Eastmoney has recently unveiled the top 500 Chinese listed companies in 2017, wherein, there are 42 pharmaceutical enterprises, and Hengrui Medicine, Kangmei Pharmaceutical, Fosun Pharmaceutical, and Yunnan Baiyao are the four with market value exceeding RMB 100 billion. From the data released, the market value of the pharmaceutical enterprises in the list has experienced significant growth: Hengrui Medicine rose to the top among pharmaceutical enterprises with its market value nearly doubled and approaching nearly RMB 200 billion, and pharmaceutical enterprises like BeiGene even had more than 300% growth, like taking a rocket.

Fig. 1 List of Top 10 Pharmaceutical Enterprises

The top 10 among the 42 pharmaceutical enterprises in the top 500 Chinese listed enterprises are as shown in Fig. 1, wherein, Hengrui Medicine’s market value ranks top, growing from the RMB 106.8 billion in 2016 by nearly RMB 90 billion to RMB 194.3 billion. Thanks to the flourishing context of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry, Hengrui Medicine has conducted extensive layout in fields of antineoplastic drugs, surgical drugs, and contrast media, etc. in recent years, especially has invested significant capital and manpower in the drug innovation. Its investment in the R&D accounts for above 10% of the sales every year, and it has successively developed and successfully marketed blockbuster drugs such as the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory and analgesic drug imrecoxib tablets and the oncology drug apatinib, etc. in recent years.

It’s worth noting that Kangmei Pharmaceutical and Yunnan Baiyao are the two enterprises featuring TCM among the four pharmaceutical enterprises with market value exceeding RMB 100 billion. China’s support for TCM has reached an all-time high in recent years, and China has continued to implement policies supporting TCM development. China began to implement the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Traditional Chinese Medicine on July 1, 2017, then promulgated the Administrative Provisions for the Simplified Registration and Approval of Classical Prescriptions and Compound Preparations of the Traditional Chinese Medicine which clearly proposes to support TCM inheritance and innovation, and the report at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposes the "Healthy China initiative", defining the strategy of developing both TCM and Western medicine at the same time. The policy perfection and promotion have aroused people’s interest in and attention to the TCM and offered an increasingly clear development route for the TCM enterprises. It was under such context that Kangmei Pharmaceutical and Yunnan Baiyao respectively achieved the good results of market value exceeding RMB 100 billion for the first time.

Fig. 2 Pharmaceutical Enterprises with Growth Over 100%

BeiGene was the one with the fastest growth which reached 318% among the 42 pharmaceutical enterprises in the list, and besides, those with growth exceeding 100% also included Sino Biopharmaceutical, NHU, and Hutchison China MediTech. As an emerging biopharmaceutical company, BeiGene features the new molecular targeting drugs for cancer treatment and tumor immune drugs, and now has main varieties such as ABRAXANE® paclitaxel for injection (nanoparticle albumin bound), Revlimid® (lenalidomide), and Vidaza® (azacitidine injection). BeiGene has been very active in recent years, and it announced the public offering of USD 750 million recently (on January 17, 2018) to use proceeds therefrom for working capital and enterprise R&D activities, etc., showing its ambition in expanding territory.

Furthermore, China has been strongly supporting the bio-medicine development in recent years. The bio-medicine in China, compared to chemical drugs that were started late, can be said to be started simultaneously with developed countries, and has achieved great development as benefiting from the policies, and reached the international advanced level. The future development prospects of the bio-medicine in China can be seen from the fact that BGI already rose to 7^th in the list of listed pharmaceutical enterprises, with market value of RMB 83.2 billion after just being listed in 2017. Many sensitive Chinese pharmaceutical enterprises have competed to lay out the biosimilars and other products.

China is in the great environment where the pharmaceutical industry is flourishing. We can see at least three pieces of good news for the Chinese pharmaceutical industry from the above analysis: 1. The pharmaceutical context is advantageous in China, with the innovation capacity and capital inflow significantly growing; 2. China’s support of the TCM has evolved to a strategic level, and TCM is in the strong revival stage; 3. The Chinese biopharmaceuticals reach the international advanced level thanks to China’s national strategy, and will have broad development prospects in the future.

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