RPT — BREAKINGVIEWS — China biotech's ingenuity extends to dealmaking

(The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.) By Katrina Hamlin HONG KONG, Oct 16 (Reuters Breakingviews) — Long gone are the days when Big Pharma scoffed at the reliability of China's clinical trials. The world's biggest drugmakers are increasingly looking to biotech researchers in the People's Republic to shore up their pipelines by snapping up the rights to develop and commercialise promising discoveries abroad. Now companies like $44 billion Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals are also learning to squeeze more value from those deals. China-based drugmakers have struck agreements worth just over $139 billion year-to-date to outlicense innovations, treating everything from cancer to obesity, to global giants including AstraZeneca, GSK and Novo Nordisk, per data provider PharmCube. That means they have already beaten last year’s record for the full year. The arrangement is mutually beneficial because Chinese champions lack the experience and brand power to tap more profitable overseas markets. Critically, Chinese sellers are becoming cannier dealmakers too. The average agreement this year is worth nearly $700 million, more than 10 times the 201