Yunnan strives to upgrade its biomedical manufacturing
The 2023 China Industrial Transfer and Development Matchmaking Activities (Yunnan) will soon take place in Kunming, Yunnan’s provincial capital, between September 2 and 4. Yunnan will come under the spotlight again.
Yunnan has long been hailed as a "bank of medicine" and China's gene pool, as it is particularly abundant in biological resources, encompassing plant-based and ethnic medicines.
Over recent years, Yunnan's biomedical industry has been transformed into a key and strategically significant field which creates over 100 billion yuan of output value annually under the strong support of national policies.
According to the Three-year Action Plan on Strengthening the Industrial Development of Yunnan Province (2022-2024), the overall income from Yunnan's biomedical industry will reach 360 billion yuan by 2024. This will make Yunnan into a national hub for the manufacturing of biomedical products.
Vaccine development pioneers Yunnan's biomedical innovation
Vaccines are major substances that humans have used to fight against diseases. Vaccine research and development, as a pioneering field in Yunnan's biomedical industry, created an output value of 11 billion yuan in 2022.
Health Guard (Kunming) Biotechnology is a pharmaceutical enterprise sitting in the Central Yunnan New Area. It focuses on producing HPV vaccines which have been widely applied to prevent cervical cancer.
Zhang Ruixia, deputy general manager of Health Guard, says the company has a capability of producing over 45 million doses of HPV vaccines annually. "We decided to set up our production base here because Yunnan has established well-functioned facilities for vaccine production over these years. And strong policy support is also an important factor."
In March 2022, Yunnan issued the Opinions of the People's Government of Yunnan Province on Accelerating the Development of Vaccine Industry. According to this document, the total economic output of Yunnan's vaccine industry is expected to exceed 60 billion yuan. In addition, Yunnan plans to turn itself into a base of vaccine industry facing South and Southeast Asia, so that its technological progresses can also benefit neighboring countries.
Quality blood products safeguard people's health
The manufacturing of blood products takes an important part in biomedical industry, as it is associated with everyone's health.
Beijing Tiantan Biological Products is China's largest producer of blood products. In 2019, the company moved its key enterprise Sinopharm Shanghai Plasma-derived Biotherapies to the Central Yunnan New Area as a whole.
"Yunnan has long been known for its unique geographic location and great space for development,” says Zhang Liang, the company's assistant of general manager. "The move to Yunnan is a milestone to our company as well as the general development of biomedical industry in this province."
At present, biomedical enterprises in Yunnan utilize a total of 2,700 tons of plasma for their production, accounting for nearly one third of the national amount. This has helped effectively cope with the shortage of blood products nationwide, and better safeguard people's health.
The biomedical industry in Yunnan province has developed steadily over the years. In 2022, the total income of the province's biomedical industry exceeded 300 billion yuan for the first time. And this figure has already hit 133.3 billion for the first half of 2023, a year-on-year growth of 7.9%.
In the future, Yunnan will continue to focus on three key areas: biopharmacy, modern Chinese medicine and health products. To achieve high quality development in Yunnan's biomedical industry, it is essential to turn the province into a national hub for the production of vaccines, traditional Chinese medicines and other health products, as well as an international medical pivot facing South and Southeast Asian countries.
Reporting by Zhang Qimin; trans-editing by Wang Jingzhong; photographs by Huang Xingneng and Zeng Yonghong (Yunnan Daily)