(Yicai) May 29 -- China has resealed its first national policy document on the marine biopharmaceutical industry, aiming to launch multiple marine innovative drugs and achieve an industry value added of more than CNY130 billion (USD19.2 billion) by 2030.

The policy, released by the Ministry of Natural Resources and eight other departments yesterday, comprises 15 tasks across five areas: strengthening resource supply, boosting scientific and technological innovation, optimizing industrial direction, expanding market applications, and improving policy support.

The conservation system for marine drug sources should be improved, the supply of raw materials for marine biomanufacturing strengthened, and the shared access to basic resources upgraded, targeting longstanding pain points, such as unstable raw material supply and limited resource sharing.

Moreover, the policy calls for building a fully integrated chain linking resources, technology, industry, and application, deepening the fusion of scientific and industrial innovation, and improving coordination among drug source, research and development, regulatory, and approval agencies.

The MNR will give full consideration to regional differences in resources, technology, and market strengths to support Qingdao, Shanghai, Ningbo, Xiamen, and other cities in developing distinctive industrial clusters tailored to local conditions, said Shen Jun, director of the ministry’s Marine Strategy Planning and Economy Department.

China's marine medicine and biological products industry generated a value added of CNY99.6 billion (USD14.7 billion) last year, up 6.1 percent from 2024 and nearly 40 percent since the beginning of the 14th Five-Year Plan in 2021, according to data disclosed by Shen.

China accounts for about 28 percent of all marine drug categories approved globally, and its output of raw materials, such as chitosan and sodium alginate, represents more than 80 percent of the global supply.

China's marine drug innovation is advancing from "following" to "running alongside" global peers, with multiple independently developed drugs now in clinical development, said Wang Xiaoyang, deputy director of the Consumer Goods Industry Department at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Despite the industry's growing scale, structural weaknesses remain. For example, the conversion rate of marine science and technology achievements in China is below 30 percent, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

There are three persistent challenges, said Zhang Donghua, professor at Ocean University of China and executive director of the Qingdao Marine Biomedical Research Institute. They are inadequate mechanisms for sharing marine pharmaceutical resources, unresolved bottlenecks in large-scale preparation technology, and intensifying regional competition marked by redundant low-level development.

Editor: Futura Costaglione