Abstract
Perhaps in his revolutionary life Mao Zedong never considered the notion of public goods for health. However, from the above quotation it is obvious that he realized that public health care services should be accessible to all citizens, rich and poor. Under his cradle-to-grave government-subsidized health care system, the government bore responsibility to provide basic health services, allowing Chinese citizens to enjoy various types of basic health care. As a socialist country, China provided its citizens with the means to meet their essential social needs, ranging from work to education to health care, until after the launch of economic reforms and the open door policy in the late 1970s. During Mao’s planned economy period, China’s health policies emphasized wide entitlement and access to medical care. The government played a dominant role in providing all citizens with a comprehensive medical system. At that time, more than 90 percent of China’s population was covered by a comprehensive government-subsidized health care system.3
Medical education should be reformed… Medical schools do not have to admit only senior middle-school graduates; it is quite proper to take in third-year children from junior schools. The main point is to raise their standard during practice. The physicians trained this way may not be very competent, but far better than fake doctors and witch doctors. Furthermore, villages can afford them.
—Mao Zedong, 19651
Realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all is essential to reduce vulnerability to HIV/AIDS. Respect for the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS drives an effective response.
—United Nations General Assembly, 20012
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Keywords
- Global Health
- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
- Basic Health Care
- Global Public Good
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Notes
Quotation in Jerome Chen, ed., Mao Papers: Anthology and Bibliography (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 100.
Betty Ho and Thomas Tsai, “The Chairman and the Coronavirus: Globalisation and China’s Healthcare System,” Harvard International Review 25, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 28–31.
In 1969, a Rural Cooperative Medical System was initiated in villages in China. As a result of this medical system, there was a huge demand for medical practitioners but not enough supply. In order to solve this problem, “production teams” in the villages could recommend peasants’ children to receive short-term medical training courses at provincial medical schools. After the training, they were sent back to the villages as medical practitioners and were able to provide some basic medical services. Peasants called them “barefoot doctors.” In 1974, there were roughly 1 million “barefoot doctors” in China. Shijie zhishi [World Affairs], September 1, 2005, 29; and David Blumenthal and William Hsiao, “Privatization and its Discontents-The Evolving Chinese Health Care System,” The New England Journal of Medicine 353, no. 11 (September 15, 2005): 1165–70.
Liu Yuanli, “China’s Public Healthcare System: Facing the Challenges,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization 82, no. 7 (July 2004): 532–38.
World Health Organization, The World Health Report 2000—Health Systems: Improving Performance (Geneva: WHO, 2000), http://www.who.int/whr/2000/en/ (accessed February 25, 2010).
See Inge Kaul, Isabelle Grunberg, and Marc A. Stern, eds., Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Franklyn Lisk and Desmond Cohen, “Regional Responses to HIV/AIDS: A Global Public Goods Approach,” in AIDS and Governance, ed. Nana K Poku, Alan Whiteside, and Bjorg Sandkjaer (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007), 237.
For example, Peter Vale, a professor at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, criticizes that the international structure favors the United States’ interests and the existing global governance frameworks ignore the fundamental conflicts between the world’s privileged and marginalized people. See Peter Vale, “Engaging the World’s Marginalized and Promoting Global Change: Challenges for the United Nations at Fifty,” Harvard International Law Journal 36, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 283–94.
Ann Mette Kjaer, Governance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), 126–29.
Toni Erskine, “Making Sense of ’Responsibility’ in International Relations: Key Questions and Concepts,” in Can Institutions Have Responsibilities? Collective Moral Agency and International Relations, ed. Toni Erskine (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 1–18
Christian Barry, “Global Justice: Aims, Arrangements, and Responsibilities,” in Can Institutions Have Responsibilities? Collective Moral Agency and International Relations, ed. Toni Erskine (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 218–37.
See David Miller, “Distributing Responsibilities,” Journal of Political Philosophy 9, no. 4 (2001): 453–71.
Christopher Hill, The Changing Politics of Foreign Policy (Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
Robert Jackson The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 175–78.
Todd Sandier, Global Collective Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 108.
Franklyn Lisk and Desmond Cohen, “Regional Responses to HIV/ AIDS: A Global Public Goods Approach,” in AIDS and Governance, ed. Nana K. Poku, Alan Whiteside, and Bjorg Sandkjaer (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007), 238.
For example, David P. Fidler, SARS, Governance and the Globalisation of Disease (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
Wolfgang Hein, Sonja Bartsch, and Lars Kohlmorgen, Global Health Governance and the Fight Against HIV/AIDS (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 8.
Richard Dodgson and Kelley Lee, “Global Health Governance: A Conceptual Review,” in Global Governance: Critical Perspectives, ed. Rorden Wilkinson and Steve Hughes (London: Routledge, 2002), 100.
Zunyou Wu, Sheena G Sullivan, Yu Wang, Mary Jane Rotheram-Borus, and Roger Detels, “Evolution of China’s Response to HIV/AIDS,” The Lancet 369, no. 9562 (February 24, 2007): 679–90.
Pierre Haski, “A Report from the Ground Zero of China’s AIDS Crisis” YaleGlobal Online, June 30, 2005; and Peter Navarro, The Coming China Wars: Where They Will be Fought and How They Can be Won (Upper Saddle River: FT Press, 2007), 188–98.
Ruotao Wang, “China’s Response to SARS,” Temple Law Review 77 (2004): 149–54, the quotation is from p. 152.
Quoted in Bates Gill, J. Stephen Morrison, and Drew Thompson, Defusing China’s Time Bomb: Sustaining the Momentum of China’s HIV/AIDS Response (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS], 2004), 10–11.
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© 2011 Lai-Ha Chan
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Chan, LH. (2011). China and the Global Health Regime: Alienation or Integration?. In: China Engages Global Health Governance. Palgrave Series on Asian Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230116245_3
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