Updates with context about Novo's China competition

BEIJING, Jan 30 (Reuters) - The longtime head of Novo Nordisk's NOVOb.CO China business will leave the company, the Danish drugmaker said on Friday, as it competes against Eli Lilly LLY.N and a growing number of local drugmakers in the world's second largest pharmaceutical market.

Christine Zhou, a senior vice president who has led the firm's operations in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and mainland China since 2018, will leave at the end of March, Novo said in a statement on its official WeChat account.

Zhou was in charge for rollouts of both its blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic, approved in China in 2021, and later the obesity drug Wegovy. Novo has since faced off against emerging rivals in diabetes and obesity, including drugs from Lilly and Chinese drugmaker Innovent Biologics 1801.HK.

Earlier on Friday, another drugmaker, China's Sciwind Biosciences, said its own type 2 diabetes treatment was also approved in the country, another potential challenge to Novo's share of the major market, and this year a local patent for the active ingredient in Wegovy and Ozempic is also set to expire.

(Reporting by Ethan Wang and Ryan Woo in Beijing, and Andrew Silver in Shanghai; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Tomasz Janowski)

((Ethan.Wang@thomsonreuters.com;))