China’s Public Health Sector in Transition: Assessing Market Reform Impacts

Many studies have been done to evaluate China’s transitional economy and its impacts on the public health sector. It is a widely accepted proposition that the market reform initiated in the late 1980s significantly changed the public health sector. While some scholars argue that the Chinese people’s overall health status has improved compared to that of the pre-reform era, others identify declining health expenditures and widening regional gaps, indicating quite a dim health situation. In this thesis, I argue that market reforms have not improved the people’s access to health services. In the reform era, the overall civil health status had been declining due to insufficient public and governmental lack of financial support for the public health sector. The collapse of the Rural Cooperative Health System (RCHS) reduced rural residents’ access to healthcare and thus greatly diminished their health benefits. Similarly, the downsizing work unit in urban areas also reduced urban residents’ social welfare, including healthcare benefits. I assessed market reform impacts on China’s health sector. The newly-established market mechanisms and empirical consequences of market reforms, from the perspective of both inside and outside of the public health sector, related to the public health sector are thus evaluated.