China Is Fast Becoming a Pharmaceutical Powerhouse

Its biotech sector has established a bright future by focusing not on breakthrough cures and treatments, but on speed and efficiency.

- Jacob Dreyer

Just outside of Shanghai, in the city of Wuxi, China is building its future of medicine – a booming biotechnology hub of factories and laboratories where global pharmaceutical firms can develop and manufacture drugs faster and cheaper than anywhere else.

Amid the Trump administration's tariffs on China, I figured manufacturing hubs like this one would be racked with anxiety. But when I visited Wuxi in April, government officials insisted that its research hub was flourishing. They were proud to tell me about its superstar labs and companies that are continuing to thrive.

The fact that Chinese biotechnology stocks have surged over 60 percent since January seems to bolster this claim. Wuxi's researchers seemed positioned to be busy for decades.

In its quest to dethrone US dominance in biotech, China isn't necessarily trying to beat America at its own game. While the US biotech industry is known for incubating cutting-edge treatments and cures, China's approach to innovation is mostly focused on speeding up manufacturing and slashing costs.

The idea isn't to advance, say, breakthroughs in gene-editing technology; it's to make China's research, development, testing and production of drugs and medical products hyper-efficient and cheaper.

As a result, China's biotech sector can deliver drugs and other medical products to customers at much cheaper prices, including inexpensive generics. These may not be world-changing cures, but they are treatments that millions of people around the world rely on every day. And as China's reach expands, the world will soon have to reckon with a new leader in biotech and decide how it wants to respond.

THE ALLURE OF LOW PRICES

One such company that embodies the Chinese approach to biotech is Wuxi AppTec. It's a one-stop shop for pharmaceutical research and development, streamlining everything from early-stage drug discovery to young scientist recruitment and medication production.