1. Foreign pharmaceutical companies
We are often familiar with the big pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer, Roche, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Merck, Merck Sharp & Dohme, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, as well as some not so familiar: Bristol-Myers Squibb, Genentech, and even the manufacturers of pharmaceutical equipment and materials: GE, Biddy, and so on. They do hold the tip of the pyramid in the world's pharmaceutical sector, grabbing excess earnings, but it's important to note: they are foreign companies, coming to China to sell products, not to offer high-paying jobs.
European and American pharmaceutical companies rarely set up R&D centers in China, and if they do, they rarely have R&D projects.
So you will see that these companies may have some factories in China with the aim of taking advantage of the cheap labor on the mainland, with reference to Foxconn, so the pay will not be too high.
Most of the positions are still pharmaceutical representatives, or sales in the pharmaceutical world. Pharmaceutical representatives are indeed high-paying positions, the problem is that you don't need so much wow, a region with a few representatives to run the business can be, more money to be used for marketing, academic promotion, lobbying hospitals to prescribe drugs.
2. Domestic pharmaceutical companies
Domestic pharmaceutical companies, marketing costs are often higher than the cost of research and development of a large, for example, a white medicine, a hall, the lack of incentive to develop new drugs, no hard products, their own Chinese medicine and the U.S. FDA's review of the possibility of not going to the international seize profits, can only huddle at home, relying on proprietary medicines to maintain life.
So now the country is advocating new drug research and development, and several innovative drug companies, led by Hengrui, Xinda, Baiji and Zhengda, are trying to push monoclonal antibody products to market.
Only if pharmaceutical companies keep making new drugs, developing themselves, and making the market bigger, can they build enough GMP factories and R&D centers, and provide enough engineers and scientists positions, there will be a way out for biology majors.
3. CMO/CDMO industry
Contract Manufacturing Organization (CMO/CDMO), is one of the most Apple - Foxconn model like approach. In order to reduce the cost of R&D and investment in fixed assets, innovative pharmaceutical companies will outsource the production of clinical drugs, and the companies that undertake this business are called CMOs. even if the domestic can't eat too much of the meat of biologics, but through CMOs, there is always a bit of soup, and a large amount of investment in plants will bring a large number of engineers jobs. Therefore, in recent years, the domestic CMO industry has absorbed a large number of students specializing in biology.