Tonghua Special: Tonghua plans booster shot for medicine sector

The authorities in Tonghua, a city in Northeast China's Jilin province, plan to attract at least 100 high-tech medicine companies and research institutes in the next five years that will generate a combined 50 billion yuan ($7.8 billion) in sales, according to local officials.

Tonghua is already home to 94 medicine makers, including five publicly traded companies and 20 firms that each have at least 100 million yuan in annual sales.

One of them, Xiuzheng Pharmaceutical Group, is among China's top 10 medicine makers.

The city's largest economic sector, the pharmaceutical industry has continued to register brisk growth, with its output last year 4.1 times that in 2005. Its profits grew 55.8 percent year-on-year in the first half of this year.

The marked growth is the result of an investment-friendly environment. After local government issued a series of preferential policies and offered tax breaks to support the sector, some 24 billion yuan in investment has flowed into the industry in the past five years.

Renowned medicine makers from home and abroad, such as Pfizer from the US, Lijun International from Hong Kong and Kangmei Pharmaceutical from Guangdong province, have established facilities in the city.

Since the city government placed a priority on the medicine industry in 1995, Tonghua has made substantial progress in development of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and technological innovation.

The city now has three State-level technology research centers and 11 provincial-level research centers along with nearly 40 high-tech companies involved in the pharmaceutical industry.

Local medicine makers have 130 proprietary products. Of them, the production of artificial insulin now fills a previous void in the industry in China.

Completion of the genome map for ginseng and other genomic research also illustrates the city's strong capacity for technological innovation.

The innovation has also been sustained by TCM and biomedicine studies offered by local institutes of higher learning, which have produced more than 4,000 specialized professionals.

The city has also attracted more than 60 experts from other cities and even abroad. The city government has employed more than 70 scholars and experts as a think tank to provide advice for the growth of local medicine industry.

As well, the authorities have also valued quality inspection and built a sound environment for brand protection. Now the city has nine trademarks that are well known nationwide.

Tonghua has won a string of honors for its achievements in the industry. It was named as a national biomedicine industry base, a national modern TCM center and an innovation-backed export base.