Healthcare’s Holy Grail is to advance affordability, service quality and accessibility at the same time. China’s route is to crack the impossible trinity by pushing the feasible boundary outward
Thanks to Robert and the Baiguan team for publishing this. The real question is not whether China can abolish healthcare’s impossible trinity, but whether a different healthcare operating system—policy reform, industrialized cost reduction, and low-friction service networks—can move the feasible frontier outward at population scale.
The contrast with the U.S. is striking: America has extraordinary medical capability, but too much of it sits behind price, insurance, bureaucracy and administrative friction. China’s opportunity is not simply cheaper care; it is to modularize routine services and build a lower-friction front door, while keeping hospitals focused on complex medicine.
Excellent piece. Totally agree. In fact China has attained healthcare's Holy Grail, for sure. Or you can't explain why in 2025, Chinese hospitals serving foreign patients received 1.28 million international visits, up 73.6% from three years earlier. This is not just medical tourism. It is a signal that patients are comparing systems by speed, cost certainty, diagnostic capacity, and the ability to turn medical infrastructure into timely care.
This essay also reinforces my own view in my recent essay (When Health Care Becomes a Test of State Capacity) about why more and more westners are coming to China to see doctors: health-care competition is increasingly a competition over organized certainty. China’s advantage lies in compressing consultation, testing, diagnosis, treatment, and payment into a faster and more predictable pathway.
To answer whether Hainan ranks among the top destinations for foreigners seeking medical treatment: the conclusion is mixed.
When measuring by conventional standards such as top-tier hospitals and experienced medical specialists, Hainan certainly cannot be counted as a leading medical hub.
Nevertheless, China’s central government and the Hainan provincial authorities have rolled out a suite of preferential policies. In Boao, a city in Hainan, patients can access world-class innovative medicines and cutting-edge medical services — even if these products and services have not yet obtained official approval from China’s NMPA (National Medical Products Administration, China’s equivalent of the FDA).
In short, patients receiving treatment in Hainan are granted access to the most advanced global innovative medical products and services
Thanks to Robert and the Baiguan team for publishing this. The real question is not whether China can abolish healthcare’s impossible trinity, but whether a different healthcare operating system—policy reform, industrialized cost reduction, and low-friction service networks—can move the feasible frontier outward at population scale.
The contrast with the U.S. is striking: America has extraordinary medical capability, but too much of it sits behind price, insurance, bureaucracy and administrative friction. China’s opportunity is not simply cheaper care; it is to modularize routine services and build a lower-friction front door, while keeping hospitals focused on complex medicine.
Excellent piece. Totally agree. In fact China has attained healthcare's Holy Grail, for sure. Or you can't explain why in 2025, Chinese hospitals serving foreign patients received 1.28 million international visits, up 73.6% from three years earlier. This is not just medical tourism. It is a signal that patients are comparing systems by speed, cost certainty, diagnostic capacity, and the ability to turn medical infrastructure into timely care.
This essay also reinforces my own view in my recent essay (When Health Care Becomes a Test of State Capacity) about why more and more westners are coming to China to see doctors: health-care competition is increasingly a competition over organized certainty. China’s advantage lies in compressing consultation, testing, diagnosis, treatment, and payment into a faster and more predictable pathway.
I heard Hainan is one of the top destinations for foreigners seeking medical care. Is that true?
To answer whether Hainan ranks among the top destinations for foreigners seeking medical treatment: the conclusion is mixed.
When measuring by conventional standards such as top-tier hospitals and experienced medical specialists, Hainan certainly cannot be counted as a leading medical hub.
Nevertheless, China’s central government and the Hainan provincial authorities have rolled out a suite of preferential policies. In Boao, a city in Hainan, patients can access world-class innovative medicines and cutting-edge medical services — even if these products and services have not yet obtained official approval from China’s NMPA (National Medical Products Administration, China’s equivalent of the FDA).
In short, patients receiving treatment in Hainan are granted access to the most advanced global innovative medical products and services
Shanghai is still the best. Hainan, in the future could be.
I think Beijing is the best, and Shanghai is very close.