Viewpoint

11.01.22

In Tibet, Officials’ Pursuit of Zero-COVID Sent Tens of Thousands into Mass ‘Isolation’ Facilities

Robert Barnett
The general attitude in Lhasa since early September has been marked by concern and discontent. Its focus has been primarily on the mass transfer by city officials of thousands of citizens to isolation camps, and on the ways in which officials have...

Viewpoint

04.08.22

Closing the U.S. to Chinese Biotech Would Do Far More Harm Than Good

Scott Moore & Abigail Coplin
Biotechnology intrinsically blurs boundaries between science and commerce, market and state, the global and the national, and even personal privacy and collective interest. Progress depends more heavily in biotech than in other high-tech industries...

Conversation

02.12.21

Will China Be a Global Vaccine Leader?

Deborah Seligsohn, Jenny Lei Ravelo & more
Beijing stands to reap major rewards by becoming the supplier of choice—or necessity—throughout low- and middle-income countries. China has expanded its international aid efforts in recent years and stressed its commitment to “south-south”...

Viewpoint

07.30.20

For Wuhan’s COVID Mourners, Little Has Been Laid to Rest

Tracy Wen Liu
In a conversation on Weibo, Yang, 50, told me about the loss of her 24-year-old daughter, Yuxi, her only child, to COVID-19. She was grieving, of course, but she was also seeking justice for what she viewed as an avoidable death. She showed me a...

Depth of Field

05.15.20

‘A Letter to My Friend under Quarantine in Wuhan’

Ye Ming, Yan Cong & more from Yuanjin Photo
Highlighting Chinese visual storytellers’ coverage of COVID-19 inside China. Some of these storytellers were on the ground documenting the experience of residents and medical workers in Wuhan, the city where the virus first emerged. Other...

Conversation

04.26.20

How Is the Coronavirus Outbreak Affecting China’s Relations with Its Asian Neighbors?

Tanvi Madan, Daniel S. Markey & more
How has China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic—inside and outside of China—affected perceptions of China among countries in Asia? And how might this shape future policy toward China, or the regional policy landscape more broadly?

Viewpoint

04.03.20

‘We’re Hardly Heroic’

Tracy Wen Liu
Dr. Li, a heart specialist at Wuhan No. 4 Hospital, spent the third week of March preparing for the reopening of the hospital’s general clinics, which closed on January 22, when No. 4 became a key facility for treating COVID-19 patients. After...

Conversation

03.28.20

Is U.S.-China Cooperation on COVID-19 Still Possible?

Julian B. Gewirtz, Deborah Seligsohn & more
Over the past two weeks, as the outbreak of the virus known has COVID-19 has accelerated its deadly spread around the world, an already collapsing U.S.-China relationship appears to be entering a period of free fall. This is happening at a moment...
04.30.19

New Analysis: Are Social Enterprises Charities?

Using the example of “mutual aid health communities” in China, contributor Caitlin Schultz digs into the questions surrounding entities known as “social enterprises”—hybrid organizations that do not fit neatly into either for-profit or non-profit...
04.30.19

Business, Charity, or Something Else?

Caitlin E. Schultz
Around the world, the concept of “social enterprise” has blurred the line between doing business and doing good. Social enterprise seeks to combine traditional for-profit business practices with products or services that primarily aim to benefit the...

Viewpoint

12.21.18

A Look Back at China in 2018

Kyle Hutzler
In 2018, the outlook for China regarding its politics, economy, and relationship with the United States darkened considerably. The removal of presidential term limits and Xi Jinping’s interactions with the Trump administration prompted rare...

Viewpoint

11.30.18

Cut out of the Operating Room

Christopher Magoon
In June 2015, doctors told 69-year-old Shuai Shuiqing she had stomach cancer and would need surgery. She left her home in the city of Chongzhou in Sichuan province and traveled 20 miles to visit Chengdu’s Huaxi Hospital, which is ranked second best...

Viewpoint

08.23.18

It’s Too Easy to Wind up in a Chinese Psychiatric Hospital, and Far Too Hard to Get Out

Jerome A. Cohen & Chi Yin
Every day in China, hundreds of people are involuntarily confined in mental health facilities, some through their involvement in criminal cases, many more via the government’s civil commitment processes. Whether, how, and how long to detain the...

Taiwan’s Vice President Talks to TIME about the Global Health Risks Arising from the Island’s Isolation

Nicola Smith
Time
When the World Health Assembly (WHA) convenes in Geneva on Monday, it will do so for the first time in nine years without Taiwan, a self-governed democracy that also boasts some of the highest medical standards in Asia.

