Positioning for Growth: Navigating China’s Biomanufacturing Industry

China’s biomanufacturing industry is entering a decisive moment: one where scientific innovation, industrial policy, and global competition are converging to reshape the future of advanced manufacturing. Once a niche segment within the broader biotechnology landscape, biomanufacturing has rapidly evolved into a strategic pillar for China’s next phase of industrial upgrading. Backed by national-level plans, accelerating regional cluster development, and surging market demand for bio-based materials and sustainable production technologies, the sector is transforming from “promising” to “priority.”

For foreign companies and investors, this shift represents more than an expanding market—it signals the opening of a new frontier within China’s high-tech economy. Yet the sector’s fast pace, regulatory sophistication, and unique ecosystem dynamics mean that simply entering the market is not enough. Understanding how China is structuring its biomanufacturing ambitions, where opportunities are emerging, and what capabilities are required to participate meaningfully has become essential.

This article explores the core characteristics of China’s biomanufacturing industry, highlights the mechanisms that shape successful integration into its value chains, and identifies the strategic opportunities available to international players as China positions biomanufacturing at the heart of its next industrial transformation.

What is biomanufacturing?

Biomanufacturing refers to the use of biological systems to produce valuable goods and substances at an industrial scale. In essence, it integrates biotechnology with advanced manufacturing processes to create high-value-added products. Cells, enzymes, or microorganisms are used to generate biomaterials and biomolecules for a wide range of uses: drugs, vaccines, dietary supplements, enzymes for the food industry, and sustainable materials for industry.

Industries already involved in biomanufacturing include healthcare and pharmaceuticals, agri-food, energy through biofuels, and the green chemistry sector. Among these industries, China already has clear comparative advantages in biopharmaceuticals and agri-food production, particularly in industrial enzymes and fermentation-based processes.

Why it matters now

China is elevating biomanufacturing as a critical engine for its next phase of sustainable and innovation‑driven growth. As part of the dual‑carbon agenda and the broader ecological‑civilization vision, policymakers view biotechnology as essential to reducing resource intensity, enabling greener industrial processes, and supporting long‑term economic resilience. Researchers widely expect China’s biotechnology landscape to expand rapidly, especially across agriculture and healthcare, driven by advances in new seed varieties, gene therapies, and treatments for neurodegenerative, metabolic, and cancer‑related diseases.

Biomanufacturing as a strategic national priority

Biomanufacturing has now been firmly positioned at the center of China’s bioeconomy strategy. It is recognized not only as a high‑value technology domain, but also as a foundation for industrial upgrading and long‑term competitiveness.

Several key national signals underscore this shift:

• 2023 Central Economic Work Conference: The Conference identified biomanufacturing as one of the core strategic emerging industries—alongside commercial aerospace and the low‑altitude economy—and emphasized accelerating the development of future industries such as quantum technology and life sciences.
• 2025 Government Work Report: The Report called for establishing an investment‑growth mechanism for future industries and specifically highlighted biomanufacturing, quantum technology, embodied intelligence, and 6G as sectors to be nurtured and scaled.
• 15th Five‑Year Plan: Early policy framing places biomanufacturing among the priority fields for China’s next five‑year planning cycle, signaling that long‑term resources and institutional momentum will continue to flow into the sector.

A pillar of “new quality productive forces”

Within China’s current policy discourse, biomanufacturing is positioned as a key pillar of “new quality productive forces” – technologies expected to drive higher‑value growth, strengthen resilience, and reinforce China’s competitive advantage in global manufacturing. This aligns with China’s broader strategic objective of reducing structural dependencies amid ongoing Sino‑American rivalry.

Strengthening technological sovereignty

To reduce reliance on US technologies and supply chains, China is rapidly expanding its domestic innovation and production capabilities. Government agencies, public research institutions, and targeted funding programs are accelerating the commercialization of homegrown biotechnologies and supporting scale‑up within strategically important subsectors.

At the regulatory level, Chinese authorities have also moved to localize biopharmaceutical production and enhance supply‑chain stability. Recent National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) guidelines for biologics emphasize strengthening domestic manufacturing capacity to “improve supply‑chain resiliency, reduce dependency on drug imports, and ensure the availability of critical medicines despite global disruptions.”

Market size and potential

China’s biomanufacturing industry has expanded rapidly in recent years, emerging as one of the most dynamic pillars of the country’s bioeconomy. According to data presented at the 2025 Biomanufacturing Conference, the industry has now reached a total market size of RMB 1.1 trillion (US$157.3 billion), reflecting sustained momentum driven by advances in biotechnology, supportive industrial policies, and strong downstream demand.

China has already established a dominant global position in core segments of the biomanufacturing value chain. The country accounts for over 70 percent of the world’s output of bio‑fermentation products, with the food additives and biopharmaceutical subsectors each generating more than RMB 400 billion (US$57.2 billion) in annual output value. In tandem with this industrial growth, China’s innovation capacity has also strengthened significantly: the country now contributes more than 20 percent of global publications and patent applications in the biomanufacturing field and has built a network of national laboratories and innovation platforms.

The sector is also benefiting from robust investment flows. Globally, synthetic biology–driven biomanufacturing has maintained a compound annual growth rate of around 30 percent since 2015, with global investment expected to reach US$25 billion by 2025. In China, annual investment in biomanufacturing has climbed to nearly RMB 30 billion (US$4.29 billion) per year, reflecting the depth of domestic investor confidence and the growing number of commercializable technologies.

Major biomanufacturing clusters in China

Regional biomanufacturing clusters are beginning to take shape, each leveraging local strengths. For example:

• Shenzhen has become a national hub for synthetic biology, accounting for 30 percent of China’s newly established synbio firms and hosting major scientific infrastructure.
• The Suihua–Harbin–Daqing cluster (Heilongjiang Province) relies on abundant biomass resources to support large‑scale production of amino acids, fuel ethanol, and related products, with an annual output exceeding RMB 60 billion.
• Hainan and Qingdao are advancing marine biomanufacturing, building microbial resource banks, and driving the development of marine biomedicine.

These geographically diversified ecosystems support complementary strengths across R&D, pilot‑scale testing, and industrial‑scale manufacturing.

We also list some other regional clusters for the sector in the table below.

How China plans to develop this industry

China’s biomanufacturing industry will enter a critical growth phase during the 15th Five‑Year Plan period (2026-2030). The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has announced plans to:

• Issue a dedicated 15th Five‑Year Plan for Biomanufacturing
• Identify flagship products and AI‑enabled application cases
• Expand pilot‑scale testing capacity
• Advance high‑performance bioreactor development
• Establish biomanufacturing standards
• Cultivate multi‑disciplinary talent

These measures aim to strengthen the innovation pipeline, accelerate the transformation of scientific breakthroughs into industrial output, and broaden the application scenarios of biomanufacturing products across future foods, healthcare, and advanced materials.

Taken together, the industry’s solid market base, high innovation intensity, growing investment scale, and strong policy commitment indicate that China’s biomanufacturing sector is positioned for long‑term, high‑value growth.

Opportunities in the market

For foreign investors and companies, this trajectory presents expanding opportunities across upstream technologies, mid‑stream process innovation, and downstream application sectors, particularly for those working with advanced biotechnology.

First, collaboration with Chinese manufacturing companies is expanding rapidly, especially in synthetic biology and high-end bioprocessing. Foreign suppliers of specialized laboratory equipment, bioreactors, sensors, automation systems, and strain-engineering tools continue to find strong demand, notably in innovation hubs such as Shanghai, where many synthetic-biology firms and pilot-scale facilities are located. There are also growing commercial openings in biomaterials and food biotechnology, including fermentation-derived proteins, industrial enzymes, and novel food ingredients. These remain among the fastest-growing segments of China’s biomanufacturing sector.

In terms of market entry, foreign companies typically benefit from structured partnerships. Joint ventures with Chinese manufacturing firms, R&D collaborations with universities or national laboratories, and licensing or technology-transfer agreements can all provide pathways to scale and regulatory access. These arrangements also help navigate procurement channels, talent recruitment, and local certification requirements, which are especially important for companies without an existing footprint in China.

Several concerns should be raised, however. Compliance with China’s biosecurity and data-governance rules as well as its genetic-resource regulations requires careful management. Intellectual-property concerns remain, especially for firms bringing engineered organisms, or platform technologies into the Chinese market. External risks also matter, as export controls imposed by the United States and other Western countries can restrict the transfer of certain equipment or genetic-engineering technologies into China.

Key takeaway

China is elevating biomanufacturing from an emerging field to a strategic industrial pillar, creating new openings in a landscape that remains highly policy-driven and tightly regulated. Foreign firms that position themselves early, focus on key clusters, and navigate compliance carefully will be best placed to capture the sector’s expanding opportunities over the next decade.

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