I think the influence of the CIIE is not inferior to that of the Davos Forum, "Wang Lei, AstraZeneca's global executive vice president, international business and China president, recently told media including First Financial.
AstraZeneca has been in China for thirty years, and this year is also its sixth consecutive participation in the CIIE. AstraZeneca's success in China has also nurtured Chinese pharmaceutical innovation.
When it comes to AstraZeneca and the next decade in the Chinese market, Wang Lei's expectation is to achieve an innovative "Chinese Western combination" that allows Chinese patients to use drugs from around the world, as well as Chinese drugs from around the world.
Innovation of the "Combination of China and West"
Under the current economic situation, the timing and timing of the CIIE are very important. At the same time, there have been many policies to promote the economy, attract investment, and encourage foreign investors in the country recently. Now is the best time. "Wang Lei gave an interview to media including First Finance at a pre CIIE communication meeting.
This year marks the 45th anniversary of China's reform and opening up, as well as the 30th anniversary of AstraZeneca's entry into China. AstraZeneca's thirty years in China have also witnessed the continuous improvement of the business environment. China has continuously introduced favorable policies for foreign investment, and national leaders have repeatedly emphasized openness
The 6th China International Import and Export Fair is about to be held in early November. It is an important platform for politicians, companies, and partners from various countries to meet, communicate, and discuss, and also an important opportunity for China to showcase its openness to the outside world. The CIIE is also a platform for AstraZeneca to communicate, cooperate, and sign contracts with local governments, especially major economic belt provinces.
Over the past thirty years, multinational pharmaceutical companies have gone through three important stages in China.
In the first decade, in the 1990s, multinational corporations mainly established representative offices in China and brought drugs to China through trade imports, with a focus on the Chinese market. At that time, AstraZeneca's headquarters in China was still in Hong Kong, and the mainland was the office.
The decade after 2000 was the decade when multinational corporations established factories in China, and China positioned itself as a global manufacturing center. During this decade, AstraZeneca's two factories have been located in two cities, Wuxi and Taizhou.
In the past decade, with the improvement of ordinary people's living standards, the country hopes to accelerate the introduction of international new drugs in major diseases. The policy reform of drug approval has accelerated the opportunities for ordinary people to use good and innovative drugs. It is precisely because of such policy incentives that a large number of multinational pharmaceutical companies have entered China, which has also driven the rise of domestic innovative pharmaceutical companies. Many places have taken the biopharmaceutical industry as their development direction, and a number of parks and enterprises have emerged.
In the next decade, AstraZeneca should strive to achieve a 'fusion of Chinese and Western innovation' with Chinese innovation. This is our idea, which is to tightly embrace Chinese innovation, combine international innovation with Chinese innovation, learn from each other's strengths and weaknesses, and achieve a win-win situation, "said Wang Lei.
Since the beginning of this year, AstraZeneca has expanded its investment in China twice, totaling $700 million. In March of this year, AstraZeneca's inhalation aerosol production base project with a total investment of 450 million US dollars settled in Qingdao High tech Zone; In August, AstraZeneca invested an additional $250 million to increase its canned production capacity and a new inhalation aerosol packaging production line, promoting Chinese factories to become an important part of the global drug supply chain.
According to data released by the Ministry of Commerce, from January to August this year, China absorbed 847.17 billion yuan of foreign investment, a year-on-year decrease of 5.1%; However, the amount of foreign investment used by high-tech industries rose against the trend, with a year-on-year increase of 19.7% from January to August.
How to become the source of innovation
Some multinational enterprises in China only have commercial departments and have less involvement in the manufacturing and research and development sectors. AstraZeneca's localization has gone further. In terms of research and development, production, commercialization, and other aspects, AstraZeneca has a layout in China, and even places global strategic research and development cooperation in China.
AstraZeneca's global R&D China center located in Jing'an District, Shanghai will be opened in 2021, becoming an important step in China's R&D strategic layout. The China Center has deeply participated in AstraZeneca's global new drug research and development, from the layout of research and development pipelines, the formulation of research and development strategies, to the launch of new drugs and the full lifecycle management of drugs.
This research and development center has experienced very rapid development in the past few years, whether it is in terms of the scale of the research and development center itself, the number of pipelines and disease fields currently covered, as well as the early and late stages, it is a great breakthrough The head of the Global R&D China Center, He Jing, told First Financial: "Our current synchronous R&D rate has reached 100%. In the entire R&D pipeline in China, early projects account for 20%, and three years ago this data was close to zero
Importantly, these early pipelines, which account for 20%, are mostly projects that China has already led globally, including cell therapy, gastrointestinal diseases, gastric cancer, liver cancer, and so on. In the next five years (2023-2027), He Jing expects these research and development projects to bring at least 15 innovative drugs to the Chinese market.
He Jing emphasized that AstraZeneca regards China as the next important source of innovation. Only in this way will we have a continuous stream of investment in innovation and pharmaceutical research and development entering China. Therefore, AstraZeneca has a research and development center in China, and the research and development center is rapidly expanding in order to truly connect with 'Chinese innovation' and transform 'Chinese innovation' into global solutions
In recent years, the pace of pharmaceutical innovation in China has been astonishing, attracting many external talents, and cultivating a large number of excellent engineers locally. However, there are still some obvious shortcomings in pharmaceutical innovation. Domestic drug research and development in China started relatively late and still requires time to accumulate experience and talent. This is the "shortage" stage that must be experienced in the development process. In recent years, the number of articles published by Chinese scientists in top international core journals has increased, but there is still a gap in overall paper citation compared to foreign countries.
At present, there is no major in 'pharmaceutical research and development' in Chinese medical schools. In the future, China's basic medical talent cultivation system should gradually include the cultivation of pharmaceutical research and development talents, so that we can establish a basic talent pool and further deepen specialization and international cooperation on this basis.
He Jing believes that in the past few decades, there have been many breakthroughs in the diagnosis and treatment of common diseases, and there are no more "drooping fruits". The remaining "difficult to gnaw bones" can only be achieved through the development of medicine and interdisciplinary research.
In the past few years, journalists from First Financial have interviewed Wang Lei several times. He has been optimistic about China's future more than once.
Throughout the industry, we place greater emphasis on unchanging things. We believe the certainty is simple: China's market is the largest, China's supply chain is the best, and China also has the world's best manufacturing industry and scientists. "Wang Lei told First Financial: We still need to do our job well. We need to do innovative things better, and the innovation that combines Chinese and Western medicine should be done better. Let Chinese patients use the world's medicine, and let patients around the world use Chinese medicine