Medicine marketing with evidence open to examination
The campaign against corruption in Chinese medicine did not end medical education. It showed how much of what the industry called academic promotion was buying access, and it gives companies a reason to fund teaching that doctors would attend without the meal.
Sales of Tanqiao's first innovative medicine, 2025
RMB 860 million
Its first year on China's national reimbursement drug list
Hospitals stocking the antibody, June 2026
1,140
Up from 110 specialist centres at the October 2023 launch
Twelve-month persistence among patients in the support programme
63%
23,400 patients enrolled; an indication, not a controlled result
A Chinese medicine earns its place with doctors and patients through evidence it can show in public, so I spend marketing money only where it would survive being disclosed.
I am the chief marketing officer of Tanqiao Pharmaceutical Company Limited, a fictional Hangzhou manufacturer listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange since 2010. For most of its history Tanqiao sold generic injectables and tablets to Chinese hospitals. Volume-based procurement cut the prices of our largest molecules by more than half from 2019, and revenue fell from RMB 7.42 billion to RMB 5.06 billion in three years. In August 2023 we received approval for our first innovative medicine, an IL-17A antibody for moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis. It earned RMB 860 million in 2025, its first year on China's national reimbursement drug list, and company revenue recovered to RMB 6.14 billion.
I have sold medicines in China from almost every position: as a hospital representative in Hangzhou in 1999, as a brand manager for herbal remedies sold over pharmacy counters, as a product manager and then marketing director at a European group's China subsidiary, and as the executive who built an online pharmacy's prescription refill service in Shanghai. Each role showed me a different way in which promotion can drift away from what a doctor or a patient actually needs to know.
My work at Tanqiao has been to launch a specialist medicine in a market whose rules changed while we prepared. Reimbursement now arrives through a negotiation that fixes the price for years. The campaign against corruption in medicine that intensified in 2023 removed the hospitality on which much of the industry's promotion depended. I believe both changes were overdue. My job is to make sure that what replaces the old model is education doctors would choose, support patients would trust, and claims we could defend before a regulator, a professor of dermatology or a patient's family.
A launch paced to the reimbursement negotiation
We launched in 110 grade-A tertiary dermatology centres rather than 600 hospitals, and hired most of our specialist field force only after the negotiation concluded. We gave up about RMB 150 million of self-pay sales in 2024; by June 2026 the antibody was stocked by 1,140 hospitals.
Sponsored department meetings ended, not paused
In July 2023 I closed marketing's programme of 3,800 sponsored department meetings a year and moved scientific exchange to medical affairs. Promotional and educational spending fell from RMB 640 million in 2022 to RMB 260 million in 2025.
Patient support without a marketing database
A third-party nurse service, with separate consent for health data, had supported 23,400 patients by June 2026. Twelve-month persistence among enrolled patients was 63 per cent, and no representative can see who is enrolled.
A superiority chart withdrawn before it reached doctors
Ahead of our second indication in 2025, I withdrew 38,000 detail aids built on a cross-trial comparison, wrote off RMB 6.8 million and accepted a seven-week delay to the psoriasis campaign.
Current focus
I am preparing the evidence and access plan for our ankylosing spondylitis indication, reimbursed since January 2026, which brings rheumatologists to a medicine that dermatologists already know. I am also working with medical affairs on an ethics-approved patient registry, so that long-term evidence on our antibody is gathered by researchers rather than by marketing.
Conversations I welcome
I am not seeking to leave Tanqiao. I would consider one independent directorship at a listed company in healthcare services, consumer health or medical devices that has no commercial relationship with Tanqiao, joining its remuneration and appraisal committee. I can give about twenty-six days a year, subject to my board's consent. I accept a few invitations to speak about compliant medical education and patient support.
Beyond the page
The record behind the perspective.
Formation
Bachelor of Science in PharmacyLanting College of Pharmacy · 1999
Executive MBA (part-time)Yanlan School of Management · 2011
Jing asked me to approve a smaller launch than our sales plan, in the year the whole company was waiting for its first innovative medicine to prove itself. She brought the numbers for both plans and told me exactly what hers would cost. It cost what she said, and it was the right decision.
Gao ShiwenFictional chief executive, Tanqiao Pharmaceutical Company LimitedThe full record ↗
Contact
I am not seeking to leave Tanqiao. I would consider one independent directorship at a listed company in healthcare services, consumer health or medical devices that has no commercial relationship with Tanqiao, joining its remuneration and appraisal committee. I can give about twenty-six days a year, subject to my board's consent. I accept a few invitations to speak about compliant medical education and patient support.
