China’s market for medicines will be the world’s largest. The country’s hundreds of millions of patients remain largely untreated. From 1990 to 1999, the Chinese pharmaceutical market grew 20% annually, and since then, at 10% annually. The U.S. State Department estimates the 2001 market at US$27.2 billion, as derived from Chinese Customs statistics.

As large as the market numbers currently are, the market is still vastly underserved due to the weak domestic industry and the inability of foreign manufacturers to adequately penetrate. This enormous market, therefore, remains “up for grabs.” To illustrate, the U.S. population is one-fifth the size of China’s, yet the ratio of total U.S. versus Chinese morphine usage is a staggering 148-to-1.

U.S. per capita usage of a product as generic and as accessible as morphine, therefore, is approximately 770 times greater than that of China. The scope and scale of unmet demand is clear.