GUANGZHOU, July 3 (Xinhua) -- In the humid heat of July in southern China, the Akeso Greater Bay Area Technology Park in Zhongshan, Guangdong Province, is running at full speed.
Signal lights flash on precision instruments as researchers monitor streams of automatically generated experimental data inside a drug-discovery laboratory, while a newly completed automated filling line is turning out medicines at a pace of more than 20,000 bottles an hour in a production building.
This busy scene offers a glimpse into the rise of Guangdong's biopharmaceutical industry, which is becoming an increasingly important force in China's push to move up the global pharmaceutical value chain.
Akeso, Inc., a Zhongshan-based biopharmaceutical company, drew international attention after its self-developed cancer drug, Ivonescimab, outperformed blockbuster therapy Keytruda of MSD, which is known as Merck in the United States, in a head-to-head Phase III clinical trial, according to Li Baiyong, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Akeso.
A Wall Street Journal columnist described it as the DeepSeek moment for China's biotech industry, albeit in a more "incremental" fashion.
Li said the company has developed more than 50 innovative drug candidates with full independent intellectual property rights.
Eight of its self-developed drugs have entered commercial sales, including two first-in-class bispecific antibody drugs for cancer immunotherapy, he added.
Akeso's rise reflects the broader expansion of the biopharmaceutical industry in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area in south China.
Covering a total area of 56,000 square kilometers, the Greater Bay Area comprises the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and nine cities in the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong Province.
It has one of China's most complete biopharmaceutical industrial chains and one of the country's strongest concentrations of scientific and technological innovation resources.
Zhongshan and Guangzhou, both in Guangdong, are two examples of this strength. Zhongshan is home to over 650 biopharmaceutical companies and has nurtured firms, including Akeso, through its biomedical industry parks. In neighboring Guangzhou, the provincial capital, more than 6,500 biopharmaceutical companies have taken root, with annual research and development spending exceeding 3.8 billion yuan (about 558 million U.S. dollars).
Industry observers say the region's strength lies not only in the number of companies, but also in its ability to connect research, manufacturing and market access.
"China's biopharmaceutical industry is accelerating its transition from catching up to running alongside, and in some areas leading global peers," said Tang Lida, vice president of the Beijing Frontier Pharmaceutical Industrial Think Tank.
"Guangdong is among the most advanced and representative regions in this historic shift," Tang noted.
Over the next five years, Guangdong plans to expand emerging industries including pharmaceuticals, medical devices and biomanufacturing, while fostering more competitive industrial clusters.
The province also aims to grow its biopharmaceutical and health industry cluster to more than 1 trillion yuan by 2027.
Guangdong's push is part of a broader endeavor. Across China, a growing number of biotech firms are drawing on a larger pool of domestic researchers to move laboratory findings more quickly into clinical development.
One example is a CAR-T drug developed by a Chinese pharmaceutical company, which is expected to break new ground in the treatment of advanced gastric cancer.
This homegrown drug reflects the burgeoning innovation capacity of China's pharmaceutical industry. Currently, China accounts for around one-third of the world's innovative drugs in development. In 2025, the total value of outbound licensing deals for Chinese innovative drugs exceeded 130 billion U.S. dollars.
From January to May this year, China approved nearly 20 innovative drugs, covering major and common diseases like lung cancer, psoriasis and renal anemia.
Biomedicine, notably, is one of the emerging pillar industries China has identified for priority development in the outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), a critical stage in the country's efforts to advance toward its goal of basically realizing socialist modernization by 2035.
The biopharmaceutical industry is a sunrise sector with enduring growth potential, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area is well positioned to seize this opportunity, Tang said.
With deeper cooperation among Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, stronger integration of AI and biomedicine, and improved regulatory coordination and data connectivity, the region is expected to play a larger role in delivering more Chinese-developed therapies from laboratories to patients at home and abroad, he added. ■
