Biocapitalism and China's emerging biomedical innovation

Keywords: biocapitalism, China, biopharmaceutical sector, innovation, Covid 19
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 41

Abstract

The outbreak of Covid-19 both challenges and attracts new players into the global Biocapitalism, a capital accumulative regime based on assetization and financialization of the bioscience knowledge, globalization of IPR regime and venture capital industry. In the last two decades, developing Asia has experienced multitudinous challenges in building the domestic biomedical industry as Biocapitalism has shifted the ground of innovation from competitive commodity production to generating, managing and commercializing patents. This paper introduces the transformation of China’s biomedical industry since 2010, predating and in conjunction with the Covid-19 outbreak. Chinese medical industry had been entirely state-owned and for decades concentrated in producing off-patent drugs and traditional medicine for the domestic market, with a regulative regime famous for corruption and ineptitude. Yet, a stunning turnaround emerged during the 2010s, in a great part catalyzed by a series of an overhaul of the Chinese drug regulatory regime since 2015 to be internationally referenced, while heightening the state control of the medical market through national insurance programs. Not only have public and private investments are surging, but Chinese companies are filing a growing number of new drug applications to Chinese and foreign drug authorities in recent years, some first-in-class in the world. The outbreak of Covid-19 is likely supercharging this trend, particularly in the biopharmaceutical fields. This paper will explore the emergence of China in changing global biocapitalism. While the innovation boom in China has largely followed the biocapitalism model, a new articulation between state regulation, domestic firms, and international hegemony is inevitable.