Team size: 4 legal counsel 

What are the most significant cases, projects and/or transactions that you and/or your legal team have recently been involved in?

In 2024, the acquisition of 100% of the shares in Sandoz China (including its product lines and intellectual property) was a major strategic move for Aspen Global Incorporated. The project was highly complex, involving multiple parties and aspects such as antitrust filings, due diligence, and the comprehensive operational integration of Aspen China and Sandoz China. Throughout this process, Helen Wang led the legal department in providing critical advice from legal, compliance, and commercial perspectives, ensuring the smooth execution of the project.

Currently, the healthcare industry is in a subdued state due to the impact of policies such as volume-based procurement and the downturn in the capital market. In response to this challenging environment, the company plans to undertake significant strategic adjustments, including acquiring key assets and introducing new product pipelines. To support these initiatives, Helen Wang encouraged the legal department to break away from the traditional confines of ‘contract review and risk control’ by establishing a business development workshop with the company’s business department. this initiative fosters close collaboration with the business department, identifying compliance risks from a commercial standpoint and providing actionable advice, which has been highly appreciated by colleagues in the business department.

moreover, the legal department continues to safeguard the company’s daily operations. for instance, helen wang instructed the legal department to proactively alert management to regulatory trends and associated risks, such as anti-corruption measures in the healthcare industry and secondary pricing negotiations with hospitals.

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

Rapid legal risk mapping and business prioritisation is essential. In times of instability — whether triggered by policy shifts, supply-chain disruption, or regulatory investigations — my immediate focus is to identify which legal and compliance exposures are mission-critical to business continuity. I typically establish a “legal control tower” to map risks across key dimensions, namely regulatory (for example NMPA, MAH, GMP, or pricing-policy changes), commercial (such as contract performance, distributor solvency, or tender eligibility), and corporate (including liquidity, employment, and governance). The goal is to distinguish swiftly between what could stop the business tomorrow and what can be mitigated over time.

Integrating Legal into the core of the crisis response is equally important. I ensure that Legal is embedded within the cross-functional crisis taskforce with Operations, Quality, Finance, and BD. This allows legal risk to be assessed in real time as decisions are made — whether concerning production continuity, distributor substitution, or cost-control measures. The mindset is always how to make an action legally safe and commercially viable, rather than why it cannot be done.

Scenario planning and strategic documentation form the next pillar of my approach. I prepare scenario-based playbooks — for example, if a key MAH partner fails, or if import pricing is reduced by 40%. For each scenario, I define the legal levers: early termination, force majeure, renegotiation, or emergency supply routes. In parallel, I ensure that our documentation trail — including minutes, notices, and board decisions — is watertight. In the pharmaceutical context, evidence of due diligence and good-faith actions is crucial for defending against potential administrative or contractual claims at a later stage.

Preserving regulatory and ethical integrity is also fundamental. During crises, short-term pressure can easily conflict with long-term compliance. I emphasise that regulatory credibility is a business asset. Maintaining transparent communication with the NMPA, customs, or local authorities — even when reporting delays or stock issues — helps to protect the company’s licence to operate. Equally, I ensure that promotional or communication materials remain medically and legally accurate so as to avoid secondary compliance exposure.

Leadership communication and reassurance form another essential element. For senior management and the Group, I translate complex legal risks into concise, business-impact language: what is material, what is manageable, and what is under control. This assists executives in making informed trade-offs under pressure. Externally, I manage the tone and timing of legal communications with partners and regulators to preserve trust, particularly in markets where relationship continuity is critical to recovery.

Finally, learning and building long-term resilience follow once the crisis stabilises. I lead a debrief with business heads to convert lessons into structural safeguards, such as stronger distributor due diligence, tighter compliance SOPs, and contractual clauses that afford greater flexibility during future shocks. Resilience is built not only by reacting effectively, but also by institutionalising the learnings into the next contract, the next process, and the next training cycle.

Based on your experiences in the past year, are there any trends in the legal or business world that you are keeping an eye on that you think other in-house lawyers should be mindful of? 

Regulatory convergence and policy volatility have become increasingly evident over the past year. I have observed accelerating regulatory change in China, particularly in the areas of pharmaceuticals, healthcare data, ESG, and AI governance. What is new is not merely the volume of change, but also its speed and unpredictability: pilot policies are implemented locally and then scaled nationally with short transition periods. For in-house lawyers, this requires a shift from traditional compliance — checking what has already been published — to regulatory forecasting, anticipating direction, and building early-warning mechanisms. Our role increasingly resembles that of a policy interpreter and business enabler, rather than merely a rule enforcer.

Digitalisation and AI governance are transforming not only legal work but also the risk landscape itself, from data localisation to algorithmic accountability. Multinationals face the dual challenge of complying with China’s AI and data laws while aligning with global frameworks such as the EU AI Act. I believe that in-house lawyers must now be able to translate these complex, cross-border requirements into pragmatic internal policies, ensuring that innovation can proceed safely and compliantly.

Finally, I see a clear trend towards legal being evaluated not solely on “risk prevention” but on business partnership and value contribution. Boards and CFOs now expect legal teams to communicate in terms of impact, cost, and enablement — for example, how an optimised contract framework supports EBITDA, or how robust compliance records strengthen market-access credibility. In-house counsel who can quantify their impact and bridge legal considerations with business metrics will lead the next generation of corporate legal teams.

AI has been taken seriously as a potentially revolutionary technological change in the legal world for a number of years now. Has it had a meaningful impact in how your legal team works in this time?

From curiosity to structured adoption, over the past few years we have moved from exploring AI tools informally to embedding them systematically into our legal processes. Initially, my team used AI primarily for document review and bilingual drafting support, particularly for contract comparison, translation alignment, and regulatory tracking. Now, we are applying AI in more structured workflows: generating first drafts of NDAs and distribution addenda, summarising regulatory changes, and even building bilingual risk matrices more quickly. This has significantly reduced routine workload and freed the team to focus on higher-value strategic advisory.

In terms of measurable impact and future direction, AI has already shortened our contract cycle times by 20–30% and improved bilingual drafting consistency across entities. Looking ahead, I see the next wave in integrating AI with compliance analytics, using pattern recognition to detect anomalies in distributor activities or to monitor evolving policy signals from regulators. That is where legal can evolve from reactive to predictive, and where I intend to take my team next.