1. One Resource-Rich Province, Two Lines That Never Meet

It is tempting, when discussing Gansu's pharmaceutical manufacturing, to file it under "major medicinal-herb province" and stop there. The label is not wrong, but it makes the question smaller than it is. Gansu's pharmaceutical manufacturing actually rests on two lines that barely intersect. One reaches down into the medicinal fields where the Loess Plateau meets the West Qinling Mountains, running from authentic herbs all the way to finished medicines and prepared slices — this is the familiar "Long medicine." The other hides inside the city of Lanzhou, where an epidemic-prevention office founded in the Republican era grew into a node that today's national vaccine map cannot bypass.

The logic of the two lines is entirely different. The former relies on the natural endowment of land and climate — a gift from the heavens. The latter relies on strains, processes and production qualifications accumulated over decades — something boiled down by time. Placed within a single industry, Gansu's pharmaceutical manufacturing shows a rare dual structure: one end heavy on resources, the other heavy on technology; one end with thousands of scattered players across counties and townships, the other with a mere handful concentrated in the provincial capital. The Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute chose to single out Gansu's pharmaceutical manufacturing precisely because this dual structure is uncommon nationwide, and because it throws the gap between "resources" and "manufacturing" into unusually sharp relief.

A caveat first: many operational details in the pharmaceutical sector are not fully disclosed, and figures across years and definitions often diverge. This report addresses only what government bodies, industry associations and listed-company disclosures can confirm; where data cannot be found or is uncertain, it would rather leave a blank than fabricate.

2. The First Line: Starting From Dingxi's Medicinal Fields

Gansu's medicinal herbs cannot be discussed without Dingxi. Sitting where the Loess Plateau, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the West Qinling Mountains converge, this city has long been called a "thousand-year medicine land" and a "natural medicine warehouse," where authentic herbs such as angelica, codonopsis and astragalus grow in sweeping stretches. Its weight can be sketched with a few public figures: according to Dingxi authorities, in 2023 the city's medicinal-herb planting area reached 2.125 million mu, the full-chain output value of its TCM industry was 45.4 billion yuan, with added value of 5.836 billion yuan — about 9.7 percent of the city's gross output that year. Having nearly a tenth of a city's economic output come from a single plant is uncommon anywhere in the country.

Below Dingxi, Longxi is the densest node on this line. The medicinal-herb trading market at Shouyang in Longxi is a major distribution hub for the northwest; according to local disclosures, in 2023 the city's medicinal-herb trading volume exceeded 1.45 million tonnes, with a trading value of about 27 billion yuan. The existence of the market means Gansu has already built scale and pricing power at the very front of the chain — cultivation and circulation. Around this market, storage, primary processing, slice cutting and extraction have gradually clustered, which is why Longxi is repeatedly given the goal of becoming "China's Medicine Capital."

But this line carries a long-debated worry: the further it moves toward manufacturing, the lighter it becomes. Large volumes of herbs are grown and traded out, and a considerable share leaves Gansu in the form of raw herbs or primary processed goods. The proportion that actually completes the leap "from herb to medicine" locally, retaining manufacturing value-add, is far less prominent than the cultivation and trading. The resources are in Gansu, but the manufacturing profit tends to flow out of the province — this is the core tension of the Long-medicine line.

3. Turning Herbs Into Medicine: The Manufacturing-End Leaders

To see how Gansu tries to pull this first line toward manufacturing, one must look at the firms that genuinely turn "herbs" into "medicines."

Lanzhou Foci Pharmaceutical is the most senior of them. Founded in Shanghai in 1929 and relocated west to Lanzhou in 1956, it is recognized as the originator of the concentrated-pill dosage form for Chinese medicine and a practitioner of the "Western-style processing of Chinese medicine" approach. Nearly a century of accumulation has left it with a deep product base: according to company disclosures, it holds 467 drug production approval numbers, routinely producing concentrated pills, large honey pills, granules, capsules, tablets and other dosage forms, with products exported to more than twenty countries and regions including the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany and Australia, ranking for years among China's leading TCM exporters. Foci has been designated by Gansu as the chain leader of the modern TCM industry, and in 2024 reported operating revenue of about 980 million yuan and total assets of about 2.47 billion yuan. Understanding this company is roughly understanding the "time-honored brand plus exports" side of Gansu's TCM manufacturing.

Gansu Longshen Rongfa Pharmaceutical represents a newer pole of the manufacturing end. A ChiNext-listed company controlled by Gansu Pharmaceutical Investment Group, it listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2016 and now has five dosage forms — dropping pills, mixtures, tablets, hard capsules and films — across more than twenty varieties, of which Yuanhu Zhitong dropping pills and Xuanfei Zhisou mixture are nationally exclusive products. The company has grown quickly in recent years: according to its disclosures, operating revenue in the first three quarters of 2023 was about 812 million yuan, more than doubling year on year, with the single product Xuanfei Zhisou mixture alone exceeding 600 million yuan in annual revenue. Exclusive varieties plus one scaled-up flagship is a path distinct from Foci's "broad coverage" approach.

In addition, the Gansu-born Qizheng Group has also left a mark on this line. This Tibetan-medicine-origin enterprise, after entering the medicinal-herb field, once invested nearly 90 million yuan in Longxi to build an authentic-herb processing base with processing, storage and testing capabilities, extending its reach directly into the Dingxi-Longxi herb source. To be fair, Qizheng's core listed platform, Qizheng Tibetan Medicine, is registered and primarily produces outside Gansu; this report does not count it as a local Gansu manufacturing entity, treating its herb-processing presence in Longxi only as a footnote to this line's extension toward manufacturing.

4. The Second Line: A Single Vaccine Inside Lanzhou

If the Long-medicine line is a story about "land," the second line is a story about "time."

