Much has been made of the advantages of doing business in China in recent years. Unlike western markets, it is far less mature – the pharma sector is growing at double-digit rates, for example. In fact, it is already the world’s second largest pharmaceutical market, and the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics predicts the annual spend may reach $185 billion by 2018 in its report, ‘Global Outlook for Medicines through 2018’, published in November 2014.