The delayed approval is the latest sign of how vulnerable Chinese tycoons — and their foreign partners — are to Beijing’s political diktats
As Covid-19 started spreading in Wuhan early in 2020, Chinese billionaire Guo Guangchang’s drugmaker appeared to have scored a big win: a partnership with Germany’s BioNTech, which went on to produce with Pfizer one of the world’s most successful vaccines against the coronavirus.
The Chinese market could fall out of reach for international pharmaceutical firms if approvals for vaccines and medicines intended for Covid-19 are made “a political issue, rather than an economic or biological one.” said Zhao Bing, a senior analyst who oversees healthcare research at China Renaissance Securities HK. Given the domestic competition, the prospects in China for the shot may be limited even if it is eventually approved for use in the mainland, he said.
Still, the shot has already been widely approved around the world for months. Pfizer — which has the rights to market it outside of Fosun’s distribution area of mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau — is pulling in billions in revenue from the vaccine. While Fosun has sold it in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau, where it’s been green-lit by regulators, a BioNTech representative said the application for the vaccine’s use on the mainland is still ongoing.
The vaccine setback comes at a time when China has curbed the ascent of some of its most powerful tycoons, derailing the IPO of Jack Ma’s Ant Financial and placing restrictions on the gaming business of Pony Ma’s Tencent. In the pharmaceutical space, Chinese leaders now appear eager to prove the country’s prowess at vaccine-making, encouraging sales of local shots around the world as a way of increasing Beijing’s geopolitical heft.
But in 2015, Guo briefly disappeared from public view and trading in his holding company, Fosun International Ltd., and Fosun Pharma was suspended. The companies said he was assisting investigations carried out by Chinese judiciary authorities. Their shares resumed trading three days later, when Guo reappeared at a group annual meeting.
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