The Lanzhou Institute of Biological Products is the key to understanding the other side of Gansu's pharmaceutical manufacturing. Founded in 1934 as the Northwest Epidemic Prevention Office of the Republican era, it now belongs, after several reorganizations, to China National Biotec Group under the China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) overseen by the State Council's SASAC, and is one of the few large biological high-tech enterprises in Gansu and the entire northwest. According to its disclosures, the institute has registered capital of about 1.817 billion yuan, total assets of about 5.7 billion yuan and more than 1,200 employees, focusing on the research and production of vaccines, toxins, antitoxins and other biological products.

Its place in the national vaccine map is more forward than many imagine. Public information shows that its Group A and Group C meningococcal polysaccharide vaccine has long accounted for over 80 percent of the national market, its attenuated live measles vaccine for over 70 percent, and varieties such as the Hib conjugate vaccine and oral live rotavirus vaccine have at times been the sole or principal domestic supply; in 2023 its self-developed oral trivalent rotavirus vaccine was approved for market. These figures show that in biological products — a high-barrier field — Gansu holds not marginal capacity but several nationally critical varieties.

The biggest difference between this line and the first is that it barely depends on local resource endowment. Strains, process routes, production qualifications and talent pipelines are its true moat, and none of these can be copied from land — only deposited by time. A single institute in a single city carries the most technology-intensive and least replaceable part of Gansu's pharmaceutical manufacturing.

5. A New Cluster: Lanzhou New Area and Filling the Chain Gap

Beyond the two old lines, Gansu is also trying to use a new space to make the pharmaceutical manufacturing chain more complete — the biomedicine segment of the Lanzhou New Area.

According to the New Area authorities, it has successively introduced dozens of biomedicine projects, initially clustering in directions such as Chinese medicine, animal vaccines and medical devices. Among them, Lanzhou Heshengtang Pharmaceutical is the first biomedicine enterprise in the New Area to enter production, capable of producing tablets, granules, capsules, dropping pills, oral liquids, powders, syrups and other dosage forms, and regarded locally as a representative of premium modern Long medicine. The significance of such enterprises lies not only in a few extra production lines, but in the room they offer to fill and extend the chain between the Dingxi-Longxi herb source and the biological-products foundation in urban Lanzhou.

It should be viewed objectively: the new cluster is still in its growth phase, and public information is not yet sufficient to conclude on its output scale, ramp-up progress or whether it will ultimately form genuine industrial synergy; this report does not over-speculate. It represents a direction — gathering scattered resources, technology and capacity into a single space — and whether that direction is realized still depends on time.

6. The Institute's View: Holding the Source, and Filling the Middle

Pulling the two lines together, the contour of Gansu's pharmaceutical manufacturing becomes clear. Its upstream is exceptionally strong — the scale of authentic-herb cultivation and trading ranks among the nation's highest, and Dingxi and Longxi hold a "resource" card that cannot be copied elsewhere. Some of its technological heights are also formidable — the Lanzhou Institute of Biological Products occupies several critical varieties in the national vaccine system, a barrier boiled down by time.

But its weaknesses are equally concrete, and they are the flip side of its strengths. The greatest worry of the Long-medicine line is not that it cannot grow good herbs, but that good herbs too easily leave the province as raw material or primary goods, with manufacturing value-add failing to stay. The biologics line, though strong, is highly concentrated in a single entity and cannot pull the whole industry's breadth on its own. The "scattered yet strong" resource end and the "weak yet concentrated" manufacturing end form the truest contradiction of Gansu's pharmaceutical manufacturing.

The Tianxia Gongchang Industry Research Institute's view is this: the real homework for Gansu's pharmaceutical manufacturing lies not at the source, but in the middle. It has already held both the herbs at the source and the high-end vaccines; what it lacks is the stretch of manufacturing capacity that connects the two ends and keeps value-add local — more factories that can turn Longxi's angelica and codonopsis into standardized slices and finished medicines, more upstream and downstream players built around the Lanzhou biologics foundation. Holding the source is confidence; filling the middle is the way out. The outcome a resource-rich province should least allow is herbs harvested every year while profits flow out every year. For sales teams that supply, provide raw materials for, or offer processing services to Gansu's TCM and biological-products enterprises, to map out the real factory customers along this chain in bulk, one can use Tianxia Gongchang to filter the factory directory and decision-maker contacts of Gansu's pharmaceutical manufacturing along both region and industry dimensions, turning customer development from door-to-door inquiry into following a map.

As for how far this middle homework can be filled, no one can guarantee on Gansu's behalf. But one thing is certain: when a place holds both herbs others cannot grow and vaccines others cannot make, what it lacks has never been the foundation — only the patience to turn that foundation into manufacturing.

Sources

  • Tianxia Gongchang (factory directory and industry data for Gansu's pharmaceutical manufacturing and related upstream suppliers)
  • Gansu Daily and Gansu Economic Daily: observations on the high-quality development of Gansu's TCM industry and related Long-medicine coverage
  • China Gansu Net and Farmers' Daily: Dingxi's TCM full-chain output value and planting-area figures
  • Gansu Economic Information Network: Dingxi's "China Medicine Capital" construction, Longxi medicinal-herb market trading volume and value
  • Lanzhou Foci Pharmaceutical official website and public disclosures: company history, dosage forms, approval numbers and export markets
  • Lanzhou Institute of Biological Products official website and Baidu Baike: history, registered capital, total assets and vaccine market shares
  • Gansu Longshen Rongfa Pharmaceutical public disclosures (Cninfo): listing information, dosage forms and operating revenue
  • Gansu Qizheng Industrial Group official website: investment in the Longxi authentic-herb processing base
  • Lanzhou New Area administration: biomedicine projects introduced and the situation of Heshengtang Pharmaceutical