China’s Aged and Sick Flock to a Hamlet Known for Longevity

Javier Hernandez
New York Times
Once a largely undisturbed hamlet hidden in the karst mountains of Guangxi Province, Bama has in recent years become a magnet for China’s sick and aged.

Ordinary Citizens Are Hoping to Make a Difference at China’s Biggest Political Meet-Up

Charlie Campbell
Time
China’s “two sessions” kicks off this week, bringing together all of the movers and shakers from the top echelons of government for the nation’s two big annual political shindigs.

Depth of Field

01.17.17

House Calls on the Tibetan Plateau, Children of Divorce, Celebrity Secrets

Yan Cong, Ye Ming & more from Yuanjin Photo
In the final galleries of 2016, the publishing juggernaut Tencent again shows its leadership in the documentary photography space, but iFeng’s choice to publish a personal photo gallery by Zhou Xin is also worth a good look, especially since...

Caixin Media

05.17.16

Government Forces Big Pharma to Swallow a Bitter Pill

China’s latest round of healthcare market controls could be a bitter pill for multinational pharmaceutical companies that now, after years of what some call easy profits, are adapting to a tougher business climate.The National Health and Family...

Depth of Field

04.29.16

April’s Best Chinese Photojournalism

Yan Cong, Ye Ming & more from Yuanjin Photo
Over the past few weeks, the publications Sina, Tencent, Caixin, China Youth Daily, and the publishing duo Sixth Tone/The Paper published photo stories on the intimate, the industrial, the private, and the political. Journalists Yan Cong and Ye Ming...

Scalped: At China's Creaking Hospitals, Illegal Ticket Touts Defy Crackdown

Adam Jourdan
Reuters
Those tickets will get a patient in front of a doctor in two days, compared with a wait that can be up to a fortnight.

Caixin Media

01.26.16

How Serial Killers Terrorized China’s Disorganized Elder Care Industry

The 45-year-old caregiver was calm on the witness stand, but her words were jarring. He Tiandai admitted during her murder trial that she killed a 70-year-old woman she cared for by poisoning her soup with sleeping pills and pesticide, injecting her...

Photo Gallery

12.01.15

Life After Death

Sim Chi Yin
A family mourns the loss of a husband and father, who died after a decade-long fight against silicosis contracted while working in China’s gold mines. He was one of an estimated 6 million workers in China who have some form of pneumoconiosis, the...

China's Obesity Epidemic: Teaching Children to 'Eat a Rainbow'

Lucy Luo
Guardian
The rise in diabetes in China could bankrupt the country’s healthcare system, says a medical expert.

Caixin Media

11.18.15

Government Enlists NGOs to Help Homeless

Drivers roll up car windows as an autumn wind chills a traffic-clogged overpass in western Beijing’s Liuliqiao area. And under the concrete overpass, homeless people are gathering for a chilly night’s rest after wandering city streets.Among the...

P&G Tripped Up by Its Assumptions About Diapers in China

Serena Ng and Laurie Burkitt
Wall Street Journal
Pampers diapers fall behind after aiming too low at the growing middle class.

GSK’s Viiv Arm Agrees China Tie-up to Produce HIV Drugs

Andrew Ward
Financial Times
GlaxoSmithKline signs a deal to manufacture cut-price HIV drugs in China as the UK group rebuilds its presence after a corruption scandal.

Episode 36 – Sim Chi Yin

Sharron Lovell & Sim Chi Yin
Multimedia Week
Sharron Lovell speaks with Sim Chi Yin about crossing the lines between journalism and advocacy. Chi Yin recently published her four year story following a Chinese gold miner suffering with the lung disease silicosis, caused by years of inhaling...

Video

06.10.15

A Miner’s China Dream

Sim Chi Yin
Over the four years I have known him, He Quangui, a gold miner from Shaanxi, has told me many times he wants to travel with me back to Beijing. It’s not just me he wants to visit. He dreams of going to the Chinese leadership’s compound, Zhongnanhai...

Dying to Breathe

Sim Chi Yin
National Geographic
This is the unseen cost of gold mining in China—the world’s top gold producer. In China, silicosis is considered a form of pneumoconiosis, which affects an estimated six million workers who toil in gold, coal, or silver mines or in stone-cutting...

