In China, Baijiu and HPV Vaccines Have Something in Common

At first blush, HPV vaccines and Chinese rice wine don’t have much in common. For a start, shares in both have been on a tear. Kweichow Moutai is up 65 percent over the past 12 months, while Zhifei Biological, Merck & Co.’s exclusive sales agent in China, has risen 135 percent. The China Food and Drug Administration has accelerated approvals for new vaccines: While Merck’s Gardasil, which protects against four strains of human papilloma virus, took 1,421 days to get the nod, Gardasil 9, which protects against nine types of HPV, got the regulatory stamp from Beijing in just eight days.