If Beijing were personified, it would probably be an engineer wearing a black down jacket and a plaid shirt, who doesn't like to be in the spotlight, isn't good at promoting itself, and is even a bit wooden. But if you pull him down to have a chat, you will find that he has actually created world-leading products—only he never thought of speaking up about it himself.

On March 20, 2025, it was announced at a press conference of the State Council Information Office that Beijing's pharmaceutical and healthcare industry had surpassed 1.06 trillion yuan in 2024, making it the first city in the country to reach the trillion-yuan level (note, not Shanghai, which is still over 900 billion). Logically, this is an achievement worth discussing, but for Beijing... such a significant piece of news was only briefly mentioned at a very late position during the Zhongguancun Forum press conference.

Indeed, "doing it" is more important than "saying it." But as a medical technology media company grown in Beijing, Siyu MedTech, has decided to speak up for this "engineer" Beijing.

Beijing's pharmaceutical and healthcare industry, quietly became the first

• AI Class III Medical Devices: Nation's First, 11 Approved in Beijing
• Innovative medical devices: second in the country, 9 approved in Beijing.
• Breakthrough Innovative Drugs: Third in the Nation, Beijing has 9 included in the National Breakthrough Therapy Designation.
• Artificial intelligence medical devices: First in the country, 27 projects from Beijing are selected for the national list of key projects.

• Highly cited scientists in life sciences: first in the country, Beijing has 58 people, an increase of 20% from last year.

What is this concept? It's like that quiet programmer by your side, who one day suddenly wrote an AI and casually won a global competition, and you didn't know until the award ceremony.

More importantly, Beijing's pharmaceutical and healthcare industry did not rely on a short-term boom, but rather on decades of accumulation, step by step reaching the top position in the country. And before this, it had hardly ever spoken about itself proactively.

Beijing's style: doesn't like being high-profile, but never idle

If you have been following the development of industries for a long time, you will find that the tone of Beijing is "do more, say less." Unlike some places that are accustomed to shouting out goals like "building an Asian medical technology center," Beijing is more like that engineer who buries himself in writing code, thinking to himself, "You can talk all you want; I'll just optimize this underlying architecture first."

But this time, the data is right here—1.06 trillion, the highest among all cities nationwide. If Beijing was previously considered "potentially strong but not so prominent," it now stands at the forefront of the national pharmaceutical and healthcare industry.

Policy promotion, faster technology transformation, Beijing's "approval efficiency" is much faster than before

These years have also seen a complete放开手脚, with quite a few optimizations made: It seems there's a part of the sentence that was intended to be in Chinese. The phrase "放开手脚" can be translated as "let loose" or "go all out." So, the full translation would be: These years have also seen us completely let loose, with quite a few optimizations made:

• Approval acceleration: The approval time for innovative drug clinical trials has been reduced from 60 days to 30 days, and the review time for supplementary applications has been shortened from 200 days to 60 days.
• Innovative drugs and medical devices enter hospitals faster: Beijing's "dual-channel" pilot institutions allow new drugs and medical devices to enter hospitals more quickly, rather than being stuck in paperwork for years.
• AI + medical data: The country's first pharmaceutical AI data training base has been established, and a green channel for data出境绿色通道 translation seems to be missing. Assuming it means "a fast-track for data export," the complete translation would be: AI + medical data: The country's first pharmaceutical AI data training base has been established, and a fast-track for data export is provided to foreign enterprises, promoting data compliance for companies like Bayer and Sanofi when exporting data.

The engineers in Beijing are turning cutting-edge technology into reality.

Beijing's industrial development is not driven by "industrial parks" but by genuine technological breakthroughs. Here are a few hardcore achievements that have already been realized:

• Brain-computer interface: "North Brain II" by Beijing Institute of Brain Science and Xinzhi Da, the world's first to achieve brain-controlled interception in non-human primates. Imagine, future medical devices might be controllable by thought.
• Gene editing: The large fragment DNA precise insertion technology developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences has been selected as one of the seven major breakthrough technologies of the year by Nature, marking another step forward in precision medicine.
• Magnetoencephalography: The world's first wireless brain magnetic detection technology developed by the Peking University team has significantly improved the diagnostic accuracy of brain diseases.

• Pfizer, Danaher, Huya Bioscience: First to Establish Innovation R&D Center in Beijing.
• Lilly, Bayer, Merck: Establishing new innovation centers in Beijing to support the overseas expansion of domestically produced innovative drugs and medical devices.
• Sanofi: Invest 1 billion euros to build an insulin production base in Beijing, which is the largest single investment by this French pharmaceutical company in China.
• GE Healthcare: Beijing imaging equipment manufacturing base becomes the country's first "Lighthouse Factory".

In the future, Beijing's goal is not just to be first.

This time, Beijing's pharmaceutical and healthcare industry has taken the top position nationwide. But in its usual style, it will most likely remain silent and continue to focus on getting things done.

Cell and gene therapy, brain-computer interfaces, and other cutting-edge fields will continue to accelerate, with many technologies potentially achieving clinical breakthroughs first in Beijing.

Policy reforms will continue to advance, approvals will be further expedited, and the investment environment will be further optimized.

International cooperation is upgrading, and in the future, there may be more foreign pharmaceutical companies setting up Asian R&D centers in Beijing.

Beijing remains that engineer in a black down jacket and checkered shirt, not actively seeking to assert its presence, but the leading advantages in technology and industry have begun to show on a global scale.

So, this time, we must speak out for Beijing — welcome medical device companies to develop in Beijing!