Some of China’s most ambitious pharmaceutical companies are finding it difficult to hire the internationally experienced professionals they need to bring their medicines to markets around the world, according to industry executives.
Companies like Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals and CanSino Biologics are among those feeling the pressure. Their goals are big, but the pool of workers who understand global drug development, international regulatory systems, and cross-cultural business management is simply too small to meet demand.
The problem stems from how quickly China has grown as a center for testing experimental medications. That growth has far outpaced the industry’s ability to develop a workforce capable of taking those drugs to international markets.
According to data from health sector research firm IQVIA, Chinese-headquartered clinical trial sponsors conducted 88% of their trials exclusively within China in 2025. Meanwhile, only 5% of their trials took place in the United States — a striking contrast that highlights just how much work lies ahead, especially after U.S. regulators declined to approve some drugs tested only in China and began pushing for multi-regional trials that better reflect American patients and medical practices.
Sun Piaoyang, the chairman of Hengrui — a company focused on oncology and metabolic diseases — told Reuters that running global multi-center clinical trials, registering drugs overseas, and commercializing products internationally all require highly qualified professionals that the industry simply doesn’t have enough of.
“The challenges that we are currently facing are also the common challenges facing China’s biopharmaceutical industry,” he said.
Yu Xuefeng, the CEO of vaccine maker CanSino, said qualified specialists are still hard to come by in areas like conducting trials in other countries, preparing regulatory filings for multiple governments, and marketing products internationally. He noted that historically, not much effort had gone into taking Chinese-developed innovative products global, including through multi-center international trials.
Industry experts say this talent crunch is especially severe in China compared to other countries. A recent survey by research organization ICON found that biotech professionals in the Asia-Pacific region were nearly three times more likely than their global counterparts to say talent shortages were affecting their operations.
Zhong Yao, the general manager of ICON’s China business, said that while India has benefited from its outsourcing industry and Japan from a more established pharmaceutical sector, China’s rapid expansion has made its hiring pressures more intense.
The scale of China’s growth in drug development is remarkable. According to IQVIA, Chinese-headquartered clinical trial sponsors accounted for 32% of all global clinical trials in 2025 — up from just 2% in 2009. At the same time, licensing deals with partners in the greater China region have exploded, rising from roughly $318 million in 2016 to around $138 billion in 2025, according to data provider Pharmcube.
Catherine Gregor, the chief clinical trial officer at U.S. software firm Florence Healthcare, said China “faces bottlenecks in global commercialization without access to more internationally trained senior talent.”
Hengrui’s Sun said his company plans to ramp up internal training and pursue global talent more aggressively, but acknowledged that professionals with international experience have become highly sought-after worldwide, which is pushing up the cost of recruiting them.
CanSino’s Yu said his company’s core regulatory and clinical teams have been learning from international advisers. Meanwhile, Shanghai Henlius Biotech — which specializes in oncology and autoimmune diseases — stated in its most recent annual report that it has built in-house clinical and regulatory teams in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia to independently manage clinical trials in those regions.
Part of the push to expand internationally is being driven by regulators who want clinical data drawn from more diverse patient populations. Richard Pazdur, a former chief of drug evaluation at the U.S. FDA, explained that multi-regional trials allow regulators to compare results across different countries, helping them figure out whether differences in a drug’s effectiveness or safety reflect data quality, ethnic differences among patients, or variations in how medicine is practiced.
“I think if, when there are studies exclusively done in China, then some people may wonder about how applicable those results are,” he told Reuters.
Japan’s Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency also told Reuters that most new drugs approved in Japan require clinical data specifically from Japanese patients, rather than relying solely on studies done in Chinese populations.
One recruiter said the talent shortage can push Chinese drugmakers to lean on overseas partners when running international clinical trials. However, the recruiter suggested this is more likely to slow things down than completely derail expansion plans.
“Talent gaps at big China-headquartered pharma are showing up more as friction — slower or more partner-dependent execution — than clearly documented failures of overseas clinical trials so far,” said Nihar Parikh, a pharmaceutical executive recruiter at U.S.-based Smith Hanley Associates.
Parikh added that some job candidates are hesitant about joining China-based firms because they’re uncertain about the long-term stability of those companies’ international strategies and teams. He also noted that compensation packages from Chinese companies can sometimes fall short of what top U.S. or European multinationals offer.
James Nyssen, global head of life sciences at British recruiter Hays, said Chinese drugmakers need to clearly spell out their scientific goals, how decisions get made, and what their long-term international plans look like if they want to attract senior talent with experience in global clinical development, regulatory strategy, and product launches in the U.S. and Europe.
“Where that proposition is well defined, Chinese biopharma companies are highly competitive,” he said. “Where it’s still evolving, hiring can take longer — not because candidates aren’t available, but because they are selective.”
