Healthcare Asia Magazine reported that most of China’s largest listed healthcare firms posted solid results for 2025, with the growth sitting in biopharma, contract research and manufacturing, and internet health platforms rather than spread across the sector. The account drew on work by the brokerage UOB Kay Hian, which kept an “overweight” call on Chinese healthcare, the report said. The strength sat in the parts exposed to global demand and to new technology, while older firms stayed under policy pressure at home.
Drug makers are leaning on licensing rather than home sales, the report said. Chinese biopharma firms signed more cross-border licensing deals through 2025, selling rights to their research pipelines abroad, and contract research and manufacturing firms deepened their work for global drug clients. “Licence income becomes a new source of growth,” UOB Kay Hian said. WuXi AppTec and WuXi Bio, the two largest contract manufacturers, both reported strong revenue and earnings growth on that global demand.
AI moves the numbers
AI is the other driver the report named. Internet health platforms used AI to cut costs and widen margins, Healthcare Asia Magazine reported. Ali Health guided to revenue growth of 10 to 15 per cent and net profit growth of 20 to 30 per cent, while Ping An Good Doctor was projected to grow profit by about 40 per cent. Corporate health management could account for more than half of total revenue at some platforms within three to five years, the report said.
The same tools reached devices. In surgical robotics, Edge Medical reported revenue growth of 185 per cent and MicroPort MedBot 114 per cent, the report said. That robotics push runs alongside efforts elsewhere in Greater China to sell advanced surgery to visiting patients, such as Hong Kong’s robotic surgery hub.
Where the pressure sits
The gains did not reach the older firms. Medical device makers outside robotics were squeezed by anti-corruption campaigns and volume-based procurement, the buying rules that force prices down, the report said. Sinopharm, a large drug distributor, reported flat revenue and earnings and expects only modest growth in 2026 under centralised procurement and tight public-hospital budgets.
Traditional Chinese medicine fell hardest. China TCM reported a 10.7 per cent drop in revenue and a 47.5 per cent fall in profit, the report said, while Shineway posted double-digit revenue falls. The weakness is worth noting against China’s parallel effort to market traditional medicine to foreign visitors, a bet set out in China’s medical tourism push on traditional Chinese medicine.
What this is, and is not
The figures describe company revenue and licensing, not patient arrivals. The report is a read on industry finances, and the pull toward international patients is a separate question these numbers do not settle. China has pursued that inflow on its own track, through steps such as its first fully foreign-owned hospital courting international patients. Growth built on cross-border licence income and AI margins can rise while cross-border patient travel stays flat, because the two run on different engines.
What to watch
The measurable test is whether the concentration holds or spreads. Whether biopharma licence income and contract-manufacturing orders keep climbing into 2026, and whether traditional Chinese medicine names such as China TCM and Shineway stop falling, will show if the sector’s growth is broadening or narrowing. Sinopharm’s 2026 revenue is the near-term number to watch, because a distributor’s flat line is the clearest read on how hard centralised procurement is pressing.