The same day in May that President Donald Trump flew to Beijing for the first state visit to China of his second term, Bristol Myers Squibb inked a deal worth $15.2bn with Jiangsu Hengrui Pharma, China’s largest pharmaceutical company by market capitalisation. The deal – one in a series of recent multi-billion-dollar licensing agreements by Big Pharma with Chinese drugmakers – embraced early-stage Chinese drug innovation as solution to its pending patent cliff and navigated around Washington’s hard-edged, bipartisan China consensus. The timing of the summit and the blockbuster strategic partnership were coincidental. ... (full story)