I. Why Chongqing Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Merits Study
Chongqing is the largest direct-controlled municipality in western China, and pharmaceutical manufacturing has long held a significant role in its industrial structure. The city carries a distinctive combination of assets: the Three Gorges reservoir region nurtures 64 species of authentic Chinese medicinal herbs (per the 2024 Chongqing Authentic Medicinal Materials Catalogue), providing a raw material foundation for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) processing; meanwhile, national-level development zones and biotech parks have attracted a cluster of modern biopharmaceutical enterprises specializing in vaccines and blood products.
Entering the 2020s, Chongqing formally designated biopharmaceuticals as a key strategic industry, assigning differentiated functions to Banan's International Bio-City, Liangjiang New Area, and the High-tech Zone. This strategic layout, layered over performance pressures at several leading enterprises, places Chongqing pharmaceutical manufacturing at a critical structural inflection point worth systematic examination.
II. Cluster Geography: A Multi-Node Configuration
Chongqing's pharmaceutical industry does not concentrate in a single center but rather takes shape across several nodes with distinct focuses.
Banan District — Chongqing International Bio-City is the highest-density core zone, hosting over 130 projects and building a "1+3+N" framework of parallel clusters in biologics, chemical drugs, modern TCM, and medical devices (source: Chongqing Municipal Government, September 2024). The official target is to aggregate over 200 enterprises and reach a production scale of 150 billion yuan by 2027.
Liangjiang New Area Shuitu High-Tech Industrial Park primarily accommodates high-value-added chemical formulations and medical device R&D, positioning itself as a high-end pharmaceutical cluster.
Fuling District is a traditional TCM hub, where Taihe Group's Fuling Pharmaceutical Plant has built what is described as Asia's largest oral liquid and syrup production base.
Additionally, Wushan and Fengdu counties are integrated into the upstream supply chain for blood products, hosting plasma collection stations for Hualan Biologic (source: Hualan Biologic 2024 Annual Report).
III. Leading Enterprise Landscape
Zhifei Biological (300122) is the highest market-cap pharmaceutical company listed from Chongqing. Its core business spans vaccine R&D and agency sales. In 2024, the company recorded revenue of 26.07 billion yuan, down 50.74% year-on-year, and net profit attributable to shareholders of 2.018 billion yuan, down 74.99%, as vaccine market demand contracted and competition in agency products intensified (source: Zhifei Biological 2024 Annual Report; CNR, April 2025). Proprietary product revenue stood at 1.182 billion yuan, representing only 4.53% of total revenue — indicating that in-house innovation still has a long road to commercial scale.
Taihe Group (600129), a flagship TCM enterprise tracing its lineage to Fuling Pharmaceutical, now operates under the China National Pharmaceutical Group umbrella. In 2024 it posted revenue of 12.386 billion yuan, down 20.72%, with net profit collapsing 96.76% to 27 million yuan; the company has 61 active R&D projects spanning innovative TCM and chemical drugs (source: Taihe Group 2024 Annual Report, Flush Finance, April 2025). The steep profit decline reflects a convergence of tax compliance issues and deteriorating market conditions.
Hualan Biologic (002007), headquartered in Henan, has extended its plasma collection footprint into Chongqing's Wushan and Fengdu counties. In 2024, the company's plasma collection volume reached a record 1,586.37 tons, up 18.18%; blood products revenue grew 10.91% to 3.251 billion yuan (source: Hualan Biologic 2024 Annual Report).
Beyond these three companies, Chongqing's emerging cohort includes Zhixiang Jintai (focused on antibody drugs), Bowei Biologics, and Zhien Modern TCM, all building capacity within the International Bio-City. As of 2024, Chongqing counts 15 listed biopharmaceutical companies and 271 high-tech enterprises in the sector (source: Chongqing People's Congress Research Report).