The Chinese Billionaire Zhang Lei Spins Research Into Investment Gold

Alexandra Stevenson
New York Times
Starting 10 years ago with $20 million from Yale’s endowment, Zhang was an early backer of Tencent and JD.com.

Caixin Media

03.30.15

Plan for Next Five Years Must Free Up Disposable Income

The government's 12th Five-Year Plan concludes this year, and work on drafting the 13th will begin soon.Which way will China turn? In its work report to legislators at the National People's Congress meeting in March, the government pledged...

Media

02.05.15

Why Chinese Promote Confining New Mothers for a Month

Rachel Lu
HONG KONG—Giving birth is never easy, but for new Chinese mothers the month following a baby’s arrival is particularly fraught. Immediately after I became pregnant for the first time, I started to hear about zuoyuezi, or “sitting the month.” It’s a...

Caixin Media

01.09.15

Baby Hatch Programs Struggle to Cope With Number of Infants With Birth Defects

Giving birth to her first baby granted Zheng Yuling no happiness, but instead brought pain and sadness. The seriously ill girl died hours after birth, and Zheng's husband, Chen Dafu, was arrested on suspicion he abandoned the newborn.Their baby...

China to Expand Input to Fight HIV: Premier

Xinhua
Xinhua
Noting that China still boasts low HIV rates, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said the government must assume the principle role in combating HIV and would continue to increase input on its prevention and treatment.

China’s Regulations on Sale of Birth By-product in Chaos

Hu Qingyun
Global Times
In a cramped, quiet room, several bloody placentas sit in a machine, drying. Some workers then ground them down and filled capsules with the viscera. This gory scene is not from a horror movie but the day-to-day business of an underground placenta...

China Ramps Up Efforts to Combat Ebola

Christina Larson
Science
Already about 200 medical workers and advisers from China are now stationed in the three West African countries fighting Ebola outbreaks: Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. George Gao, deputy director-general of the Chinese Center for Disease...

China to Allow Foreign Ownership of Hospitals

Fanfan Wang
Wall Street Journal
China will let foreign companies own and operate hospitals in some parts of the country as part of an effort to overhaul its health-care system.

Congratulations! Inoculations!

Economist
The World Health Organization gives China a glowing report for its lowering of infant and maternal mortality rates.

Caixin Media

07.15.14

Silencing a Health Reformer’s Voice

Dr. Liao Xinbo is struggling to square his enormous popularity and thirst for healthcare reform with a recent demotion that, in his words, marked the culmination of his frustrated work life.Liao served as Deputy Director of the Guangdong Province...

As China Gets Fatter, World Bank Calls for Health Care Reform

Mark Magnier
Wall Street Journal
As China has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and grown increasingly wealthy, its people are suffering from many lifestyle diseases endemic to developed countries.

China ‘Baby Hatch’ Inundated With Abandoned, Disabled Children

Connie Young
CNN
In just 11 days, 106 children, all with disabilities or medical conditions, were dropped off at the Jinan Orphanage, according to local state media. That is more than the 85 orphans the city accepted the entire previous year.

China Sees Wave of Violence Against Hospital Staff

John Sudworth
BBC
A nurse left paralysed in Nanjing, a doctor with his throat slashed in Hebei and another beaten to death with a pipe in Heilongjiang are not isolated cases, but the latest in a growing crisis of violence at the heart of China's healthcare...

Harvard-Linked Hospital Eyes Expansion With China Billionaire

John Lauerman And Michael McDonald
Bloomberg
Brigham and Women’s Hospital is considering a proposal from real estate billionaire Hui Ka Yan to become the first Harvard-University affiliated hospital to expand to China.

Infographics

10.01.13

Markups, Kickbacks, and Sellouts: What’s Wrong with China’s Medical System

from Sohu
As the United States haltingly moves to implement the Affordable Care Act, China claims it has already achieved universal rural health care, with more than 800 million rural residents enrolled in a medical plan. Yet according to recent reports the...

Chinese Court Rules Against J&J in Monopoly Suit

Joe McDonald
Associated Press
Health care giant Johnson & Johnson has become the latest global company accused of misconduct in China after a court ordered it to pay damages to a distributor in a lawsuit brought under an anti-monopoly law.

Sinica Podcast

06.29.13

The Fate of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
Bill Bishop swears by part of it. Jeremy Goldkorn swears regularly at it. Chances are you’ve got strong opinions on Traditional Chinese Medicine (T.C.M.) yourself, which is why we’re delighted to be joined by James Palmer this week, author of The...

