China is aiming to improve its capacity to supply advanced medicines and medical equipment, with the cabinet passing plans to support the development of the industries.
In an executive meeting chaired by Premier Li Qiang on Friday, the State Council endorsed two work plans to promote “high-quality development” of the pharmaceutical and medical equipment industries for 2023-25.
State news agency Xinhua said the plans were meant to improve China’s capacity to produce advanced pharmaceuticals and tackle weaknesses in the manufacture of leading-edge medical equipment.
The State Council also stressed the need to promote and use domestically produced medical equipment and help the sector upgrade, according to Xinhua.
Observers said the work plans were driven by economic and strategic concerns.
A medical school professor in Beijing said advanced medicines, or innovative medicines, had become an important industry in China, attracting a great deal of investment.
Innovative medicines are drugs that contain an active substance or combination of active substances that have not been authorised before, according to the European Medicines Agency.
The professor, who requested anonymity because he is not authorised to speak publicly, said the investment in innovative medicines was critical to China’s economy, particularly when there were few other potential areas for growth.
But because the drug development cycle was long, this preliminary investment could be wasted if support did not continue, he said.
“We have huge investments in biopharmaceuticals and this area may cool down if we don’t back up the investment,” the professor said.
“If pharmaceutical innovation stagnates, China’s economic situation will be even worse.”
Another concern was the impact of sanctions from the United States on “resilience and modernisation” of the pharmaceutical industry.
Xie Maosong, a senior researcher at Tsinghua University’s National Institute of Strategic Studies, said China needed to do its own research and development of advanced medicines and medical equipment to break the monopoly of foreign pharmaceutical groups.
“We should have these advanced medicines in our own hands so that we won’t be constrained by the West,” Xie said.
He said if China and the US did decouple their economies “we hope at least it won’t have a big impact on the pharmaceutical industry”.
“We should have domestically produced substitutes for high-end pharmaceuticals. We don’t want to be affected if there are sanctions like the one the US imposed on China’s chip industry.”
China has some world-leading medicines and therapies, such as the CAR T-cell therapy which uses people’s immune cells to help fight cancer.
But the country is still very dependent on imported equipment for scientific research and in the pharmaceutical industry.
“One example is the Chinese life scientist Yan Ning who quit her job in the US and came back to China last year. Although she’s back, the [equipment she uses for] cryogenic electron microscopies is all from abroad,” the Beijing medical school professor said, referring to a technique for studying the structure of cells at atomic resolution.
“If we decouple from the US and can’t use these techniques, it’s hard to say if Yan would still be able to achieve so much.”
Yan returned to China to be the founding dean of the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation.
The State Council’s work plans come as the medical sector is in the midst of an anti-corruption campaign.
Some 170 hospital bosses and secretaries have been identified in the campaign, according to a tally by the Post. At least two senior pharmaceutical company executives were under investigation for alleged corruption.
Xie, from Tsinghua University, said conducting an anti-corruption campaign in the medical sector and increasing investment were two methods to “enhance the sustainability” of the industry.