Large-scale central government funding is cited as the reason China has pulled ahead in antibody-drug conjugates (ADC) and ribonucleic acid (RNA) therapeutics. In South Korea, by contrast, companies struggle to secure money for early-stage clinical trials and receive no government backing, prompting warnings that the biotech technology gap between the two countries could widen further.
China's government launched a national venture capital guidance fund last December, according to pharmaceutical and biotech industry sources on the 13th. The central government is contributing 100 billion yuan (about 20 trillion won) and plans to draw in private capital through regional funds and other channels to expand the total to as much as 1 trillion yuan (about 200 trillion won). The fund has a 20-year life, split between 10 years of investment and 10 years of recovery. It is designed as "patient capital" that supplies long-term money to early-stage innovators that need time for technology development and commercialization rather than short-term returns. Biotech is among the priority investment areas, alongside semiconductors, quantum technology and aerospace. While it is not a biotech-only fund, the government has explicitly named biotech as one of the advanced industries receiving long-term state funding.
Financing conditions for Korean biotech companies, by contrast, are deteriorating. Venture investment in the bio and medical sector reached 1.5041 trillion won in the first half of this year, up 53.6% from a year earlier, but the money is concentrating in pre-IPO deals for companies preparing to list. Analysts attribute the shift to the spread of stability-oriented investment practices over high-risk, high-return bets. As a result, there are concerns that drug programs could stall at the candidate compound stage for lack of funding to run early clinical trials.
The government also identified the funding gap that emerges after preclinical work as a problem and pushed a separate support program, but the effort ultimately fell through. The Ministry of Health and Welfare drew up a new program for 2027 that would have extended support beyond candidate discovery and preclinical work to early clinical stages such as Phase 1 trials, and requested a budget for it. The program was excluded during the government's budget drafting process. "If financing conditions and policy support do not improve so that companies can carry programs beyond candidate discovery into early clinical trials, the gap with China could widen further," an industry official said.
