China claimed the top spot in the world in innovative drugs under research by the end of 2025. with Chinese innovative drugs achieving "world first" breakthroughs, according to official data.

By the end of 2025, there were 4,751 innovative drugs under research in China, accounting for 33.7 percent of the global total. The rapidly rising innovative strength has made global equity cooperation on Chinese innovative drugs highly desirable in the international market, and China's reputation in the global pharmaceutical innovation field is rising.

At the recently concluded China Development Forum in Beijing, many top executives of major international pharmaceutical companies expressed their optimism about China's bio-pharmaceutical innovation environment and confirmed China's position as a hub of global pharmaceutical innovation.

Guo Jinjiang, head of Data Science Department, Global Health Drug Discovery Institute, said, "It has become an international consensus that the R&D capabilities of China's pharmaceutical innovation have been upgraded as a whole." China's bio-pharmaceutical industry has a new image of pursuing target innovation and mechanism innovation, he added.

In the emerging field of bio-pharmaceuticals, China's R&D capabilities account for half of the global total. Among the cell therapy projects under development, China makes up 48 percent. Among the antibody-drug conjugate projects under research, China accounts for more than 50 percent.

According to new research from Georgetown University, the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and the National Bureau of Economic Research of the U.S., early-stage drug development worldwide has nearly doubled over the past decade, shifting from a U.S.-dominated model to a dual hub centered in the U.S. and China.

The new analysis of global early-stage bio-pharmaceutical development programs from 2015 through 2025 found that while the U.S. remains the single largest originator of early-stage drug programs, China's share has grown substantially.

In 2015, about 48 percent of early-stage programs originated in the U.S. and eight percent in China. By 2024, the U.S. share had declined to just over 37 percent, while China's share rose to over 32 percent.

Today, China's innovative pharmaceutical industry is embarking on a new journey of high-quality development. This is not only a profound transformation of China's new drug R&D from isolated exploration to systematic operation, but also a footnote of the era when Chinese wisdom and solutions inject new impetus into the global health cause.

Cheng Zengjiang, vice president of the China Food and Drug Corporation Quality and Safety Promotion Association, said, "It is not accidental but inevitable that multinational giants can purchase potential new drugs in China."

There are over 20,000 pharmaceutical R&D institutions in China. Once an innovative target in academic research emerges, many leading institutions follow and develop it.

Li Kefeng, associate professor of the Center for Artificial Intelligence Drug Discovery, Macao Polytechnic University, said China has become the core source of innovation in new drug R&D represented by cell therapy, gene therapy and antibody-drug conjugates.