Multinational Pharmaceutical Companies’Development Strategy In China

Pharmaceutical industry has always been one of the most important industries for the humanity, its meaning and value cannot be overestimated. Along with China’s opening up to foreign countries, multinational pharmaceutical companies started focusing on this market full of potential and opportunities. The beginning of MNC’s development in China can be traced back to the1980’s of the20th century. At the time MNC’ s started gradually entering China, getting more and more familiar with the market, establish their presence in the country. After more than30years of development history in China, MNC’s now control1/3of the market, and turn China into one of the focusing regions of their strategic expansion. Therefore, multinational pharmaceuticals get a lot of advantages that China can provide, including a large talent pool, tax incentives, and low cost, as well as facing several problems, for example, government’s price control policy, complex distribution system and counterfeit medicine.The study focuses on the development process of multinational pharmaceutical companies in China, strategy adjustments. The core question the study is aiming to answer is what methods multinational pharmaceutical companies choose, how they retain growth, how China’s role changed during the course of time. The results of the study suggest that MNC’s development in China can be divided into3main stages:early stage (1979-1992yy.), the interim (1992-2002yy.) and the late stage (2002y. to present). One of the purposes of the study is to determine main characteristics of the MNC’s development strategy, summarize the steps companies take and existing trends, and hopefully aid pharma industry companies in getting ideas and development suggestions.