Recently, just months after cancelling plans for expansion in the UK, AstraZeneca announced that it is planning to spend $15 billion to expand manufacturing and R&D in China. It has also agreed to pay the Chinese drugmaker CSPC a total of $18.5 billion. This amount includes costs for development and regulatory milestone payments if the drug trial programmes hit certain sales targets.1
Last year, AstraZeneca cancelled a £200m expansion of a research site in Cambridge, and a £450m investment in its vaccine site at Speke. However the company plans to expand its existing manufacturing facilities in four different locations in China, and is planning on building new sites there too.2 The decision to cancel planned R&D and vaccine manufacturing investments in the UK, while simultaneously expanding and constructing multiple manufacturing facilities across China clearly shows the strategic reallocation of investment and resources. It indicates that AstraZeneca views China as a more attractive environment for large-scale manufacturing and long-term expansion. In 2025 there were 57 deals between large global pharmaceutical companies and Chinese biotech companies, a number which has increased sharply from 2024.3 The large number of deals demonstrates how China and Asia have become a major source of biopharma innovation, not just generic producers or manufacturers, and supports AstraZeneca’s strategy of investing so heavily in China as a part of its long-term growth plans.
The transaction between AstraZeneca and CSPC is the largest yet for a weight-loss drug collaboration, and greatly surpasses GSK’s $12.5 billion agreement with Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals, which had previously been the largest deal with a Chinese drugmaker.1 For comparison, Eli Lilly has only invested $2.1 billion in its Suzhou plant, and $1 billion in India. This scale of commitment compared to other global pharmaceutical companies highlights AstraZeneca’s prioritisation of China as a cornerstone into its expansion into Asia.
Overall, AstraZeneca’s expansion into Asia reflects a high-risk, yet high-reward strategy that prioritises long-term growth in China. The outcome of the drug programmes could greatly influence how other large pharmaceutical companies approach investment in Asian markets in the future. For biopharmaceutical executives and entrepreneurs, this highlights the importance of establishing deep, long-term partnerships with domestic firms when entering the Asian market, as these partnerships are essential for securing drug approvals, testing, and protection against political risk.