Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, a few days after announcing major commitments on the other side of the world.
Like the rest of Big Pharma, the company must find a balance. It wants to maintain close relations with the United States, its largest market, and this listing aims to stimulate investment there.
Meanwhile, innovation-friendly China is attracting pharmaceutical companies that urgently need to develop new drugs to replace blockbuster drugs whose patents will expire in the coming years. Pricing issues in the United States are adding to the pressure.
AstraZeneca announced it would invest billions in China and partner with a Chinese biotech on weight-loss drugs, just ahead of its U.S. listing on Monday.
These developments come at a critical time for the pharmaceutical industry, as companies increasingly look east for innovation to replace revenue from current systems. Blockbuster drugs losing their patent in the next two years. Pricing Challenges in the US Marketwhich account for the bulk of most big pharma’s profits, add to the pressure on big pharma.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer shake hands before their meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on January 29, 2026.
Carl Court | Afp | Getty Images
On Thursday, AstraZeneca announced plans to invest $15 billion in China by 2030 to expand both manufacturing and research and development, as Keir Starmer became the first British Prime Minister to visit the country to eight years.
“These investments span the entire value chain, from drug discovery and clinical development to manufacturing, and bring Chinese innovation to the world,” the company said, while highlighting a series of other partnerships with other biotechs in the region.
In a separate announcement on Friday, the UK’s largest company would join forces with the Hong Kong-listed company. Pharmaceutical products CSPC to strengthen its obesity portfolio. The collaborative agreement includes eight preclinical and early-stage CSPC programs, including one once-monthly injectable. CSP stock fell 10.2% following the announcement.
AstraZeneca will pay CSPC $1.2 billion up front, and an additional $17.3 billion if certain regulatory, research and sales milestones are met, an AstraZeneca spokesperson confirmed to CNBC on Friday. The company declined to comment further on its geographic priorities.
These announcements came just before the listing of AstraZeneca shares on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, as well as the recent announcement of their An American investment of 50 billion dollars to remove US tariffs on pharmaceutical products.
“What we can infer from this is that the U.S. and China will be the two most important regions for the company for the foreseeable future,” Camilla Oxhamre, portfolio manager at Rhenman & Partners, told CNBC via email.
The balance of AstraZenecaThe United States is by far AstraZeneca’s largest market, and the company announced last year that it would end its American depositary stock program to pursue a market listing. New York Stock Exchangealso maintaining its references in London and Stockholm, claiming to want more global investor base.
“It is the largest pharmaceutical company [in China] and when they decide to go public in the United States, there will always be a question about the commitment in some people’s minds to China and the fact that they have had a few investigations last year,” HSBC’s Rajesh Kumar, head of European research on life sciences and healthcare equity, told CNBC. In 2025, Astrazeneca has been the subject of several investigations by Chinese regulators over unpaid import duties.
“So they are telling you very clearly that they are committed to China through this action,” Kumar added.
China is also AstraZeneca’s second largest market. Oxhamre, whose fund has a significant long position in Astra, added that the Chinese market would “continue to grow in importance over time, both in terms of revenue and research.”
And Astra is not the only pharmaceutical company looking to China for innovative new assets. London-listed GSK signs agreement with Hengrui Pharma worth up to $12 billion in Julythe majority being linked to the achievement of certain development and commercial milestones.
The fashionable biotechnology scene in ChinaLicensing deals between Big Pharma and Chinese biotechs, like the one between AstraZeneca and CSPC, have increased sharply in recent years, with 57 such deals in 2025, according to data from Biopharma Dive.
“These deals demonstrate the success of China’s long-standing efforts to move up the biopharmaceutical value chain from fast follower to differentiated assets capable of competing on a global scale,” PitchBook analysts said in a report released last month.
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China’s emergence as a leader in preclinical and early development comes as biotech funding elsewhere has suffered in recent years and is helped by the speed with which first human trials can be conducted there. According to Kumar, a reverse brain drain, thanks to the return of Chinese scientists to the country, is also helping the country’s biotechnology sector.
“China’s biopharmaceutical sector has reshaped itself around next-generation therapeutics coupled with efficient clinical trial infrastructure to de-risk these assets,” PitchBook analysts said.
“Mid-sized and multinational biopharmaceutical companies are sourcing assets from China at an increasing rate, from mega-deals to smaller licensing deals. Importantly, this activity is geared toward complex biologics rather than legacy modalities.
A June report from the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs suggested that “China has the most immediate opportunity to overtake the United States in biotechnology” and that this could “rapidly shift the global balance of power”.
But at the end of 2025, we saw a significant recovery in American funding in the field of biotechnology.
“There will always be innovation coming from both geographies,” Kumar said. “The world has changed… China was catching up with the United States, [the] The United States will reaccelerate.”
— CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng contributed to this report
