Big Pharma Launches a Talent Raid in China

In most parts of the world, being a physician brings both prestige and affluence. However, Mao Mengjia gave up a career as a doctor in China for a simple reason: He could make more money selling medicine than prescribing it. Mao, 26, tripled his income after quitting his job at a hospital in northeastern China to work as a medical sales representative in 2009. As many as 14,000 physicians will join foreign pharmaceutical makers, ranging from New York-based Pfizer to Paris-based Sanofi, in China in the next five years, predicts Aon’s Shanghai-based human resources advisory firm.

Pharmaceutical sales grew an average of 24 percent a year in China from 2006 to 2010 and will expand at a 19 percent to 22 percent annual clip over the next five years, according to researcher IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. IMS projects annual drug sales in China could reach $115 billion by 2015. “The pay for new doctors is low, which makes it hard to survive,” says Mao, who was one of 30 to graduate in 2005 from a medical college in Dalian, 286 miles east of Beijing. Nine of his classmates have since taken jobs in pharmaceutical sales, he says.