China’s cancer drug is raising alarm in U.S. pharma

At the world's largest cancer congress in Chicago, a drug that was completely developed and tested in China was the focus this weekend.

• In 61 years of this conference, that's a premiere, and a warning signal for America's pharmaceutical industry.

The drug is called Ivonescimab, invented by Chinese biotech company Akeso.

In the decisive study with 532 patients with advanced lung cancer, it reduced the risk of death by 34% compared to the previous standard immunotherapy.

Treated patients lived on average four months longer: 27.9 instead of 23.7 months.

Just ten years ago, China's pharmaceutical industry was considered an extended workshop that copied Western active ingredients.

• Today, around half of all major licensing deals in the industry come from China, compared to almost zero in the 2010s.

US startups complain they can no longer compete with the speed and prices of Chinese competitors. Some are now deliberately avoiding scientific publications so their inventions aren't copied.

Whether the drug works just as strongly in Western patients is still open. Asian lung cancer patients respond better to immunotherapies for reasons that are still unclear.

Furthermore, Ivonescimab competed in the study against a rival drug that isn't even approved in the US.

A global study is still running. In April, initial data with Western patients disappointed and sent Summit's stock tumbling. The FDA decides on approval by November.

FROM THE ASIABITS TEAM

The development described above was recently part of Thomas's keynote to a room full of pharma managers in Shanghai.

He explained why Chinese and Western pharmaceutical manufacturers are collaborating at record pace while politics argues.

If you want to book Thomas as a speaker or just want deeper insights into China business, just reply to this email.

OUR CONTENT PARTNER: LIMEN CHINA

Limen China delivers China business intelligence for decision-makers in the DACH region: geopolitics, macroeconomics, industrial policy, and what they mean for companies, associations, politics, and founders.

The first lead article reads the new spring assessment of the Council of Economic Experts through the China lens.

The thesis is uncomfortable: The real China shock 2.0 for German industry doesn't just lie in price pressure. It lies in the fact that German and Chinese export products are becoming increasingly similar while prices diverge. China is losing weight as a sales market, imports from China are rising, and it hits mechanical engineering, vehicle manufacturing, and technology-intensive components hardest.

What does it mean for supervisory boards, CEOs, and investors?

→ To the full analysis at Limen China (in German)

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CHART OF THE WEEK 

5 STORIES YOU MISSED LAST WEEK 

🇨🇳 Unitree's $6.2 Billion IPO Sprint: Unitree, China's biggest humanoid-robot maker, has filed an accelerated application to list on Shanghai's Star Market. Targets: 45 billion yuan ($6.2 billion) valuation and a roughly $619 million raise. The prospectus dropped one small bomb: first-quarter profits plunged year-on-year, even as revenue kept climbing. The market did not flinch. Every A-share with a known Unitree supply-chain link rallied. This IPO is a beta test for the entire humanoid wave. Deep Robotics, AISpeech and CXMT are all queued in the same filing window. If Unitree clears its hearing on the first pass, the next dozen names get a green light.

🇰🇷 Samsung Out First with the World's First 12-Layer HBM4E: Samsung has been shipping samples of the world's first 12-layer HBM4E memory chips to its main AI customers since May 29, ahead of SK Hynix and Micron. The stock jumped about 6 percent intraday. HBM4E is the memory generation that pairs with Nvidia's Rubin and AMD's next MI400-class accelerators from next year on. SK Hynix had owned the HBM3E race for two straight years and only joined the trillion-dollar club one day earlier. With HBM4E the order book flips: Samsung now sits in front of the next AI build cycle, and Korea's two big memory houses have gone from a one-horse race back to a real duopoly.

🇰🇷 Kospi Tops 8,400, Asia Markets Print Fresh Records: Korea's Kospi closed above 8,400 for the first time in history on May 29, Japan's Nikkei hit fresh record highs the same day, and Seoul opened at another all-time peak again today, carried by AI memory and hopes for an Iran deal. One Tokyo broker now pencils Nikkei 69,000 by end-2027 in its house view, and several others raised their targets for Korean and Japanese indices in parallel. Korea's volatility index climbed alongside the cash index, which is unusual and signals that traders are buying upside and hedging downside at the same time.

🇯🇵 SoftBank Bets on French AI Data Centers: SoftBank will invest up to €75 billion over the next five years to build AI data centers in France, with the goal of putting at least 5 gigawatts of compute capacity in place by 2031. The first €45 billion phase funds 3.1 GW in the Hauts-de-France region. The signal Masayoshi Son is sending: the US is no longer the only home for frontier-AI training, and Europe needs its own infrastructure if its industrial base is not to drop out of the AI loop. The number is roughly half of what SoftBank committed to the US Stargate project earlier this year.

🇨🇳 China's Economy on Two Tracks: One booming, the other Bleeding. China's large industrial firms posted 24.7 percent more profit in April than a year earlier, the strongest jump in over two years. A week later, the monthly sentiment index of Chinese factories came in at just 49.4. Anything below 50 means the industry is contracting rather than growing. New orders are dropping, especially for smaller firms. The two prints do not contradict each other. The firms that can push exports into the US right now, before Trump's new tariffs hit, are minting cash. The firms that depend on Chinese domestic consumption or the property market keep bleeding.

ALSO LAST WEEK 

CXMT, China's biggest DRAM maker, was cleared by the securities regulator for a Star Market IPO that is set to be mainland China's biggest listing in four years. The clearance closes the loop on the 1,688 percent first-quarter profit surge.

Deep Robotics, the Hangzhou-based quadruped and humanoid maker, filed for a $367 million Star Market IPO on the back of its first profitable year ($24 million net profit). Third Chinese robotics name to file inside a month, after Unitree and AISpeech.

South Korean President Lee Jae-myung formally ordered an accelerated procurement of nuclear-powered submarines, targeting a first hull by the mid-2030s. The plan still depends on a US deal to unlock fuel rights under the bilateral 123 Agreement.

The planned phone call between Donald Trump and Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te has been put on hold and pushed past Xi Jinping's expected US visit this fall. During Trump's May Beijing leg, Xi had warned that Taiwan could become a "very dangerous situation".

Tianji Intelligent System, a Chinese humanoid-robot startup, raised 1 billion yuan ($147.4 million) in a combined Series B and B+ co-led by Hillhouse-backed GL Ventures and local-services giant Meituan. The valuation rises to roughly 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion).

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