Is China Going to Control Your Medicine?

It was in 2024 that Patrick Malone had what he calls his “oh, shit” moment. Malone is a physician turned investor who is a managing partner at KdT Ventures, which specializes in early stage biotechnology. He was in San Francisco for JPMorgan’s annual healthcare conference, prepping for a panel, when he saw a new report. He was startled by what he read.

It used to be that the big global pharmaceutical companies didn’t license potential new drugs from China. Not only had that changed, but the chart was going vertical. In 2022, 23 percent of global deals over $50 million involved Chinese companies—up from almost nothing. By 2024, the number had risen to a stunning 44 percent.

“Two things became very clear to me,” Malone said. “One, the way in which China has captured a remarkable share of global biopharma development at a pace without precedent. Two, the slope of that change is so steep, it’s very easy to extrapolate where this goes.”

Tim Opler, who specializes in healthcare stocks at the investment bank Stifel Institutional, came to a similar realization earlier this year after an investor asked him what percentage of pharmaceutical deals were being done with Chinese companies. He found that in 2025, almost 70 percent of the dollars spent on global pharma deals—$137.7 billion—were with start-ups based in China. “I guess that was the first moment when we realized, ‘Oh, China could be a problem.’ ”