On Mar. 29, 2026, The South China Morning Post reported the cross-border outlicensing activities of Chinese biotech firms reached a record transaction value of US$60 billion in the first quarter of 2026, driven by multinational pharmaceutical companies’ growing appetite for the country’s promising drug candidates.

The deal value represented a 73 per cent jump from the same period a year earlier, and accounted for nearly half of the total US$135.7 billion worth of agreements signed throughout 2025, the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) said in a statement on Saturday. The drug regulator did not reveal the number of transactions.

Outlicensing agreements typically involve a company granting another firm the exclusive rights to further develop, manufacture and commercialise a drug once it has entered human clinical trials, in return for upfront payments, milestone fees and royalties on future sales. Innovative drugs – novel medicines targeting unmet medical needs, including new chemical entities and advanced biologics – were expected to grow at an annualised pace of 20 per cent between 2026 and 2030 in mainland China, before slowing to 8.8 per cent from 2030 to 2040, according to Chen Chen, head of China healthcare research at UBS.

The Swiss bank estimated last year that the mainland’s pharmaceutical industry would rise by 50 per cent between 2024 and 2030, generating revenues of US$2.1 trillion by 2030. An ageing population offered the biggest boost to drug and medical device businesses in China, with the market size likely to top US$3.2 trillion in 2050, Chen said in a media briefing in October.

Among the latest outlicensing deals involving China-originated drugs, Hong Kong-listed Sino Biopharmaceutical agreed with Sanofi early this month to grant the French pharmaceutical company the exclusive worldwide rights to develop, manufacture and sell rovadicitinib, an oral drug to treat blood cancer and immune-related diseases. The deal was worth US$1.53 billion.

Also in early March, Antengene Corp. signed a US$1.18 billion pact with Belgium’s UCB, under which the Brussels-listed company obtained an exclusive worldwide licence to manufacture and commercialise ATG-201, an experimental antibody-based therapy treating autoimmune diseases. Other notable outlicensing deals so far this year include a January 29 tie-up in which AstraZeneca agreed to pay US$1.2 billion upfront to China’s CSPC Pharmaceutical in a weight-loss drug collaboration worth up to US$18.5 billion, and an early-February Innovent Biologics-Eli Lilly partnership involving US$350 million upfront and as much as US$8.5 billion in milestones for next-generation cancer and immunology drugs.

Innovative efforts by biotech firms have also bolstered Beijing’s ambitions to build China into a technology powerhouse with a grasp of core technologies amid an uncertain geopolitical outlook. A total of 157 cross-border outlicensing deals worth a record US$135.7 billion were signed between Chinese companies and overseas partners in 2025, compared with 94 transactions worth US$51.9 billion in 2024, according to NMPA data.