China serves not only as a rewarding market for multinational companies, but also increasingly as a reliable and vital production base and innovation hub amid the fast-evolving global economic landscape, a senior executive from Merck, one of the world's leading research-intensive biopharmaceutical companies, told China Daily.

"Speed does matter when talking about global supply chains these days," said Rogier Janssens, president of Merck China. "You see what's happening in the world today, not everything is predictable, so we need to be agile when we go forward."

China's integrated advantages — manufacturing depth, innovation capacity, infrastructure and market scale — have helped support global businesses like Merck in enhancing production and supply resilience, according to Janssens.

"We look at China not just as a market; we see China as a production base and, in particular, a base for innovation," said Janssens while speaking to China Daily during the China Development Forum 2026 in Beijing.

China's innovation ranking has broken into the global top 10 for the first time, according to the Global Innovation Index 2025 released by the World Intellectual Property Organization last September.

"We need Chinese talent to drive innovation, enhance supply chain efficiency, optimize production systems and find market opportunities," Janssens added.

In the medical field, Merck's partnership efforts with local firms are currently concentrated on fertility, oncology and rare diseases, according to Janssens.

Meanwhile, in its push to integrate with the digital environment, Janssens noted that Merck is working with Tencent to manage healthcare data and is collaborating with JD to enhance product availability and delivery speed for patients.

Dilma Rousseff, president of the New Development Bank, said at a symposium during the forum that China serves as a core engine for global stability, growth, trade and technological transformation — a role rooted in a structural shift from scale-driven growth to one powered by productivity, innovation, sustainability and resilience.

"We at Merck are helped by stability," Janssens said, noting that this year's annual growth target is a "realistic" goal supported by policies focused on resilience and innovation.

China is targeting an economic growth of 4.5 percent to 5 percent this year and will strive for better in practice, according to a Government Work Report released earlier this month.

Meanwhile, China's continuous commitment to opening-up in the Government Work Report also provides multinational companies with a predictable business environment to drive their long-term strategy forward, Janssens said.

"China has already moved to the 2.0 version of its opening-up policy, as it's not just about enabling multinational companies to access the Chinese market, it's about empowering them to collaborate in innovation," he added.

During the forum, Vice-Minister of Commerce Yan Dong said that China in recent years has become a testing ground, application field and profit center for global innovation, and that the country will support international joint research and application, and promote the construction of an open innovation ecosystem.