China's pharmaceutical industry offers great opportunities for development, advancing the output to 10 trillion yuan ($1.57 trillion) by 2020 as multinational drug producers suffer the effects of the looming patent cliff as blockbuster drugs come off patent, Economic Information reported Friday.

China's pharmaceutical industry has grown at an annual rate of 16.4 percent in the past decade and will grow at 23.6 percent yearly in this decade, said Shao Ying, former director of the drug evaluation department at the State Food and Drug Administration.

Shao, now a scholar at Peking University, predicted that China will become the third largest market, after the United States and Japan, in the next few years and leap to second by 2020.

The Chinese government has identified pharmaceuticals and biotechnology as one of the seven national "strategic industries" and set out provisions to boost and consolidate the sector, including an investment of 10 billion yuan to support drug innovation.