AstraZeneca to invest £1.9bn in Beijing drugs research centre

AstraZeneca will invest $2.5bn (£1.9bn) in research and manufacturing in Beijing as the pharmaceutical company tries to move past recent controversies including ditching plans for the expansion of a UK vaccine plant and the detention of top executives in China.

- Simon Goodley

The investment will be staggered over the next five years as part of a "strategic partnership" with the city's authorities and includes agreements with three local biotech companies.

Britain's biggest drugmaker said it hoped the deal would "advance early stage research and clinical development and will be enabled by a new state-of-the-art AI and data science laboratory".

The announcement was made six months after it emerged that eight current and former AstraZeneca employees had been detained by Chinese police as part of an investigation into possible breaches related to data privacy and importing unlicensed medications.

The following month, the company's president in China, Leon Wang, was detained as part of a separate investigation and was said to be "cooperating with [the] Chinese authorities".