Table 4

Top 10 recruitment countries/regions for registered studies sponsored by China, global studies and global MRCTs, by number of studies as of December 2018

Rank	Studies sponsored by China		Global studies		Global MRCTs
Rank	Country/region	Number	Country/region	Number	Country/region	Number
1	Mainland China	32 369	USA	128 857	USA	22 563
2	USA	125	Japan	42 247	Germany	19 972
3	Australia	60	Germany	37 886	UK	15 672
4	Germany	35	Mainland China	36 657	Spain	14 853
5	Taiwan, China	30	UK	35 963	France	13 915
6	Spain	28	France	29 649	Italy	13 829
7	Italy	26	Canada	25 348	Canada	13 573
8	France	24	Netherlands	23 682	Belgium	10 691
9	Japan	24	Australia	22 263	Poland	9740
10	UK	21	Spain	21 884	Netherlands	9480
…			…	…	…	…
40	…		…		Mainland China	2422
…	…	…	…	…	…	…

Data note: There were 1932 registered studies sponsored by China with absent recruitment countries/regions data, and the recruitment country/region was assigned to China after manual verification. Another 28 067 registration entries with absent recruitment countries/regions data were excluded from the analysis because the missing recruitment countries/regions could not be determined manually. In addition, 407 registration entries on JapanPrimary Registries Network only specified the continents of recruitment. The number of recruitment continents was used to represent the number of recruitment countries or regions in these entries.
MRCTs, multiregional clinical trials.