Rita Fatiguso
BEIJING. From our correspondent
Never before had such a counterattack been seen. Relations between China and foreign multinationals are heating up and the battleground now becomes the price of pharmaceutical products manufactured locally, in joint ventures with non-Chinese groups.
From chemicals to drugs, unfair competition is just a memory, there is no longer just anti-dumping on toluidine imported from Europe hit by heavy duties, up to 36.9 percent, the latest move by Beijing to curb the attack on solar panels, just landed on the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Trade website.
Yesterday's real news is another: in the price survey released by the Chinese government agency that deals with economic planning, the pharmaceutical companies are accused of having applied too high prices to the products on the market and the government commission, which among the others also have the task of regulating prices in China, will send teams of inspectors to check the wholesale prices and production costs of the products under investigation.
The harsh reality is that these sixty Chinese pharmaceutical groups, many of them joint ventures with foreign groups, will be investigated by the National Development and Reform Commission.
Among the foreign groups targeted by the investigations are the Sino-British joint venture of GlaxoSmithKline and the German Boheringer-Ingelheim. Among the Chinese groups, however, there are leading names in the drug market such as Sinopharm and Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine.
For Glaxo, a different issue is also looming, linked to internal investigations into alleged episodes of corruption. One more problem to unravel. [you see: https://www.fedaiisf.it/Start/HDefault.aspx?Newsid=8063 ]
