UPDATE 1-INTERVIEW-Bayer says to expand China R&D centre

* Sees 300 Beijing lab scientists in few yrs vs 130-140 now

* Sees China as biggest market soon, surpassing U.S., Japan (Add details)

By Tan Ee Lyn and Donny Kwok

HONG KONG, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Germany's Bayer AG said on Thursday it will expand its drug research and development centre in China, at a time when major pharmaceutical companies are cutting R&D costs.

Chris Lee, managing director for Bayer HealthCare China, said there were between 130 to 140 scientists working for Bayer's laboratory in Beijing now.

"We expect to increase that to 300 in the next few years," he told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a healthcare conference in the city.

"China will be the centre of our focus in terms of investment. We announced the plan to add 1,000 people this year, when we are cutting people outside of China," he added.

Bayer's R&D centre in Beijing is one of the company's four worldwide - two in Germany, and one in the United States.

Lee said China would soon be Bayer's biggest market surpassing the United States and Japan, which are now in first and second place.

"For the past several years, China was the biggest contributing (market) in terms of growth," he said.

"For our company, the U.S. is the biggest single pharmaceutical market right now, followed by Japan and China but eventually we all believe that China will be biggest contributor ... in the foreseeable future," he said.

FOCUS ON CHINA-PREVALENT DISEASES

Its R&D centre in Beijing would pay special attention to drugs for diabetes, hypertension, and liver and gastric cancers, diseases which have high prevalence in China, Lee said.

Eighty-three percent of all deaths in China are due to chronic and lifestyle-related diseases, such as heart disease and stroke, hypertension, cancer and respiratory diseases.

An estimated 100 million Chinese are obese and 92 million are diabetic. An estimated 177 million have hypertension but only 40 percent are aware of their condition.

Only 28 percent of people who need anti-hypertensive drugs are taking them.

Pfizer jolted the industry early in February when the world's largest drug maker said it would cut its 2012 R&D spending by as much as $2 billion from a planned $8.0 billion to $8.5 billion, including the shuttering of Sandwich. (Reporting by Donny Kwok and Tan Ee Lyn; Editing by Hans Peters)