Sinica Podcast

04.26.13

Healthcare in China

Kaiser Kuo, Jeremy Goldkorn & more from Sinica Podcast
The state of healthcare in China is in many ways better than it was in the era of the barefoot doctors, with average life expectancy in the country now trailing the United States by only three years and morbidity rates far lower too. But while even...

Caixin Media

12.28.12

Desperate Cash Infusions Driving Blood Trade

The tumor was growing, and the family of cancer patient Xia Jianqing was growing desperate.Doctors at a military hospital in Beijing had warned Xia’s family that he would die without the blood needed for a lifesaving operation. But the hospital had...

Media

12.01.12

Chinese AIDS Activist Endures “Degradation” in New York, Determined to Finish What She Started

Chinese people translate “New Yorker” into “New York Ke” to designate people living in New York City, including Chinese immigrants. But in Chinese, “ke” means “visitor” or “guest.” It has been a sad word in Chinese literature and poems for thousands...

Violence Against Doctors on the Rise

Unattributed
Economist
AFTER a growing number of attacks on medical staff in China, doctors and nurses are finding hospitals increasingly unsafe. According to figures from the Ministry of Health, more than 17,000 “incidents” aimed at hospitals and their staff occurred in...

Reports

01.01.11

Equity and Public Governance in Health System Reform: Challenges and Opportunities for China

Hana Brixi, Yan Mu, Beatrice Targa and David Hipgrave
Sara Segal-Williams
World Bank
Achieving the objective of China's current health system reform, namely equitable improvements in health outcomes, will be difficult not least because of the continuously growing income disparities in the country. The analysis in this paper...

Books

04.01.10

One Country, Two Societies

Martin K. Whyte
This timely and important collection of original essays analyzes China’s foremost social cleavage: the rural-urban gap. It is now clear that the Chinese communist revolution, though professing dedication to an egalitarian society, in practice created a rural order akin to serfdom, in which 80 percent of the population was effectively bound to the land. China is still struggling with that legacy. The reforms of 1978 changed basic aspects of economic and social life in China’s villages and cities and altered the nature of the rural-urban relationship. But some important institutions and practices have changed only marginally or not at all, and China is still sharply divided into rural and urban castes with different rights and opportunities in life, resulting in growing social tensions. The contributors, many of whom conducted extensive fieldwork, examine the historical background of rural-urban relations; the size and trend in the income gap between rural and urban residents in recent years; aspects of inequality apart from income (access to education and medical care, the digital divide, housing quality and location); experiences of discrimination, particularly among urban migrants; and conceptual and policy debates in China regarding the status and treatment of rural residents and urban migrants.  —Harvard University Press

Reports

03.11.09

Epilepsy Management at Primary Health Level in Rural China

Kennett Werner
World Health Organization
Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders, affecting about 50 million people in the world, 85 percent of whom live in resource-poor countries. Epilepsy imposes an enormous physical, psychological, social and economic burden on...

Reports

12.01.08

The Macroeconomic Impact of Healthcare Financing Alternatives: Reform Options for Hong Kong SAR

Dennis Botman and Nathan Porter
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
With much healthcare publicly funded, Hong Kong's rapidly aging population will significantly raise fiscal pressure over coming decades. The authors ask what the implications are of meeting these costs by public funding, or private funding...

Reports

05.01.08

WHO-China Country Cooperation Strategy, 2008-2013

Kennett Werner
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization and the Government of the People’s Republic of China have been working together to improve the health of people throughout China for many decades. The first Country Cooperation Strategy (CCS) in China covered the period...

Reports

03.01.08

Advancing Food Safety in China

Kennett Werner
United Nations
Over the past year, intense media attention has focused on food safety in the People’s Republic of China. Since the headlines broke, the government of China has been quick to respond, both highlighting the work it was already doing and taking many...

Reports

01.01.08

External Evaluation 2003–2007 - Safety and Effectiveness of Contraception in China

Barbara L.K. Pillsbury and William Winfrey
Luo Xiaoyuan
World Health Organization
HRP has a long history of successful collaboration in China. WHO is widely respected in that country, and HRP benefits from its prestige. Since 1979, HRP has helped establish and strengthen a network of research institutes and provided support to...

Reports

01.01.06

Turning the Tide: Injury and Violence Prevention in China

Kennett Werner
World Health Organization
Like most countries around the world, productivity (including economic and all other development indicators) in China is very strongly linked to the health of its people. The ability to achieve the Government of China’s overall goal of “xiaokang,”...