(Yicai) Jan. 5 -- The Chinese innovative drug industry set new records last year, including the number of such products released for marketing in the country and licensed out.

A total of 76 innovative drugs were greenlit for marketing last year, up 58 percent from the year before, the National Medical Products Administration said in a statement on Jan. 3. Of them, 47 were chemical drugs, 23 were biologic products, and six were traditional Chinese medicines.

Eighty-one percent of the chemical drugs and 91 percent of the biologic products were independently developed by Chinese pharmaceutical companies, and the remainder by overseas companies. Eleven of the 76 were first-in-class medicines, four of which were independently created by Chinese firms.

Chinese pharmaceutical companies signed more than 150 external licensing agreements over innovative drugs in 2025, for a total value of over USD130 billion, both achieving new records, according to NMPA data. The two figures compare with 94 deals and USD51.9 billion in value in 2024.

"The significant increase in external licensing reflects the international community's recognition of Chinese innovative drugs," said Lan Gongtao, deputy director-general of the NMPA Department of Drug Registration.

The surge in external licensing deals and the record number of innovative drug approvals demonstrate the significant achievements resulting from the implementation of a series of government policies aimed at encouraging innovation, Lan noted.

The NMPA will accelerate the approval of urgently needed clinical drugs through four pathways, which are breakthrough therapy designation, conditional approval, priority review and approval, and special approval, as well as improve the protection system for drugs' trial data and market exclusivity system to systematically strengthen the protection of innovation, Lan added.

These achievements in the innovative drug field are backed by a substantial rise in research and development breakthroughs. The latest NMPA statistics showed that the number of new drug pipelines under research in China accounts for about 30 percent of the global total, ranking second in the world.

China is adopting an open approach to welcome and support foreign investment and R&D in the field of pharmaceutical innovation.

The new catalogue of encouraged industries for foreign investment released by the Ministry of Commerce, which will come into effect on Feb. 1, includes new incentives for foreign investment in the development and production of novel target- and mechanism-based chemical innovative drugs, antibody-drug conjugates, radiopharmaceutical products, and zero-magnetic medical equipment.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione