Preface

In November 2026, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders' Informal Meeting will be held in Shenzhen — China's third time hosting APEC. This meeting, with trade and growth as its main thread, has this year placed biopharma further forward on the agenda. For Shenzhen, this is not just a home-ground diplomatic event, but a window for the city's biopharma industry to meet Asia-Pacific cooperation, capital, and markets head-on.

In November 2026, the APEC spotlight falls on Shenzhen.

When the outside world was tallying how many trade consensus items the meeting reached, primary-market healthcare investors had already, in one sub-agenda after another, keenly sensed a shift in the wind: biopharma has this time been firmly pushed onto the Asia-Pacific agenda table.

In the SME Business Forum, it became one of two core tracks; at the Third Senior Officials' Meeting (SOM3), the integration of medical treatment and prevention was placed on the closed-door discussion table; and at the precision medicine and AI drug discovery showcase sites, regulatory coordination and cross-border commercialization became core topics. Such "prominence" is truly rare.

What biopharma needs is not just "being discussed"

Looking back at where APEC landed on biopharma in 2026, three threads stand out particularly clearly.

The first thread is the tangible sense of industry matchmaking. Under the APEC framework, biopharma is first and foremost an industry cooperation topic, and only then a policy topic. At the June APEC SME Business Forum Shenzhen Futian special session, biopharma and intelligent terminals were explicitly set as the two core visiting tracks; more than 300 business representatives from APEC member economies visited the Hetao Cooperation Zone and XtalPi, reaching more than 60 on-site cooperation intentions. [1]

The second thread is the systematized perspective on public health. During the August APEC Third Senior Officials' Meeting, a closed-door seminar hosted by Tsinghua University's Vanke School of Public Health focused on "integration of medical treatment and prevention," using hepatitis B prevention and control as the primary entry point, placing disease elimination, integrated health services, universal health coverage, health financing, and technological innovation on the same table for discussion. [2]

The third thread is the attempt to break ice at the rules level. Under the APEC framework, discussions on drug regulatory coordination made substantive progress in 2026; a proposal to push member economies to gradually establish a mutual recognition mechanism for drug approval results was included in the agenda, directly targeting the long-standing pain point of high fragmentation in pharmaceutical regulations across the Asia-Pacific region. [3] The policy dialogue on precision medicine and health technology innovation likewise listed cross-border regulatory coordination and healthy aging governance as key topics. For an industry like biopharma that is highly dependent on long-cycle R&D and cross-border commercialization, every step forward in regulatory coordination adds a measure of certainty on the industry side.

And in this Asia-Pacific rules dialogue, what Shenzhen brings out is by no means just a newly built venue.

Why the APEC biopharma agenda has a landing point here

As one of the first national biopharma industry bases and a national independent innovation demonstration zone, Shenzhen's biopharma industry, after four decades of cultivation and development, has formed three strategic emerging industry clusters: biopharma, high-end medical devices, and big health.

The capital market's sense of smell is often the keenest. In 2025, Shenzhen's pharmaceutical and medical device industry cluster revenue reached 218.9 billion yuan, of which the pharmaceutical cluster was 117.3 billion yuan and the medical device cluster 101.6 billion yuan; total exports were 44 billion yuan, ranking first among all cities nationwide; there were more than a thousand above-scale enterprises and 35 listed companies. [4] Under the "20+8" industry cluster framework, the city has laid out 9 biopharma specialized parks and 8 "AI + pharma/devices" parks; a 13 billion yuan special industry guidance fund linked with cluster funds constitutes a capital ecosystem covering everything from early-stage R&D to scaled production.

Longhua District, relying on the National High-Performance Medical Device Innovation Center, has driven the landing of "bottleneck" achievements such as the world's first 5.0T whole-body human MRI system and the first domestic extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) system; in 2025, the added value of the high-end medical device industry grew by 20.8%; the output value of Futian District's biopharma industry cluster even doubled within three years. [5, 6]

Setting aside these impressive macro data, the deeper truth is this: Shenzhen's biopharma was not "temporarily put on display" during APEC; it is itself the industrial chassis that this city has continuously invested in for several years under the "20+8" strategy. What APEC provides is a window for this chassis to engage in direct dialogue with Asia-Pacific rules, capital, and markets — from source R&D and clinical translation to scaled production, the complete chain of Shenzhen biopharma is being seen by more and more people.

And in this chain, venture capital institutions are a key link connecting technology and industry. Yifeng Capital is precisely one such professional force rooted here.

From its early bet on Chipscreen Biosciences, to accompanying companies such as Pumen Technology and Northstar Life as they landed on the capital market, to recently joining hands with the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation to establish in Guangming District the Mingyuan Seed Fund focused on very early-stage translation — step by step, this is Yifeng's long-term commitment to "investing early, investing in hard tech."

The grand event will eventually end, but the endurance race has no finish line

The APEC curtain rises in Shenzhen, and the world's eyes focus here. But after the event ends, what truly supports Shenzhen and China's innovative drugs are the scientists toiling away in laboratories, the business teams negotiating milestone payments clause by clause at the bargaining table, and those who, in the dark of night, are willing to hold up a lantern for China's hard tech.

Cycles will change, but the endurance race has no finish line. No matter which way the wind blows, Yifeng Capital will remain on the field, a firm companion to hardcore healthcare.

Data sources:

1. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/QaSdbZpDanRsm5FyCeP11A

2. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/zgLnsvwudfN4-_sVsQ83ew

3. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/EUkTFBMTK-JyHfI7h5hbgw

4. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/tTQBqKLQV3EKXw0QXy6Q6Q

5. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/kmashJEH11-6zMMB6jwUSw

6. https://www.szft.gov.cn/ftqtzcjj/gkmlpt/content/12/12345/post_12345879.html?sessionid=#26556

[Disclaimer]

The content of this article represents only the company's views based on current public information and materials provided by portfolio companies, and does not constitute any investment advice, medical advice, or guarantee of the performance of any specific enterprise. Investing carries risks; enter the market with caution, and readers should make independent judgments based on public information. Reproduction or use for commercial purposes without authorization is prohibited.