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Julie Zhang

China’s biotech firms are pressing ahead with global expansion, a trend industry insiders describe as “irreversible”, even as Washington rolls out investment restrictions and national security measures aimed at slowing their advance.
“The US has erected numerous regulatory and non-tariff barriers for Chinese companies seeking to enter the American market,” said Zhang Jun, co-head of the global healthcare group at Chinese investment bank Citic Securities, at the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing’s Future Tech Summit in Shenzhen on Thursday.
“But the trend of Chinese biotech companies commercialising their products globally is already irreversible. In markets such as Europe, tight fiscal conditions have made governments more receptive to Chinese innovative drugs and medical devices that offer strong cost-performance advantages.”
Overseas markets represent the most profitable segment of the global pharmaceutical value chain, with the United States remaining the world’s most lucrative drug market.
Chinese companies now account for about half of all global biotechnology business development deals, including out-licensing agreements, according to Citic Securities. Beijing has identified biotechnology as a strategic industry to help drive economic growth.
Speaking at the same event, Ren Feng, co-CEO and chief scientific officer of Hong Kong-listed AI-powered drug developer Insilico Medicine, said international expansion was essential for Chinese biotech companies.
“If you don’t internationalise and only focus on the China market, it will be very difficult to build a big future,” Ren said. “And when it comes to global expansion, Chinese companies generally lack large overseas clinical teams. That is the weakness. So the only way out is to pursue business development deals.”

A growing number of Chinese-developed drugs are entering overseas markets through out-licensing agreements. Akeso, for example, drew global attention after its cancer drug ivonescimab was hailed as biotech’s “DeepSeek moment” when it outperformed Merck’s Keytruda in a late-stage lung cancer trial last year.
The company has since filed for US Food and Drug Administration approval through Summit Therapeutics, the American biotech firm that acquired rights to commercialise the drug outside China and parts of Asia.
“Approval could come as early as the end of this year,” said Cusson Leung, chief investment officer at KGI Asia, at a press briefing in Hong Kong on June 9. “That would be a significant milestone, as it would mark the first Akeso drug to successfully enter an overseas market,”
He named Akeso his top stock pick for the second half of the year despite mounting US efforts to curb Western collaboration with Chinese biotech firms.
The geopolitical headwinds facing China’s biotech sector show little sign of easing.
This week, the Pentagon added Chinese pharmaceutical contractor WuXi AppTec to a list of entities it alleges have links to the country’s military. In a May 21 letter, John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on China, urged the US Treasury Department to prohibit American investment in China’s biotechnology sector.
Yet few industry observers believed a broad decoupling from Chinese contract development and manufacturing organisations was feasible, let alone from WuXi AppTec, the world’s second-largest contract drug manufacturer, according to a June 10 note by Tony Ren, head of Asia healthcare research at Macquarie Capital.


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Chinese drug makers are increasingly relying on overseas licensing deals to reach global markets amid growing geopolitical tensions


Chinese drug makers are increasingly relying on overseas licensing deals to reach global markets amid growing geopolitical tensions.


China’s biotech industry sees global expansion as unstoppable, despite US pressure

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Chinese drug makers are increasingly relying on overseas licensing deals to reach global markets amid growing geopolitical tensions

Chinese drug makers are increasingly relying on overseas licensing deals to reach global markets amid growing geopolitical tensions