China, as the world’s second largest pharmaceutical market, has the annual sales of USD1.167 billion in 2016. However, western pharmaceutical companies have been difficult to gain a firm foothold in Chinese market. According to the analysis, the reason is that supervision has become the barrier to make foreign pharmaceutical companies have difficulties in selling the latest products in China.   Deputy director of commerce Institute of international market research institute said, the strict supervision from China’s drug safety authority can protect pharmaceutical enterprises from possible risks, which is good for foreign enterprises, and they should realize it.

The recent report from foreign media said that the world’s large pharmaceutical companies are investing billions of dollars to develop new drugs, trying to overcome the diseases with high incidence in China, different from the West’s deadly disease. This action shows that the global large pharmaceutical companies have changed the old strategy of past few decades to sell existing products to China who has more than one billion people, and hope to deepen the Chinese business.

 

Trading up brings new opportunities

According to WHO, lung cancer, liver cancer and gastric cancer are diseases with the highest fatality rates, and more than 1 million patients die of these diseases each year. At present, large multinational pharmaceutical companies in Europe and America choose the development strategy for Chinese market, having invested heavily in research and development of new drugs for China’s high incidence. These actions show that the global large pharmaceutical companies have changed the old strategy of past few decades to sell existing products to China who has more than one billion people, and hope to deepen the Chinese business.

Bai Ming, deputy director of commerce Institute of international market research institute told the International Business Daily, first of all, the large population in China and the rigid demand for drugs have assured that China is the great consuming power for drugs. Second, with the steady development of China’s economy, income level of consumers in China has improved constantly, and consumption upgrading is gradually promoted, which have stimulated the growth in demand for health products and drugs with higher quality, but now the domestic pharmaceutical companies can not supply the capacity. Thirdly, the European and American pharmaceutical companies are more advanced than pharmaceutical companies in China in the technology, rate of updating products and management, marketing. Developing R&D strategy for Chinese market can fill a vacancy of domestic suppliers and follow the tendency of trading up and seize the business opportunity in China.