China News Service, Beijing, September 15th. Title: Free Trade Pilot Zone Releases Dividends, Jiangsu activates the entire biopharmaceutical industry chain
China News Service reporter Yin Qianyun
In Jiangsu, the institutional innovation dividends of the free trade pilot zone are penetrating into all links of the biopharmaceutical industry chain.
In August 2025, the State Council approved the "China (Jiangsu) Pilot Free Trade Zone Open Innovation Development Plan for the Whole Biopharmaceutical Industry Chain". A reporter recently visited Jiangsu and learned that since the plan was approved, the three districts of Nanjing, Suzhou, and Lianyungang have carried out exploration based on their own endowments and continued to open up blocking points in the entire biopharmaceutical industry chain.
"Grab" time for innovation
Time is particularly important for biopharmaceutical research and development. The customs clearance efficiency of raw materials and products is directly related to the process of new drug research and development. Some drug R&D companies have been unable to import domestic unregistered R&D items, which has affected the advancement of R&D projects.
The person in charge of the Biomedical Industry Comprehensive Service Center of Suzhou Industrial Park introduced that in response to this problem, the Suzhou area has launched the Yanyida 2.0 policy. The applicable scope of items has been extended from Yanyida 1.0 medical devices to R&D drugs, reagents, and chemical raw materials. After evaluation, companies and items are included in the "white list" management, and they are directly exempted from submitting an "Imported Drug Clearance Form" and going through customs clearance procedures.
Among the projects that have received support, some have advanced to the Phase III clinical trial stage of drugs, and some have completed product registration and have been successfully launched. Policy effects continue to be transformed into actual results for corporate development.
The Nanjing area is also "grabbing time" for research and development. Yang Tao, deputy director of the Life and Health Office of the Nanjing Area of the China (Jiangsu) Pilot Free Trade Zone, mentioned that the Nanjing Area implements a "white list" system for the import of biomedical research and development items, and multiple departments jointly identify the "white list", and companies can go through customs clearance procedures without submitting an "Imported Drug Customs Clearance Form." Implement one-time identification and import in batches, broaden the scope of global material procurement for enterprises, speed up customs clearance, and reduce logistics losses and costs.
Technical staff of the National University Biomedicine Regional Technology Transfer and Transformation Center (Nanjing, Jiangsu Province) operate pipettes and conduct pre-processing experiments for computer sequencing. Photo courtesy of Jiangsu Provincial Department of Commerce
Regarding the SPF laboratory mice commonly used in preclinical research on innovative drugs, the Nanjing District has innovative supervision models, shortening the approval period from 20 days to 7 days, and shortening the isolation and quarantine period from 30 days to 14 days, gaining valuable time for preclinical research on innovative drugs.
With the help of institutional innovation, biopharmaceutical companies can "go into battle lightly" and achieve "acceleration" of high-quality development.
Link up the industrial chain
If "speed up" solves the efficiency problem of a single link, the development of the entire industry chain also aims at the optimization and reshaping of production methods and resource allocation.
Under the traditional model, companies producing new drugs need to build full-process production workshops and production lines, which requires heavy investment and a long construction period. The Suzhou area thus explores the segmented production of biological products, allowing the separation of raw solution production and preparation production, and different enterprises to undertake the corresponding production tasks.
The person in charge of Suzhou Shengdia Biopharmaceutical Co., Ltd. said that this model helps integrate resources, improve the response speed of the supply chain, significantly reduce the cost of heavy asset investment, and significantly optimize resource allocation.
The warehousing links in the industrial chain are also changing. In view of the "unequal busyness" of warehousing resources on the production side and trade side of group-type pharmaceutical companies, Lianyungang area promotes the implementation of a pilot project of "two-way entrustment" of warehousing resources for pharmaceutical companies.
Chen Fugao, director of the Comprehensive Coordination Bureau of Lianyungang Area, said that in the past, warehousing collaboration pilots only allowed "forward entrustment", that is, production companies can store goods in wholesale enterprise warehouses, and reverse entrustment of production enterprises for storage at the trade end was not supported. The group's existing warehousing resources could not be fully utilized.
Lianyungang Free Trade Zone takes the "Chinese Pharmaceutical Port" as the core carrier to accelerate the creation of a domestic first-class and internationally recognized source of biomedical innovation. Photo courtesy of Jiangsu Provincial Department of Commerce
He mentioned that "two-way entrustment" breaks this restriction, allowing group pharmaceutical companies to revitalize existing warehousing resources, reduce duplication of construction and rental warehouse investment, while reducing the internal drug circulation link within the group, reducing transportation risks and operating costs.
From production collaboration to warehousing and circulation, the institutional innovation in the pilot free trade zone is extending from single-point breakthroughs to industrial chain collaboration.
Link to global markets
To fully activate the industrial chain, we need to move towards the global market. Another value of the free trade pilot zone lies in linking global resources.
In Suzhou BioBAY Biomedical Industrial Park, the way innovative pharmaceutical companies enter the international market has extended from simple product sales to technology licensing, joint development, capital cooperation, etc.
According to the relevant person in charge of BioBAY, since August 2025, companies in the park have completed a total of 21 cross-border BD (business development) transactions, and the total potential transaction amount has been disclosed to exceed US$48.9 billion.
Behind the internationalization of enterprises is the efficient allocation of factors promoted by institutional innovation. The Jiangsu Pilot Free Trade Zone is the first in the country to establish and improve the joint meeting system for the management of cross-border data flows at the provincial level, focusing on the biopharmaceutical industry and issuing a negative list of data exports. As long as corporate R&D data is not on the list, it can be exported compliantly through the filing route, and there is no need to declare security assessments item by item.
Qinhao Pharmaceutical, a company in the BioBAY Park, completed the outbound registration in just two weeks, solving the urgent need to cross-border innovative drug research and development data.
An aerial view of the Suzhou Biomedical Industrial Park in the Suzhou Free Trade Area. Photo courtesy of Jiangsu Provincial Department of Commerce
The Nanjing area is exploring linkage with the Hainan Free Trade Port to speed up the clinical transformation and registration and listing process of innovative medical devices. Wang Feng, senior vice president of Simcere Pharmaceutical Group, mentioned that the innovative chemotherapy and bone marrow protection drug Cosella introduced by the company from the United States was originally an imported product from the United States and has not been launched in China. "Under normal circumstances, it usually takes 3-5 years for international innovative drugs to be launched in China after being registered for clinical research." Wang Feng said, but while Kosela was conducting clinical trials, it also carried out real-world research in Hainan. The two data were jointly submitted for registration, and it only took one and a half years.
From compressing the time cost of R&D, to improving the collaborative efficiency of the industrial chain, to helping companies connect to the global market, Jiangsu is using the "test field" of the free trade pilot zone to continue to release institutional dividends to the biopharmaceutical industry.
