(Yicai Global) April 10 -- Twenty-nine or the majority of Chinese administrative regions are listing pharmaceutical and biomedicine industries as key areas of development as the country aims to upgrade the productivity of its healthcare sector.

More than half of China's 399 national-level industrial parks count biomedicine as a core development direction, according to public information. China's health industry is set to be worth CNY29.1 trillion (USD4.23 trillion) by 2030, Yao Jun, head of the China Health Association, said during the ongoing 2023 World Health Expo in Wuhan.

One of the key clusters of innovation is Shanghai as 18 of the world's top 20 drug firms have built regional headquarters or research and development centers in the eastern megacity. The Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, located between the city's downtown area and Shanghai Pudong International Airport, is home to over 1,400 innovative biomedicine entities.

In recent years, Beijing has been promoting its pharmaceutical and healthcare industry to drive the capital city's development. Over 3,500 biomedical firms have set up local arms in the city with an output value of about CNY90 billion (USD13.1 billion) last year while 21 industry players have gone public.

Even southern China's Guangzhou and central Hubei province's Wuhan have made big efforts to cultivate biomedical companies. Guangzhou's biomedicine industry has grown by about 10 percent on average per year in recent years to have more than 6,400 such firms, six major national biomedicine labs, as well as five Nobel prize winners and 23 academicians.

Wuhan is home to over 600 high-tech firms in the healthcare space and 21 of them are listed, Wang Qinghua, deputy mayor, said at the expo. Wuhan strives to become a national leader in the sector by 2025, he added.

Moreover, Chengdu, Chongqing, Changsha, Lanzhou and other cities have revealed policies to accelerate the regional development of healthcare.

Editors: Shi Yi, Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi