1. Trade surplus significantly narrowed, and pharmaceutical foreign trade achieved balanced development. In 2017, the amount of import of pharmaceutical products was USD 55.877 billion in China, while the amount of export thereof was USD 60.799 billion, therefore, the trade surplus declined to USD 4.922 billion, down by 34.60%. The main reason for the rapid narrowing of the trade surplus was the rapid growth of the import of high-end medical devices, pharmaceutical equipment, Western medicine preparations, and biologics for consecutive years.
2. Supply-side reform achieved initial success, and API export overall showed a warming trend. In 2017, affected by objective factors such as tightening of environmental protection, shortage of upstream supplies, and price rise of raw materials, Chinese enterprises accelerated the structural reform of Western medicine API production lines, increased environmental protection control efforts, and shifted from "volume sale" to "quality guarantee". The API export showed the trend of volume decline and price increase in the first half of 2017, while the second half saw the revival of the export volume, with the amount of export significantly increasing, and the whole-year growth of 13.71%.
3. Processing trade rebounded, and preparation processing trade largely increased. In 2017, the amount of export of pharmaceutical product processing trade was USD 10.431 billion, growing by 6.11% year on year, wherein, the preparation processing trade rapidly grew by 48.80%.
4. New fields such as bio-pharmaceuticals and in vitro diagnostics were burgeoning. The production and sales scale of China’s bio-pharmaceutical industry has grown steadily, with the annual growth above 15%. China has become the country with the second largest number of biological drugs in development next only to the U.S. China’s in vitro diagnostic reagent market size is also increasingly expanded, and is expected to reach RMB 72.3 billion by 2019, with the compound annual growth rate reaching 18.7%.
5. Medical service trade showed exuberant growth momentum. For local Chinese enterprises, new formats such as CRO (Contract Research Organization), CMO (Contract Manufacture Organization), and CSO (Contract Sales Organization) have gradually risen with the continued extension and breakdown of the pharmaceutical industry chain, and become new forms for Chinese pharmaceutical enterprises to participate in international division of labor. TCM services are quickened the "going abroad" pace. According to data, China sends out about 2,000 TCM clinicians every year, accounting for 60% of all the assigned medical service personnel. There are more than 60 TCM service trade institutions operating TCM hospitals, TCM clinics, TCM healthcare institutions, and TCM research centers, etc. in more than 20 countries and regions, annually receiving 250,000 person-times.
6. Transformation of R&D achievements entered the harvest time. In 2017, Chinese enterprises obtained 34 Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) approvals for preparation products (including 8 tentative approvals), being 1.7 times the number approved in the previous year. More and more Chinese enterprises have gone abroad to the U.S. generic drug market. The "licensing" has been the keyword in China’s pharmaceutical R&D field since 2017. Collaboration in 6 products of the four enterprises: BeiGene, Hengrui Medicine, Gloria Pharmaceuticals, and Nanjing Legend was conducted with overseas R&D giants and multinational investment banks in the form of licensing, with the total transaction amount exceeding USD 3.2 billion.
7. Pharmaceutical capital operation became a normal, and transaction amount surged to new highs again and again. At the beginning of 2017, SanPower Group announced the acquisition of the U.S. biopharmaceutical company Dendreon for USD 819 million, kicking off 2017 with such a big investment, followed by Fosun Pharmaceutical, Humanwell Healthcare, Xianju Pharma, 3SBio Inc., and Wego Group, etc. SanPower Group created the record of a Chinese enterprise acquiring the first overseas biologic...
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