Zibo seeks industry partners in US tour

A delegation from the Bureau of Commerce of Zibo City, Shandong province, and the China-US Chamber of Commerce co-hosted an event to promote investment in the medical industry in Washington on Feb 8.

Li Shumin, vice-mayor of Zibo, said he hoped the conference would help generate deeper research and develop relationships with the US.

"We are seeking more cooperation on a larger scale with the US, specifically in the areas of biomedicine, chemical synthetics, drugs, medical devices and medicinal packaging materials," Li told China Daily.

During the delegation's earlier visits to Toronto and New York City last week, some agreements were signed, including a continuation of cooperation on cancer diagnosis kit production with Panacea Global, a Canada-based biotechnology company.

The city is also planning to put in place a US-based representative, but is "still looking for the best location", said Li.

Zibo city, with a population of about 4.5 million, is located in the center of the eastern costal province of Shandong. Li called it an important industrial city with "a long history of international trade and investment dating back a century".

As a national pharmaceutical export and nationwide biological medicine industry base, Zibo is the largest pharmaceutical industrial center in Shandong province, its economic scale and integrated operations ranking it first provincially, said Qiu Feng, chairman of the Zibo Medical Industry Association.

"We have a group of products with production capacity and market share ranking first in China," Qiu said.

The city houses a total of 150 pharmaceutical enterprises, more than half in medical device production, 30 in medicine and 42 in pharmaceutical packaging materials, employing about 40,000 people.

Featured are metamizole sodium, caffeine and aspirin from Xinhua Pharmaceutical Co, one of the nation's largest manufacturers and exporters.

Xinhua products have been distributed to more than 50 countries, with 11 registered by the US Food and Drug Administration, Qiu said.

"Zibo city has developed strong pharmaceutical companies and the opportunities for more partnerships here will help many people," said Milton Brown, director of Georgetown University's Center for Drug Discovery. "We are looking forward to more collaborations with Zibo city."

Zibo's GDP rocketed to $64.5 billion in 2014, a 7.4 percent growth over the previous year, according to the Zibo government.

The medical industry contributed about a third of the city's export growth of 6.9 percent, the highest rate of any sector.

Sheng Yang in Washington contributed to this story.

(China Daily USA 02/10/2015 page2)