AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot said Western pharmaceutical companies must move at "Chinese speed" to avoid falling behind more innovative rivals, a neat little summary of how the drug business talks when it’s stripped of the public-health varnish. He said, "We have to make sure we don’t fall behind." He added, "What we are learning ourselves is we have to move much faster. We always talk about Chinese speed in our company, and we want to operate in Chinese speed."
Profit Targets, Public Costs
AstraZeneca said on Monday it was confident of hitting its growth targets for 2030, when it expects to make $80bn in annual sales, up from $59bn last year. The British company, headquartered in Cambridge, reported revenues of £30.7bn in the first half of 2026, a 6% increase on the same period a year earlier at constant exchange rates. The numbers are tidy. The social consequences are not. Soriot, described as the highest-paid FTSE 100 chief executive, said the pipeline of new drugs was "unmatched," and said the company was on course to hit its growth targets in 2030 and beyond despite the surprise failure of Wainua, one of its major heart disease drug prospects, in clinical trials earlier this month.
He said, "We have to accept to fail some of the time. Biology is biology." That line does a lot of work for a company whose business model depends on turning illness into revenue and clinical trial failure into a manageable cost of doing business. The market gets its discipline. Patients get the risk.
The NHS and the Trump Deal
Soriot said AstraZeneca would engage with the UK government under its new leader, Andy Burnham, to seek clarity on a deal with the US that could result in the NHS paying billions of pounds more for medicines. He said it was too early to say whether the change in leadership would affect the deal, which was struck under pressure from Donald Trump, who threatened heavy tariffs on UK drug exports to the US. The arrangement shows how quickly national governments bend when corporate supply chains and tariff threats start dictating policy. The NHS, the one institution meant to stand between people and the market, is left to absorb the bill.
Analysis has suggested the deal could lead to 229,000 excess deaths in England. That figure hangs over the whole arrangement like a warning label no one in power seems eager to read aloud. Soriot said, "We need to understand their priorities and where the priorities are. You have to establish your priorities and then fund them." In practice, the priorities are already visible: trade pressure first, public health second, and profit sitting comfortably at the top.
China Speed, AI Speed, Market Speed
Soriot said Europe and the US needed to watch China’s pharmaceutical industry closely and collaborate to take drugs to global markets. He cited the automotive industry as an example, saying western companies had focused on petrol engines and left the way clear for Chinese companies to dominate electric car sales. He said Chinese pharmaceutical companies were investing heavily in antibody drug conjugates, which deliver chemotherapy agents directly to cancer cells, and cell therapy, in which live cells are injected into the body to help fight diseases.
He also played down the risk to jobs posed by AI, saying it could increase the speed of drug development, particularly in the design of trial protocols. He said AI tools would help improve productivity in the pharma industry, allowing for economic growth rather than fewer people being needed. He said, "This story about AI killing jobs is a bit of a fake story. I can tell you it makes me faster and smarter," referring to his experience with AI tools. Faster for whom, exactly, is the only question that matters here. The answer is written into the revenue figures.
AstraZeneca’s confidence in $80bn in annual sales by 2030, its £30.7bn first-half revenue, and Soriot’s insistence on moving at "Chinese speed" all point in the same direction: a pharmaceutical system organised around competition, expansion and leverage over public institutions. The company wants speed. Governments supply the pressure. Patients are left to live with the consequences.