Tocco Report: CHINA BIOECONOMY 2025-2026 EDITION

Dissecting China’s Leading Role in Global Biotech

"China’s biotech industry is growing fast and becoming a global player, with U.S. companies increasingly looking to partner with Chinese firms on cutting‑edge science." - Glenn Hunzinger, PWC.

Biotech isn’t an industry of the future. It’s already here. Not in the abstract ways white papers forecast—but in pipelines, patents, pilot plants. And few countries have treated it as systematically as China.

Since 2021, China has pursued biotech not as a niche or climate gesture but as infrastructure. Its five-year bioeconomy plan connects genomics to grain, enzymes to energy grids. In 2023 alone, it allocated around USD 2.8 billion to biotech R&D, with growing dominance in synthetic biology and biomanufacturing.

Meanwhile, industrial logic is shifting. High-volume sectors—textiles, packaging, pharmaceuticals—are under pressure to reduce input intensity. And China’s advantage is less ideological than operational. The industrial reality is: as of 2023, China accounts for 31.6% of global manufacturing output — more than the US, Japan, Germany, and India combined. The country graduates 1.6 million engineers annually, with millions more trained in technical vocational schools. Since early 2023, foreign visits to China have increased over 130% YoY, reflecting a growing wave of international interest — particularly from product teams, investors, and industrial designers.

This isn’t simply growth. It’s alignment: of capital, labor, policy, and production. A convergence that few other nations can replicate.

This report by Tocco Editiorial team does not presume clear answers. Instead, it examines the data, case studies, and industrial signals without prescription. The objective is clarity: to allow stakeholders—whether designers, investors, or policymakers—to interpret the field on its own terms.