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Government Planning and Policy for the Health Industry

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The Globalization of China’s Health Industry

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Abstract

Health-related sectors have become increasingly strategic for the structural change that the Chinese government is pursuing. After a brief sketch of the institutional setting, the chapter first illustrates the main health policies, that is the major reforms that China has undertaken with respect to the provision of healthcare and to the financing of healthcare services. Then, the analysis summarises main policies for the health industry, that is the strategic guidelines and the specific interventions targeting health-related manufacturing sectors, with specific reference to the biotechnology industry, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and the pharmaceutical sector. The chapter ends with a zoom on the latter, with a specific focus on the restructuring process which has characterised the industry in the last decades by means of mergers and acquisitions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The indicators are as follows: (1) for the health level: life expectancy at birth, infant mortality rate, under-5 mortality rate, maternal mortality rate and percentage of people meeting the national physical fitness standards; (2) for a healthy life: level of health literacy in the population and number of people doing physical exercise; (3) for health services and security: premature mortality from main non-communicable diseases, number of registered doctors and nurses per 1000 inhabitants and percentage of out-of-pocket expenditure in total health expenditure; (4) for healthy environment: percentage of days with good air quality in cities at the prefecture level or above and percentage of surface water at or above level III; (5) for the health industry: the total size of the sector (Fu et al. 2018).

  2. 2.

    http://english.gov.cn/state_council/2014/09/03/content_281474985533579.htm.

  3. 3.

    www.pharmaceutical-technology.com.

  4. 4.

    www.astrazeneca.com.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Management, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy

    Marco R. Di Tommaso & Lauretta Rubini

  2. Department of Law, University of Macerata, Macerata, Italy

    Francesca Spigarelli

  3. Department of Economics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy

    Elisa Barbieri

Authors
  1. Marco R. Di Tommaso
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  2. Francesca Spigarelli
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  3. Elisa Barbieri
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  4. Lauretta Rubini
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Correspondence to Marco R. Di Tommaso .

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Di Tommaso, M.R., Spigarelli, F., Barbieri, E., Rubini, L. (2020). Government Planning and Policy for the Health Industry. In: The Globalization of China’s Health Industry. Palgrave Studies of Internationalization in Emerging Markets. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46671-8_3

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