12 multinational healthcare giants' leaders gather in China to continue investing in these sectors

Ask AI · Why are multinational healthcare giants collectively ramping up investment in China?

On the evening of March 21, the China Development Forum 2026 Annual Meeting released the list of the forum’s primary overseas representatives. Twelve executives from multinational healthcare companies were included, including Severin Schwan, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Roche Group; Albert Bourla, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Pfizer; Pascal Soriot, Global Chief Executive Officer of AstraZeneca; Vasant Narasimhan, Chief Executive Officer of Novartis; David A. Ricks, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Eli Lilly; Robert Ford, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Abbott; Marc Casper, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Thermo Fisher Scientific; Geoff Martha, Global Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Medtronic; Bernd Montag, Global Chief Executive Officer of Siemens Healthineers; Hubertus von Baumbach, Chairman of the Shareholders’ Committee of Boehringer Ingelheim; Joseph Morrissey, Acting Chief Executive Officer of Organon; and Dave J. Rosa, Chief Executive Officer of Intuitive Medical.

Executives from multinational pharmaceutical companies and association heads, including Severin Schwan of Roche Group in Switzerland, said that China has achieved tremendous progress in the healthcare and health sector, providing broad room for development for multinational companies. In the future, they will further expand investment and business planning, and deepen cooperation in areas such as new drug R&D, clinical trials, and digital healthcare.

In recent years, multinational pharmaceutical companies have been deepening local supply-chain buildouts in China. Just this week, AstraZeneca announced two major investments in Shanghai and Guangzhou, respectively: building a cell therapy production and supply base in Shanghai, and building a radioconjugate drug production and supply base in Guangzhou. AstraZeneca said that the synergy between the two bases will further strengthen AstraZeneca’s localized production capabilities in the field of novel drugs and therapies, and become a key pillar in its continued expansion of a diversified global supply network.

Last week, Eli Lilly also announced a plan to cumulatively invest $3 billion in China over the next decade. This move will comprehensively expand the company’s supply-chain production capacity in China, and build a localized production and supply system for oral solid dosage forms, laying groundwork in advance for its production capacity for future-to-market oral small-molecule GLP-1 receptor agonists.

China’s consistently booming demand for weight-loss drugs is also the next important market targeted by multinational healthcare companies. On March 21, a study on the economic burden of overweight and obesity released by Eli Lilly China showed that our country’s annual economic burden resulting from overweight and obesity has reached RMB 1 trillion. Eli Lilly CEO David A. Ricks said that improving the accessibility of effective treatment options, accelerating the improvement of the obesity management system, and thereby helping reduce the long-term chronic disease management pressure faced by society from the source are all expected.

This month, Pfizer’s GLP-1 receptor agonist enoglutide injection, which was licensed in China from a China-based biologics company, was also officially approved for market launch in China by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA). This means Pfizer has officially entered China’s weight-loss drug market.

On the other hand, as multiple major drugs from multinational pharmaceutical companies are scheduled to come off patent in recent years, these companies also want to enrich their R&D pipelines by acquiring innovative drugs from China. “Early-stage R&D in China now has global competitiveness.” In a report, an analyst from UBS Medical wrote.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla has repeatedly called for cooperation between the U.S. pharmaceutical industry and China’s pharmaceutical industry. He said China, with its fast R&D processes, has captured about 30% of the global drug development market share over the past decade. “In the field of biopharmaceuticals, China’s astonishing speed, cost advantages, and scale effects have already changed the global competitive landscape,” Bourla said. He also said that Chinese biopharmaceutical companies recruit patients for clinical trials at a speed that is 2 to 5 times that of U.S. companies.

(This article is from First Finance)