It took American biotech company Moderna just over three months to start the construction of its first pharmaceutical plant in China following an investment agreement with Shanghai.
The “Moderna speed,” even faster than that of Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory, is a reflection on how the China is pushing its business and economic importance to the forefont as its seek to open up further to the international community.
On July 5, Moderna signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatisation and the Minhang district government.
As one of the world’s leading mRNA vaccine developers, Moderna focuses on cancer immunotherapy, including mRNA-based medicine R&D and virus prevention technologies.
The pharmaceutical company then secured land for the China R&D and production headquarters project in Shanghai and obtained approval for the pile foundation work of the facility in October.
With an estimated investment of 3.6 billion yuan (about 507 million U.S. dollars), the project is by far the largest foreign investment in China’s biomedical field. It covers an area of about 18 hectares in the Shanghai Xinzhuang Industry Park in Minhang District.
To facilitate the investment, Minhang has set up a special work team serving 24 hours a day to address issues with the investment. The team handled 45 requests from the US within two months, responding to them in as little as 30 minutes.
The city, district and industrial park all have a special work team, according to Tong Lingling, deputy general manager of Xinzhuang Industrial Zone Economic and Technological Development Co., Ltd.
“The teams at the three levels worked in coordination with each other and helped enterprises speed up the approval process,” Tong said.
At a recent plenary session of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, the optimisation of the business environment represented by “Moderna speed” has received widespread attention.
From January to October this year, Shanghai’s actual use of foreign investment has seen a positive growth year on year, reaching 20.77 billion U.S. dollars, official data showed.
