China Is Getting Ready to Take On the World’s Biggest Drugmakers
- Local biotech firms are working to develop innovative drugs
- President Xi’s government wants to build pharma champions
Eight years ago when Pittsburgh entrepreneur John Oyler was setting up a Beijing biotech company, he was warned that China was the wrong place to try drug development. “You can’t do anything innovative there,” was the refrain as funders turned him down.
Oyler stuck it out and put in $10 million of his own money to get his BeiGene Ltd. off the ground. Then President Xi Jinping’s government began a massive overhaul of regulations in the country’s $122 billion drug market. Money rushed in, and these days investors point to China’s health-care sector as the possible birthplace of its next juggernauts — maybe even the next Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.