With sizable government support, China’s life sciences industry “is quietly gathering a critical mass of skilled talent, and savvy and focused venture investors,” writes Monitor’s George Baeder in the December 2011 issue of Pharmaceutical Executive magazine.

The Chinese government’s investments in new life sciences labs, biotechnology parks, and incubators are part of a plan “to see the nation transformed from a low-wage manufacturing power to a source of high-value ‘indigenous innovation,’” Baeder writes, adding that China’s next five-year plan will allocate $1.5 billion to spur biological research programs.

These investments come at a time when the life sciences industry in the West “is beset by patent cliffs, rising regulatory hurdles, and the declining productivity of its research and development pipeline,” Baeder notes. Even so, he writes that China faces a series of challenges to becoming a global life sciences leader, including: the need to set up new regulatory structures for drug development, the current slow pace of clinical trials, generic drug pricing policies, and improving product quality standards.