Preferential policies, investment boost bio-pharma sector

Cooperation with international companies is boosting the development of bio-medicine in Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City as the local government strives to improve the investment environment with better polices and facilities.

The Knowledge City is located in Guangzhou Development District in Huangpu district of Guangzhou, Guangdong province.

On June 23, construction kicked of on a General Electric bio-campus in SSGKC with an official groundbreaking event.

The GE bio-campus is intended to serve as a leading biopharmaceutical and health industrial park. It will add to the attraction, encourage creativity and enhance the competitiveness of the pharmaceutical industry cluster in Guangzhou, according to Chen Zhiying, member of the standing committee of the CPC Guangzhou Committee and deputy mayor of Guangzhou, who talked at the event.

As a strategic collaboration project between China and Singapore, SSGKC focuses on the development of the advanced manufacturing industry, information technology, intellectual property protection, environmental protection, bio-medicine and healthcare, to establish an innovative knowledge-based hub and an international cooperative platform.

The GE bio-campus is not the only biopharmaceutical company entering SSGKC. BeiGene - an international company aiming to discover and develop immuno-oncology drugs for the treatment of cancer - signed an investment agreement with Guangzhou Development District in March, valued at 2.2 billion yuan ($320.6 million). Together, they plan to build an oncotherapy medicine manufacturing center in SSGKC.

Wang Xiaodong, co-founder of BeiGene, said that the project will meet growing demand for bio-medicine development in the global market.

"The capacity for new drug research and development in the field is relatively weak in China. Some patients have to buy expensive imported drugs," said Wang. "What BeiGene wants to do is to make good and afordable anticancer drugs for them."

The State Council approved SSGKC's plans to carry out integrated pilot reforms in intellectual property protection and utilization in July 2016.

The State-level Intellectual Property Rights Utilization and Protection Hub focuses on IP trading, evaluation, pledges, agency services and training. It aims to become more comprehensively embedded to help facilitate the country's economic development.

Patent applications between Singapore and China have increased significantly since the first memorandum of understanding was signed between the two nations' IP offices in 2014, said Daren Tang, chief executive of the IP Office of Singapore.

In 2015, patent filings from Chinese applicants in Singapore increased by 87 percent, while patent filings from Singaporean applicants in China increased by 44 percent compared to 2012.

Since SSGKC started operating in 2010, it has housed 494 registered enterprises with a total registered capital of 82.4 billion yuan.

In 2016, the fixed-asset investment of construction projects in the city reached 3.5 billion yuan, an increase of 40 percent year-on-year.

"2017 will be the year for rapid development in SSGKC," said Zhang Jinghua, executive director of Join& Well Science Park.

Zhang's company, which was established in 2013 in SSGKC, provides a platform for small and medium-sized enterprises to have their own offices in the city.

Zhang said that when he first came to SSGKC in 2010, conditions were poor, with inconvenient transportation, inadequate infrastructure and rudimentary facilities.

With the support of the Guangzhou Development District government, railways and expressways are under construction. New policies have been issued to attract more enterprises.

The arrival of Fortune 500 enterprises, such as GE and BeiGene, has attracted related industries and brought supporting facilities to SSGKC, Zhang added.

caoyingying@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 06/28/2017 page15)