The pharmaceutical manufacturing project has become the core of various cities competing for the biopharmaceutical industry, whether it is the first line or the new first line. From a data perspective, the same applies. The industry share of the top ten cities on this chain is 36.76%, far lower than other chains such as research and development and sales.

Starting from 2024, the First Financial · New First tier City Research Institute will aggregate data from three dimensions: the concentration of leading enterprises, the popularity of investment events in the primary market, and the number of invention patents, and launch a series of reports on the urban industrial chain index.

In the pharmaceutical industry, the strongest cities in China are currently Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou. In addition, the top ten cities include Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuhan, Nanjing, Chengdu, and Xi'an.

The biopharmaceutical industry in a broad sense includes two industries: pharmaceuticals and medical devices. The core chain of the pharmaceutical industry can be further divided into research and development, manufacturing, and sales.

The extended industrial chain links also include pharmaceutical information service links composed of pharmaceutical informatization, smart hospitals, as well as other biological industries composed of medical testing, laboratory reagents, etc.

These two areas of "chain extension" are also important links for some new first tier cities to seek differentiation in the competitiveness of the pharmaceutical industry.

Medical research and development includes the development of chemical drugs, biological products, traditional Chinese medicine, active pharmaceutical ingredients, as well as clinical trial related enterprises.

As the top ranked pharmaceutical R&D industry in terms of market share, Shanghai has accounted for a quarter of the total number of Class I innovative drugs launched in the country in the past five years. Thanks to the spillover effect of the innovation chain, new first tier cities in the Yangtze River Delta are among the top in the research and development sector in the country.

In addition to pharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical manufacturing also includes the manufacturing of raw materials such as active pharmaceutical ingredients, excipients, packaging materials, and pharmaceutical equipment.

In the manufacturing sector, extremely low industrial concentration leads to fierce competition between cities. Xinyi Sauce has previously used specialized algorithms to differentiate the main medicinal grains in China.

Therefore, selecting the right pharmaceutical track is the key to breaking through the barriers of resource-based cities in the chemical and manufacturing industries

Pharmaceutical sales mainly consist of wholesale, retail, and import and export. Chengdu has outstanding advantages in this area and is a national center city for pharmaceutical distribution. From the perspective of the value chain, the pharmaceutical distribution industry is expected to unleash greater potential in the context of the evolution of pharmaceutical consumption patterns.

With the continuous penetration of the concept of "digitalization" in various industries, pharmaceutical information services have also become a new track for more cities to focus on layout.

Among them, there are new platforms for digital transformation of traditional pharmaceutical enterprises represented by "Shangyao Cloud Health", and O2O platform products with Internet gene "Dingdang Quick Medicine". The diversification of industrial entities brings more imaginative space for the layout of cities in this stage.

The other biological industries cover technology supporting industries under the concept of pan medicine.

Wuhan's industrial share in this sector has reached 6.61%. Relying on the leading pharmaceutical companies in Optics Valley Biotech City and the overall biological research resources of the city, Wuhan focuses on deepening its research in sub fields such as laboratory reagents and gene sequencing, thereby further empowering the entire industrial chain. 

From the perspective of industrial structure in key cities, the layout of new first tier cities mostly focuses on upstream and downstream extension links with higher value.

Unlike the top pharmaceutical cities in the Yangtze River Delta, Hefei has created a distinctive industrial chain in the field of pharmaceutical information services, as evidenced by the clustering of various industrial exhibitions. In 2023, the National Medical Products Administration Information Center held the "2023 Drug Digital Intelligence Development Conference" and the 17th China Health Information Technology/Health Medical Big Data Application Exchange Conference in Hefei.