China's healthcare shift woos more global biz

China has evolved from a massive market into an indispensable source of global healthcare innovation, driven by fast-track review pathways, expanded global collaborations and an artificial intelligence-integrated healthcare model, a senior executive told China Daily.

"China has moved from manufacturing to clinical trial expertise, and is now becoming a source of discovery and innovation for the rest of the world," said Jean-Christophe Tellier, CEO of multinational bio-pharmaceutical firm UCB.

Tellier made the assessment during a visit to Beijing earlier this month that brought nearly the entire global leadership team to mark the company's 30th anniversary in China.

"Bringing the executive committee with me — and almost everyone came — was a symbol of China's importance," Tellier said. "When people saw all of us here, they realized that when we said China is important for us, it's a reality."

On June 4, UCB signed an agreement to establish the China Integrated Operation Center in the Suzhou Industrial Park in Jiangsu province, to strengthen end-to-end commercialization, distribution and supply capabilities in China.

"There is an element of investing to strengthen our supply chain — something that in our industry is becoming more local and less global. The era of supplying the entire world from a single location is over," Tellier said.

UCB recently introduced several differentiated innovative medicines in China and is committed to improving their accessibility and affordability for Chinese patients, including through active engagement in the national reimbursement drug list process, he noted.

"The speed by which China is now doing approvals is ahead of everybody else," Tellier said. "There is really this willingness, engagement and commitment across the healthcare ecosystem to deliver innovative solutions as quickly as possible, which is really remarkable."

To accelerate the market entry of innovative drugs, the National Medical Products Administration launched fast-track review pathways in the Provisions for Drug Registration issued in 2020. They were later incorporated into the new regulations of China's Drug Administration Law, which took effect in May, further strengthening the legal basis for expedited drug approval.

Beyond speed, Tellier highlighted a deeper structural shift in where medicines originate. He noted that roughly one in four new drugs discovered globally now comes from China, and expected that ratio might rise to two in four in the near future.

UCB itself has embedded China into its global research and development system. "We decided six or seven years ago that systematically, each of our global clinical trials for strategic products will include Chinese, Japanese and other Asian patients, to make sure we could file at the same time. Today, 14 global multicenter clinical trials are being conducted simultaneously in China," Tellier said.

The NMPA has approved the marketing of 19 innovative drugs so far this year, including 15 from Chinese manufacturers. In 2025, it approved 76 innovative drugs, a record number and a significant hike from the 48 approved in 2024.

This changing geography of innovation, he argued, has rendered the old "China for China" mindset obsolete.

"We have reached a point where, particularly because of its innovations, China has now reached a level of development that is global by nature. When you discover new medicines, they cannot be just for China — patients are everywhere. Science is global. Progress is global," Tellier said.

Tellier also pointed to China's expanding innovation ecosystem during a visit to Beijing's biomedical park, where regulators, clinical researchers, data scientists and commercial teams operate in close physical proximity.

"Collaboration, AI, plus the culture and mindset of testing, experimenting, changing and pivoting, make me feel that if change comes in the future, it is likely to come from China," he said.

wangkeju@chinadaily.com.cn