Big Pharma Is Shopping in China for Its Next Blockbuster

A decade ago, large pharmaceutical companies looked to biotech hubs in the United States and Europe for their next blockbuster drugs. It appears that now, China has overtaken this role. 

On September 15, 2026, GSK agreed to a deal potentially valued at up to $750 million to acquire global rights to an experimental cancer drug from the privately held Chinese biotech company Chimagen Biosciences. The drug is a trispecific T-cell engager for multiple myeloma that has not even entered Phase 1 trials yet. 

GSK is not alone in this pursuit of Chinese medicine. Over the past two years, Western pharmaceutical companies have poured billions into licensing drugs developed by Chinese biotechs. Pfizer and Innovent struck a deal worth up to $10.5 billion. Myers Squibb and Hengrui agreed on a partnership potentially worth $15.2 billion. And AstraZeneca has made multiple partnerships adding up to billions of dollars involving Chinese-developed medicines. China has quickly turned itself into the destination for new drugs. 

So why has Big Pharma increasingly turned to China? Developing a drug from scratch is incredibly expensive, slow, and risky. For Big Pharma, licensing promising drugs that have already made some progress down the rocky road allows them to bypass much of the early discovery work and commit their capital to financing global clinical trials. China’s rapidly expanding biotech industry has created a large supply of medicines and pushed many of them into clinical development quickly. 

However, the structure of these deals is worth noting. When Pfizer made the deal with Innovent for up to $10.5 billion, the agreement was exactly that. Up to $10.5 billion, not guaranteed. Innovent received $650 million upfront, but the rest depended on the drug's future success in reaching development, regulatory, and commercial milestones. If it fails, that money may never be paid. 

This shows why these deals are so attractive for both Big Pharma and the smaller biotech companies. Pharmaceutical powerhouses can effectively buy promising medicine without too much risk. They pay a bit at first, but only more if the drug proves successful. For the Chinese biotechs, these agreements allocate to them the capital and access needed for global clinical development and commercialization. 

China was once known largely for manufacturing the world’s existing medicines. Now, it’s emerging as the primary source for experimental medicines Western companies are betting billions on. If this momentum continues, the geography of drug innovation could look very different in the years ahead.