Is Pfizers established drugs decline in China the canary in the coalmine?

Big Pharma has been able to count on China to jack up growth for the last several years, but in the second quarter one drugmaker Pfizers Upjohn unit wasnt so fortunate. Is that an ill omen for the rest of multinational pharma? One analyst is posing the question. During the second quarter, Pfizers Upjohn established medicine business now destined to merge with Mylan plummeted 20 Percent in China, mainly because of a volume-based procurement system under testing in 11 major Chinese cities. The program rolled out in March, and Upjohn’s Q2 plunge dragged the New York pharma’s overall China sales growth to a mere 2%, a huge decline from the 20%-plus increases it's posted over the previous three quarters at least, Wolfe Research analyst Tim Anderson noted in a recent report to clients. Is this the “canary in the coalmine?” he asked; after all, almost all companies have an “Upjohn” of their own. Yes and no. It's true the so-called “4+7“ program, which centers on off-patent drugs, is a dual-threat: It offers up a big proportion of public hospitals’ prescriptions to the winning bidder in exchange for price cuts.