The Globalization Of China S Health Industry

This book explores the ongoing transition of China’s economy by examining how its healthcare industry is growing and changing. The coronavirus pandemic has reinforced one of the authors' key points: in our complex, fragile, and interconnected societies, the production of health is a vital strategic ‘industry’. The case of China is particularly salient, because of its economic and geopolitical significance, and the scale of the healthcare challenge it has faced. Adopting a multi-level perspective, the authors examine the entrepreneurial role of the Chinese government as it seeks to strengthen the competitiveness of domestic firms. They analyze the strategies employed to improve China’s technology and capacity for innovation, and discuss China’s strategies and policies to ensure knowledge acquisition and creation in the long-term, with particular reference to international scientific collaborations. This book is a must-read for students, researchers, and policymakers interested in the prospects and challenges posed by the growth of the Chinese healthcare industry and its global impact.

This book considers the key sectors of China's health care system after its entrance into the WTO, including the pharmaceutical industry, health insurance services, and hospitals in terms of policies, legal framework and market potential. It offers a critical analysis of the impact of the WTO and globalization on China's health care.

In the post-Cold War, post financial crisis era, health care is an issue of critical political, personal and economic concern. In the US, plans to address a troubled health care model were met by vocal opposition. In the UK and post-communist Europe, attempts to introduce aspects of that model have resulted in controversy and violent protests, while China and Russia have recently backpedalled on marketising reforms. This innovative book provides a timely analysis addressing the many dimensions of radical health care change. Bringing together three major geopolitical regions with strikingly different recent histories, this international cast of contributors, examines reform in US, China and Europe within a single study frame. They look at the processes that have been involved when countries with such diverse starting points try to move towards a globally shared health care framework. An underlying theme running through the chapters is access to care, and how it is shaped by moral economies, by what can be said and known, and by political and economic power. Health Care Reform and Globalisation confronts the interpretations and experiences of patients, professionals, and politicians of health care transformation in practice. It will be of interest to scholars from a range of diverse disciplinary backgrounds, including public health, anthropology, area studies, sociology, politics, social policy, geography and economics.

Argues that developments in biomedicine in China should be at the center of our understanding of biomedicine, not at the periphery

This volume provides a comprehensive review of China's healthcare system and policy reforms in the context of the global economy. Following a value-chain framework, the 16 chapters cover the payers, the providers, and the producers (manufacturers) in China's system. It also provides a detailed analysis of the historical development of China's healthcare system, the current state of its broad reforms, and the uneasy balance between China's market-driven approach and governmental regulation. Most importantly, it devotes considerable attention to the major problems confronting China, including chronic illness, public health, and long-term care and economic security for the elderly. Burns and Liu have assembled the latest research from leading health economists and political scientists, as well as senior public health officials and corporate executives, making this book an essential read for industry professionals, policymakers, researchers, and students studying comparative health systems across the world.

The lack of significant improvement in people’s health status and other mounting health challenges in China raise a puzzling question about the country’s internal transition: why did the reform-induced dynamics produce an economic miracle, but fail to reproduce the success Mao had achieved in the health sector? This book examines the political and policy dynamics of health governance in post-Mao China. It explores the political-institutional roots of the public health and health care challenges and the evolution of the leaders’ policy response in contemporary China. It argues that reform-induced institutional dynamics, when interacting with Maoist health policy structure in an authoritarian setting, have not only contributed to the rising health challenges in contemporary China, but also shaped the patterns and outcomes of China’s health system transition. The study of China’s health governance will further our understanding of the evolving political system in China and the complexities of China’s rise. As the world economy and international security are increasingly vulnerable to major disease outbreaks in China, it also sheds critical light on China’s role in global health governance.

Most of the existing literature on health system reform in China deals with only one part of the reform process (for example, financing reform in rural areas, or the new system of purchasing pharmaceuticals), or consists of empirical case studies from particular cities or regions. This book gives a broad overview of the process of health system reform in China. It draws extensively both on the Western literature in health economics and on the experience of health care reform in a number of other countries, including the US, UK, Holland, and Japan, and compares China''s approach to health care reform with other countries. It also places the process of health system reform in the context of re-orienting China''s economic policy to place greater emphasis on equity and income distribution, and analyzes the interaction of the central and local governments in designing and implementing the reforms. This book will be of interest to policymakers, academics, students of health economics, health policy and health administration, and people who are interested in Chinese social policy. Sample Chapter(s). Chapter 1: Health Policy in China: Introduction and Background (189 KB). Contents: Introduction: Health Policy in China: Introduction and Background; Health Systems and Health Reform: International Models; Main Components of Health Reform: Strengthening China''s Social Insurance System; Providing Primary Care; The Hospital Sector and Hospital Reform; China''s National Drug Policy: A Work in Progress; Health Care and Harmonious Development in China: Health Policy and Inequality; Decentralized Government, Central-Local Fiscal Relations, and Health Reform; China''s Health System in the Future: Health Services in the Future: Social Insurance and Purchasing; China''s Future Health Care System: A Mixed Public-Private Model?. Readership: Policy makers, academics, students of health economics, health policy, and health administration, and people who are interested in Chinese social policy.

This book examines the financing of China’s health system, argues that present arrangements are not adequate and proposes an increased role for commercial health insurance as a way of overcoming the difficulties. Highlighting that China’s present social medical insurance system can only cover basic medical services, with the results that many Chinese people with higher income are going abroad for high-quality medical services and that doctors are not bringing in the salaries and obtaining the social status they expect, the book suggests that commercial health insurance offers a possible solution, in that it can help meet the demand of higher-income groups for better healthcare services while at the same time increasing the income of more competent medical professionals. The book goes on to consider the current state of China’s commercial insurance industry, outlining the various challenges that the industry needs to overcome if it is to fulfil an increased role, challenges such as greater specialization, increased capacity, structural reform, improved regulation and closer integration with China’s medical reform programme.