Pioneering era, recording 40 years of "imported" multinational pharmaceutical enterprises

At the beginning of reform and opening up, China's pharmaceutical production capacity and R & D capacity are extremely backward In 1978, the GDP of the domestic pharmaceutical industry was less than 8 billion yuan, and the annual sales volume of the whole pharmaceutical industry was only 7.2 billion yuan In the primitive era of Chinese pharmaceutical industry, the demand for imported drugs is urgent After 1978, China's pharmaceutical industry entered a period of rapid development The total output value of the national pharmaceutical industry jumped from 7.3 billion yuan in that year to nearly 3 billion yuan in 2017, an increase of 410 times in 40 years It is the fastest-growing industry in the national economy, and is far higher than the growth rate of GDP From 1978 to 2017, the import volume of the pharmaceutical industry also increased from US $40 million to US $55.88 billion, an increase of 1397 times According to the National Bureau of statistics, China's drug imports in 1998 amounted to 386 million US dollars In 2016, China's drug imports reached US $20.071 billion, an increase of nearly 54 times The average growth rate of China's drug import in the past 18 years has reached 25% Data source of China's drug import from 1998 to 2016: in the winter of 1978, the first pharmaceutical enterprise "introduced" by the National Bureau of statistics, the central government made a strategic decision on reform and opening up The State Administration of medicine has just been established, and the law on Sino foreign joint ventures has not yet been promulgated, so joint ventures encounter many difficulties When Comrade Deng xiaoping visited Japan, the China Japan Friendship Treaty was signed less than a year ago China and Japan are full of enthusiasm in cooperation, while Japan's pharmaceutical industry is at the top of the world Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd of Japan and the State Administration of medicine began to discuss the technical exchange of infusion and joint venture construction of the plant During the negotiation, the law on Sino foreign joint ventures was finally promulgated The law expressly allows: "companies, enterprises and other economic organizations or individuals shall, in accordance with the principle of equality and mutual benefit and with the approval of the Chinese government, establish joint ventures with Chinese companies, enterprises or other economic organizations within the territory of the people's Republic of China." The promulgation of the joint venture law gave legal support to the cooperation and accelerated the negotiation process The cooperation between China and Japan has gone through many rounds of negotiations and consultations In February 1980, the State Administration of medicine and Tianjin Municipal Revolutionary Committee proposed a joint venture plan to the State Planning Commission and the Foreign Investment Commission China and Japan have signed three documents, namely, the contract for joint venture operation of China Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., the technical cooperation contract and the articles of association of China Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd China Pharmaceutical Industry Corporation and Japan Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd jointly invested 71 million yuan to establish a joint venture company, China Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd The following year, China Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd was established in Tianjin, the first joint venture pharmaceutical enterprise in China was born, and the first board of directors of the company was held The joint venture pharmaceutical enterprises "laowujia", Tianjin Otsuka, Shanghai Shiguibao, Wuxi Huarui, Xi'an YANGSEN and Suzhou capsule, started with the official signing of Tianjin Otsuka These five Chinese foreign joint ventures, the first to invest and build factories in China, are called "laowujia" in the industry In June 1979, after the door of reform and opening-up was opened, Guan Zhou, deputy director of the State Administration of medicine, led a Chinese delegation to visit the United States again to discuss the establishment of a joint venture with Squibb In July 1980, the State Administration of medicine officially approved the establishment of a joint venture pharmaceutical enterprise with Squibb in Shanghai According to the document No 13 (1980) issued by Shanghai Planning Commission, Shanghai Pharmaceutical Industry Company and American Squibb Company at that time agreed to operate as joint venture partners As of May 15, 1982, Squibb, China Pharmaceutical Foreign Trade Corporation and Shanghai Pharmaceutical Industry Corporation signed a contract With a total investment of 111.64 million yuan, Shanghai Squibb Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd of China and the United States was officially established Although Shanghai Squibb is the second Sino US joint venture pharmaceutical enterprise in China, it has established many firsts in the domestic pharmaceutical industry: it is the first Sino US joint venture pharmaceutical enterprise; it is the first pharmaceutical