At the 2016 China Healthcare Investment Conference, held in Shanghai in late March, the Chinese government emphasized the need for foreign investments and innovation in the pharmaceutical industry as part of China’s 13th five-year plan (2015–2010). Factors to aid Chinese innovation include in-licensing of pharmaceutical drugs, using US business locations to endorse high-class drugs in the US, partnering with large CROs, and taking advantage of low research costs and the construction of new R&D centers by multinationals to further international integration. Recently, the government amended certain policies to speed up the process of drug approval, such as the Investigational New Drug and New Drug Applications regulations, and is also currently upgrading its Medicare program’s drug list. China is also continuing to encourage entrepreneurship; in 2015, $414 million was invested by venture capital firms, which is a 23% increase.

Source: The Pharma Letter