Why China biotech is getting a DeepSeek moment, too

FROM artificial intelligence to military defence, China has offered a few DeepSeek moments this year, showing that the country is more than just the world’s biggest factory, and that it also can compete with the United States on the technology front. Now biotech is having its own.

In late May, Pfizer agreed to pay a record US$1.25 billion upfront to license an experimental cancer drug from Shenyang-based 3SBio, as well as making a US$100 million equity investment in the Hong Kong-listed biotech company.

Two weeks later, Bristol-Myers Squibb said it would pay BioNTech US$1.5 billion guaranteed to license a similar cancer asset. It was a win for BioNTech, which bought Biotheus, the Chinese company that developed the drug, late last year for US$800 million.