enterprise to establish a professional pharmaceutical sales team, the first new mode of academic promotion of hospital doctors; it is the first Chinese company to obtain the quality certification of Canada Insurance Regulatory Bureau; it is the first one to pass the FDA certification, China's first joint venture to export Western medicine products to the United States, and the establishment of China's first over-the-counter drug promotion team In September 1982, Wuxi Huarui Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., the first joint venture between China and Sweden, was established with a registered capital of US $15.6 million, mainly providing enteral nutrition products In October 1985, Xi'an Janssen Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd was established by the wholly-owned subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson company of the United States Belgium Janssen Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd and Shaanxi Provincial Pharmaceutical Corporation, Shaanxi Hanjiang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., China Pharmaceutical Industry Corporation and China Pharmaceutical Foreign Trade Corporation, with a total investment of 150 million yuan In July 1985, the Sino US joint venture Suzhou capsule Co., Ltd was established, which introduced high-quality hollow capsule technology for China Multinational pharmaceutical companies In the 1990s, after more than ten years of development in the early stage of reform and opening up, the first batch of pharmaceutical factories set up joint ventures in China made use of foreign advanced technology and combined with China's low cost Although the scale is limited, the pharmaceutical enterprises of the world saw China's potential for the first time and felt the huge historical opportunity brought by China's reform and opening up From 1990 to 2010, a large number of foreign pharmaceutical enterprises set up offices, investment companies and factories in China It is worth mentioning that during this period, multinational enterprises began to set up R & D centers in China In 1997, Novo Nordisk, a Danish pharmaceutical company, set up a research and development center in Beijing This is the first multinational biopharmaceutical enterprise to set up a R & D center in China As of 2016, the number of R & D centers set up by foreign pharmaceutical enterprises in Shanghai alone has reached 98 The important reasons for foreign enterprises to invest in China are the opening and superior policies, the growing Chinese talents, the low cost compared with developed countries, and the huge Chinese market in the process of reform and opening up The continuous introduction of foreign pharmaceutical enterprises in China in the past 40 years after the "Introduction" of the annual table of major investment events in China has first brought a wealth of pharmaceutical products In 1978, there was a serious lack of drugs in China, or even no drugs available The entry of a large number of foreign pharmaceutical enterprises has enriched the categories of drug market Those diseases that become incurable due to "incurable diseases" are no longer so-called incurable diseases It greatly improves the treatment rate of the disease, reduces the death rate of the patients, and improves the national average life level Secondly, technology has been brought, and every link of technology in the whole life cycle of pharmaceutical industry, such as project approval, R & D, synthesis, process, testing, quality, clinical, production, registration, market, sales, has been improved as a whole For China's pharmaceutical industry, which is extremely backward in industrial level, if we water the sponge, we will absorb all of them Today's pharmaceutical industry in China has made great progress in various technologies compared with 40 years ago High end pharmaceutical companies, cro companies and consulting companies emerge in an endless stream The deep meaning of technological progress is to cultivate a large number of outstanding scientific research talents and skilled workers, who are the cornerstone of the continuous development of the pharmaceutical industry The reform and opening-up of the pharmaceutical industry also brings laws and regulations A series of GXP regulations such as GMP, GLP, GCP and GSP, industry standards such as ISO, and a series of regulations such as drug registration regulations, clinical trial regulations and drug management measures were issued At the same time, it also brings international vision to Chinese pharmaceutical enterprises It has a great influence on the ideology, strategic decision-making, management mode and other strategic levels of enterprises Also let the managers of Chinese pharmaceutical enterprises gradually get rid of the backward management concept and mode, let the enterprises they manage stand on the shoulders of giants, and realize overtaking at the corner This article is excerpted from the statement of "China Pharmaceutical R & D 40 years big data": this point of view only represents the author and does not represent the position of yaozhi.com, welcome to exchange and supplement in the message area; if you need to reprint, please be sure to indicate the author and source of the article.