Beijing may seem like the proverbial center of the universe, but when fighting for market share in China, it may be best to focus on some of those other provinces. Such as Urumqi, which is the capital of Xinjiang province, where everyone speaks Turkic, but is one of the places at the heart of AstraZeneca’s business plan, The Wall Street Journal writes.

In 2002, AstraZeneca decided to pour money into hiring local sales reps to canvass docs and hospitals across China to persuade them to prescribe its meds. While its major competitors focused on China’s big cities, AstraZeneca went after smaller ones others ignored. The strategy has paid off. Its sales in China grew to $423 million last year from $85 million in 2001, propelling it from sixth place to No. 1 in the Chinese market, according to IMS Health, the paper writes.

Moreover, the paper posits that AstraZeneca’s lead could give it leverage to capture much of the expected growth in the Chinese market, which IMS Health predicts will reach $46 billion by 2012, up from $8.4 billion in 2003. Yin Xudong, the head of AstraZeneca’s China operations, tells the Journal that the drugmaker anticipated an “arms race, and we needed to be first.”

In developing its strategy, AstraZeneca hired Emerging Market Economics, a London consulting firm, to create a color-coded map of China showing where incomes were growing fastest, as a way of finding out which patients had money to spend on meds. AstraZeneca also collected data to figure out “which hospital is hot, which doctor is hot,” Yin tells the Journal.

Xinjiang province, which is more than twice the size of Texas, was a standout. In 2002, AstraZeneca had around eight sales reps there. Now, there are 43, and sales have shot to $6.2 million in 2007, up from $1.1 million in 2002. “Everybody is interested in Xinjiang,” says Yin, who was born in China and holds a doctorate in biochemistry from Stanford University and a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard, the Journal writes.

Yin had a list of nearly 700 cities, with data on each ranging from per capita spending on health care to population projections, the paper continues. They narrowed the list to around 200 of the most promising cities. Yin and his team at Boston Consulting developed a computer algorithm to help decide where to put sales reps. The algorithm told them to bulk up significantly in Xinjiang, calling for some 40 people, although he tells the paper he doesn’t rely on algorithms alone.

Yin also tells the Journal that AZ deals harshly with unethical behavior by its employees, including off-label promotion. AZ covers some costs for docs to attend scientific or academic meetings, but they must spend at least 70 percent of each day at the conference (how is that tracked?). In addition, AZ permits small gifts, of around $14 or less, but no more than three times per year per doc, and only on designated holidays, such as the Lunar New Year.