In Japan, fears of China’s antibiotics dominance spur calls for self-sufficiency

Despite efforts over the last three years to increase domestic production of a range of commonly used medicines in Japan, the domestic medical sector still relies heavily on imports from China and restricting or halting imports would cause “huge trouble”, according to the experts.

“Japan still gets most of its antibiotics from China and while we know that Beijing is limiting exports of rare earth minerals, we hope that will not expand to medical products,” said Kazuhiro Tateda, president of the Japan Association of Infectious Diseases and a member of the panel set up to advise the Japanese government at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020.

“We depend on China for basic ingredients for drugs and, therefore, Beijing could exert a lot of pressure on Japan,” he told This Week in Asia, citing a comparable situation in 2019.

Before 2019, Japanese drug manufacturers had been actively reducing domestic production of many commonly used antibiotics – such as penicillins and streptomycins – as well as active pharmaceutical ingredients, due to poor profit margins. Trade statistics showed China was Japan’s largest source of such medicines.

However, China later introduced stricter environmental regulations and closed a major factory that produced the components of the drug cefazolin, an essential antibiotic for preventing surgical infections.