SHANGHAI: Leading Chinese drugmakers with global ambitions such as Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals and CanSino Biologics are struggling to recruit internationally experienced staff needed to develop and commercialise promising medicines overseas, industry executives say.
The shortage reflects how China’s rapid rise as a hub for testing experimental, next-generation medicines is outpacing the industry’s ability to build the workforce needed to take those products global.
China-headquartered clinical trial sponsors conducted 88% of their trials exclusively in China in 2025, according to data from IQVIA, a health sector research firm. By contrast, in the US they ran just 5% of all trials in 2025, underscoring the scale of the challenge ahead, particularly after the US declined to approve some China-tested drugs and called for multi-regional trials that might better reflect US patients and clinical practice.
Sun Piaoyang, chairman of oncology and metabolic disease specialist Hengrui, said his company’s global multi-centre clinical trial, overseas registration and commercialisation efforts require more highly qualified professionals, yet the industry faces a shortage of people with global development, international regulatory and cross-cultural management expertise.
“The challenges that we are currently facing are also the common challenges facing China’s biopharmaceutical industry,” he told Reuters.
Yu Xuefeng, CEO of vaccine maker CanSino, said qualified specialists remained scarce in areas such as conducting overseas clinical trials, preparing regulatory submissions for multiple jurisdictions and international marketing.
In the past, not much has been done in China to go global, especially for innovative products, including multi-centre global trials, Yu told Reuters.
While senior drug-development talent is in demand globally, industry experts say the challenge is particularly acute in China. A recent survey from research organisation ICON found Asia-Pacific biotech professionals were nearly three times more likely than global peers to report talent shortages affecting operations.
India has benefited from its outsourcing industry and Japan from a more mature pharmaceutical sector, but China’s rapid expansion has made its recruitment pressure more acute, Zhong Yao, the general manager of ICON’s China business, said. Drug development from China-headquartered clinical trial sponsors has grown significantly over the past two decades, with them running 32% of all global clinical trials in 2025, up from just 2% in 2009, according to IQVIA data. As patents expire on overseas drugmakers’ blockbuster medicines, demand for new products has fuelled a boom in licensing deals with partners in the greater China region, which rose to about US$138 billion (RM562 billion) in 2025 from just US$318 million in 2016, according to data provider Pharmcube.
China “faces bottlenecks in global commercialisation without access to more internationally trained senior talent”, said Catherine Gregor, the chief clinical trial officer at US software firm Florence Healthcare.
Hengrui’s Sun said his company would step up efforts to strengthen internal training and recruit global talent. But he added that professionals with international perspectives and hands-on experience have become highly sought-after globally, driving up recruitment costs.
CanSino’s Yu said his firm’s core regulatory affairs and clinical team have learned from international advisers.
Oncology and autoimmune disease specialist Shanghai Henlius Biotech said in its latest annual report that it has established in-house clinical and regulatory affairs teams in the US, Europe, Japan and Australia to independently operate clinical trials.
Chinese drugmakers are expanding overseas as regulators seek clinical data from more diverse patient populations.
Former US FDA drug evaluation chief Richard Pazdur said multi-regional trials allow regulators to compare results across countries, helping determine whether differences in efficacy or safety reflect data quality, ethnic differences in patients or variations in medical practice.
“I think if, when there are studies exclusively done in China, then some people may wonder about how applicable those results are,” he told Reuters.
Japan’s Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency told Reuters that most new drugs approved in Japan require clinical data from Japanese patients rather than relying solely on studies conducted in Chinese populations.
A recruiter said the talent shortage can force Chinese drugmakers to rely on overseas partners when conducting international clinical trials, though it was more likely to slow execution than derail expansion plans altogether.
“Talent gaps at big China-headquartered pharma are showing up more as friction – slower or more partner-dependent execution – than clearly documented failures of overseas clinical trials so far,” said Nihar Parikh, a pharma executive recruiter at US-based Smith Hanley Associates.
Parikh said there was some hesitation among candidates looking at China-headquartered firms about the durability of overseas strategies and teams, while their offer packages could sometimes trail top-tier US or EU multinationals.
