Drug manufacturing in China

2025: Chinese pharmaceutical companies entered into deals for licensing drugs for a record $135 billion in a year

In 2025, Chinese drug manufacturers signed 157 licensing deals with global pharmaceutical companies for a record $135 billion. This is more than one and a half times higher than in 2024, when 94 agreements were concluded in the amount of $51.9 billion. The data was presented by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) of China and published in the media on January 8, 2026.

According to The South China Morning Post (SCMP), the record result of 2025 is due to dozens of multibillion-dollar contracts between companies from Hong Kong and mainland China and international pharmaceutical giants.

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Фото: Freepik

SCMP clarifies that licensing agreements usually imply that one company grants the other exclusive rights to further develop, manufacture and commercialize a drug that has passed the phase of clinical trials in humans, in exchange for initial payments, milestone contributions and royalties from future sales.

The biggest deals of 2025 include a $13 billion contract signed in January between Suzhou-based GeneQuantum, America's Biohaven Pharmaceutical and South Korea's AimBio. The agreement concerns the development of antibody-drug conjugates, an innovative class of cancer drugs.

In May 2025, the Shenyang pharmaceutical company 3SBio entered into a $6 billion licensing agreement with the American corporation Pfizer to develop and commercialize the antitumor drug SSGJ-707.

In July 2025, Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals, the largest Chinese pharmaceutical company by market capitalization, signed a $12.5 billion deal with the British GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The subject of the agreement was the drug HRS-9821, intended for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).^[1]

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