In the news: The CFDA faces a brain drain, Tencent considers buying 'Clash of Clans' maker Supercell and the government pledges manufacturing support

Staff at China's food & drug regulator move on to better pay

Officials at the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) are reportedly being lured to the private sector by higher salaries and greater work freedom: A former CFDA section chief spoke to Reuters of a “brain drain” where senior staff eventually move on to drug companies that provide more than Rmb600,000 ($92,000) a year, in contrast to being paid Rmb120,000 at the regulator. Areas including drug supervision and front-line enforcement in particular were reportedly hard hit. Those with regulatory experience are increasingly in demand at multinational pharmaceutical companies, local drugmakers, consultancies and investment firms. The CFDA has been dealing with a backlog in drug registrations—the slow approval process for which China is already notorious—for quite some time and has been making efforts to keep up with the industry, such as by hiring more staff and benchmarking standards of mature jurisdictions, according to Eli Lilly China's general counsel. The drain isn't unique to the drug industry. Many PRC court judges move into private practice, and a number of leading antitrust partners at law firms in China are ex-MOFCOM [Ministry of Commerce], for instance.

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