IV. Supply Chain: Upstream and Downstream
The upstream supply chain for Chongqing pharmaceutical manufacturing encompasses chemical APIs, pharmaceutical excipients, drug packaging materials, vaccine adjuvants, and biologic production consumables. On the TCM raw materials side, authentic varieties such as Coptis chinensis (primarily from Shizhu County), Polygonatum sibiricum, and Scrophularia ningpoensis provide partial local sourcing for TCM manufacturers — though structural gaps remain in high-end API self-sufficiency (source: Chongqing Municipal Economic and Information Commission policy documents).
Downstream, the International Bio-City is simultaneously advancing medical device integration and pharmaceutical logistics infrastructure, with smart medical equipment designated as a focused initiative for 2025–2027 (source: Chongqing Municipal Government's Smart Medical Equipment Industry Innovation Development Action Plan, January 2025). Pharmaceutical distribution is anchored by the Chongqing Pharmaceutical Group, which handles wholesale and delivery of medicines across the municipality.
On the TCM cultivation side, the city's target is for combined TCM planting and processing output to exceed 43 billion yuan by 2027. Currently, 106 TCM processing enterprises operate in the municipality, with TCM processing industry output reaching 19.118 billion yuan (source: Chongqing Municipal Government, January 2025).
V. Challenges and Transition Directions
Chongqing pharmaceutical manufacturing faces multiple structural headwinds. Vaccine demand volatility has directly hit Zhifei Biological; competitive and compliance pressures in traditional Chinese medicine have squeezed margins at Taihe Group; and long R&D cycles for innovative drugs mean that most local enterprises still generate only a small fraction of revenue from proprietary innovations.
Meanwhile, of the International Bio-City's 1,500-billion-yuan target, a significant portion depends on medium- and long-term projects — which, per the city's disclosed project mix, represent over 60% of planned output value. Near-term production contribution is therefore limited.
Three transition opportunities stand out: first, expanding domestic capacity in blood products and antibody drugs; second, standardization and internationalization of modern TCM (underpinned by the Chongqing Authentic Medicinal Materials Catalogue framework); and third, smart medical device manufacturing and pharmaceutical logistics digitalization, enabling a shift toward manufacturing-as-a-service.
VI. Research Assessment
The structural characteristic of Chongqing pharmaceutical manufacturing is: dominant leaders are large but under strain; emerging players are fast-growing but still thin. Zhifei Biological and Taihe Group together account for the bulk of local pharmaceutical manufacturing output, yet both absorbed significant earnings pressure in 2024. The newer enterprises within the International Bio-City are still small in scale, with most in the capacity-construction and clinical-stage phase.
Within the comparative landscape of western China's pharmaceutical manufacturing, Chongqing's advantages lie in the administrative efficiency of direct municipal governance and the market reach of the Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Circle. Its shortcomings include limited self-sufficiency in high-end APIs and a degree of concentration risk from dependence on a small number of leading enterprises. Whether the Banan International Bio-City can, within the next few years, aggregate and nurture a cohort of mid-sized biopharmaceutical firms will be a decisive variable in Chongqing's capacity to complete this industrial transition.
Sales teams working upstream of Chongqing pharmaceutical factories can use Tianxia Gongchang to screen factory directories and key decision-maker contacts by region and product category.
Data Sources
- Tianxia Gongchang (factory database and industry data for Chongqing pharmaceutical manufacturing)
- Zhifei Biological Products Co., Ltd. 2024 Annual Report (disclosed on SZSE, April 2025)
- Taihe Group (Chongqing) Co., Ltd. 2024 Annual Report (disclosed on SSE, April 2025)
- Hualan Biologic Engineering Inc. 2024 Annual Report (disclosed on SZSE, March 2025)
- Chongqing Municipal Government: Chongqing International Bio-City Development Press Conference (September 2024)
- Chongqing Municipal Government: Policy Interpretation on Modern TCM Industry Cluster Development (January 2025)
- Chongqing People's Congress Education, Science, Culture and Health Committee: Research Report on Biopharmaceutical R&D
- Chongqing Municipal Economic and Information Commission: Policy Interpretation of Chongqing Biopharmaceutical Industry 14th Five-Year Plan