the United States," said Zhou Le, deputy director of the administration's drug regulation department.

In a sign of Chinese drugmakers' growing innovation prowess, they struck 157 out-licensing agreements worth over $135.7 billion with overseas partners in 2025, compared with 94 transactions worth $51.9 billion in 2024.

By signing out-licensing agreements with overseas partners, domestic companies grant foreign firms the exclusive rights to further develop, manufacture and commercialize their drug candidates in specific regions. In return, they receive future payments and milestone fees, while mitigating development risks.

"China's innovative drugs are positioned at the very core of the global pharmaceutical landscape at present," said Zhou.

During the 2026 JPMorgan Healthcare Conference in mid-January — billed as the largest and most influential healthcare investment symposium held annually in San Francisco — the rising influence of China's biotech sector emerged as a major topic of conversation, echoing across the event alongside discussions on AI and a surge in merger and acquisition activities, said industry insiders.

Juergen Eckhardt, head of the impact investment unit of the German multinational pharmaceutical company Bayer, said in an article published by Forbes that China is now, beyond doubt, a leading biotech power rivaling the US and Europe.

"Seven years ago, China was developing mainly 'me-too' drugs, following the West's novel science. That's no longer the case. We're now seeing a steady ramping up of their capabilities to deliver truly novel assets across multiple therapeutic areas, including not only cancer but also inflammation, cardiometabolic diseases and rare diseases," he said.

Mike Ward, an industry expert at analytics company Clarivate, said that when compiling an annual profile of potentially transformative therapies across the globe from 2013 to 2017, assets from US, European and Japanese companies were highlighted.

"This reflected the structure of global pipelines (for innovative drugs) at the time and the Chinese pharmaceutical sector's focus on generics and 'me-too' products," he said.

From 2018 to 2021, however, Chinese products were referenced more directly in global market forecasts, especially for new oncology and immunology treatments.

"Chinese companies started to show up indirectly through co-development, local commercialization partnerships, and as competitive factors in key markets," he said.

"By the mid-2020s, our analysis pointed to China as the second-largest contributor to the global innovative pipeline and as a rising source of out-licensed assets, with Chinese-origin deals accounting for a growing share of global licensing value," he said.