China, the world’s largest country by population (20% of the world’s population), is an ideal location to run a clinical trial. With over one billion individuals and growing, China has the potential to recruit an adequate number of participants for clinical trials of any size. The number of clinical trials is also increasing as the population increases.
This can be seen in an analysis of the current clinical trials space for China using the Clinical Trials Database of GlobalData’s Pharma Intelligence Center.
When looking at clinical trials in China in the database, the percentage of trials relative to global clinical trials has increased steadily over the years. Since 2000, it has risen from 1% of the global total to 21% in 2018. This can be seen in Figure 1. By sponsor type, industry-sponsored clinical trials in China are outnumbered by non-industry sponsored trials by about 40%: industry-sponsored clinical trials make up 31%, while non-industry sponsored trials are 69% (Figure 2).
Lastly, non-industry sponsored clinical trials outnumbered industry-sponsored trials every year except 2000 and 2001. In 2000, they were levelled at 50% while in 2001, industry-sponsored trials were more numerous by 4% (Figure 3).
