The Chinese Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Market: Ignore at Your Own Peril

China’s healthcare industry is one of the largest sectors of GDP for the country. The Chinese healthcare market is the second biggest globally. The surge in demand for superior healthcare and services is driving swift growth across various healthcare segments. Factors like an aging population, a major disease burden and increased spending power, resulted in a substantial increase in spending on healthcare. The government also has recognized this growing healthcare needs of the population and prioritized the increased importance of providing better quality and more accessible healthcare to its citizens. China realized that it must provide better medicines, technology and services to its people. To address all these issues, in 2016 the ‘Healthy China 2030’ initiative was launched. The aim is also to increase the local and global market share in medicines and medical technology products, promote made-in-China manufacturing and create a few global healthcare industrial champions. As a result of that China has grown into a major pharmaceutical player, home of 4,500 pharmaceutical companies, a top producer of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs), generic medicines and of course Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). The newest addition is the biopharma sector and its focus on innovative medicines. Innovative drug discovery is only a decade old in China, but the sector a seen an explosive growth, combined with massive investments from foreign and domestic healthcare investors.