Accelerating Advancement of the Healthy China Initiative

— An Interview with Lei Haichao, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and Director of the National Health Commission

Recently, the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, the Working Committee of Central and State Organs, the Ministry of Education, the Political Work Department of the Central Military Commission and the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee jointly hosted a series of situation and policy report forums themed "Ensuring and Improving People’s Wellbeing Amid High-Quality Development". On July 21, Lei Haichao delivered a special report titled "Accelerating Advancement of the Healthy China Initiative". Excerpts of the report are published below in a Q&A format.

Historic Achievements Made in Advancing the Healthy China Initiative; Core Health Indicators Rank Among the Top of Upper-Middle-Income and Populous Countries

Reporter: Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, what historic achievements has China registered in advancing the Healthy China Initiative?

Lei Haichao: Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has put safeguarding people’s health in a more prominent position, and made major strategic arrangements for advancing the Healthy China Initiative from the overall perspective of the Party and national undertakings. General Secretary Xi Jinping personally mapped out the blueprint for the Healthy China Initiative and delivered profound, systematic instructions at every critical juncture.

In December 2014, during an inspection tour at a township health center in Shiye Town, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out, "Without universal health, there can be no moderate prosperity in all respects." In August 2016, at the National Conference on Health and Healthcare, he stressed that people’s health should be put at a priority strategic position. Centering on five priorities—popularizing healthy lifestyles, optimizing healthcare services, improving health security, building a healthy environment and developing the health industry—we shall accelerate progress on the Healthy China Initiative, strive to protect people’s health in all respects and throughout their entire life cycle, and lay a solid health foundation for realizing the Two Centenary Goals and the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation. At the 19th CPC National Congress in October 2017, the major decision to "implement the Healthy China strategy" was adopted, clarifying the strategic positioning of advancing the Healthy China Initiative.

In March 2021, during an inspection tour in Sanming, Fujian Province, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that "people’s health is an important symbol of socialist modernization" and "Health is the number one, and everything else comes after zeroes. Without the one, all the zeroes mean nothing." This further highlights the fundamental and leading role of health. On March 6 this year, when meeting members of the Peasants and Workers Democratic Party, the Jiu San Society, and representatives from the medical and health, social welfare and social security sectors attending the Fourth Session of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, General Secretary Xi Jinping underscored that to advance the Healthy China Initiative, we must proceed from China’s national conditions, unswervingly follow a Chinese path for health and healthcare development, and faithfully implement the Party’s guidelines on health and healthcare work for the new era.

In the historical journey toward fulfilling the Two Centenary Goals, developing health and healthcare undertakings has always occupied a fundamental position, closely aligned with national overarching strategies and providing vital underpinning support. We have built and continuously consolidated the world’s largest systems for medical services, traditional Chinese medicine, disease prevention and control, and medical security. We have historically guaranteed basic medical care for people living in poverty, secured historic accomplishments in health and healthcare development, withstood the severe impact of the global pandemic, and created a miracle for a populous nation to pull through a major pandemic. The strategic pace of advancing the Healthy China Initiative has grown firmer, its strategic connotations richer, making tremendous contributions to sustaining stable economic and social development.

From a global comparative perspective, Chinese residents’ health levels outpace the country’s economic development level, with core health indicators hitting an all-time high. Between 2012 and 2025, China’s average life expectancy rose by 3.85 years over 13 years to reach 79.25 years. The under-five mortality rate dropped to 5.4 per 1,000 live births, and the maternal mortality rate fell to 13.4 per 100,000 live births, placing China among the top tier of upper-middle-income countries and nations with populations exceeding 100 million. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the average height of boys and girls aged 6 to 17 increased by 2.1 cm and 2.2 cm respectively. The upward trend of overweight and obesity among children under six has been curbed, and the national coverage rate of eye care and vision screenings for children aged 0 to 6 hit 95.8%. The premature mortality rate from major chronic diseases has fallen below 14%. Residents’ national health literacy level has grown by an average of 2 percentage points annually, reaching 33.69% in 2025. A social atmosphere valuing, pursuing and safeguarding health is taking shape.

These achievements are fundamentally attributable to the leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core and the scientific guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. They demonstrate the strengths of the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the remarkable advantages of the Chinese path for health and healthcare development.

Fully Grasp the New Landscape and New Requirements Facing Health and Healthcare Development

Reporter: How should we understand the new landscape and new requirements for China’s health and healthcare undertakings?

Lei Haichao: During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China will continue to face a complex landscape featuring coexisting threats from multiple diseases and intertwined health risk factors. The situation for infectious disease prevention and control remains severe and complicated. Since 2014, the World Health Organization has declared eight Public Health Emergencies of International Concern. Driven by global warming and more frequent extreme weather events, the transmission scope, epidemic patterns and duration of vector-borne infectious diseases have expanded and shifted. Amid surging cross-border population mobility and international trade and logistics, the risks of imported infectious diseases and domestic secondary transmission keep rising. Pressure to prevent and control chronic diseases continues to mount. Population aging has expanded the number of chronic disease patients and the resulting disease burden. Around 450 million Chinese people live with chronic diseases, which account for as high as 88% of all resident deaths. Sedentary lifestyles, late nights, smoking and excessive drinking, unhealthy diets and lack of physical activity are major contributing factors. Adolescents face new challenges including obesity, myopia and mental health disorders.

As economic and social development and people’s living standards keep improving, the public attaches greater importance to quality of life and health security, with continuously rising, diversified and differentiated health demands. People have shifted from passive medical treatment for illness to full-life-cycle health needs. They expect not only accessible and quality medical care, but also to avoid or reduce illness in the first place. Meanwhile, China remains and will long stay in the primary stage of socialism. Basic national conditions including a huge population and gaps in urban-rural and regional development will persist. Imbalanced and inadequate development in health and healthcare still exists. Medical and health resources, particularly the workforce, are insufficient in total quantity and unevenly structured. Mechanisms to safeguard the public welfare nature of medical care remain imperfect, and economic and social development and governance models conducive to health need further consolidation and expansion.

The 15th Five-Year Plan period marks a critical phase to lay foundations and push full steam ahead for basically realizing socialist modernization. At the start of the 15th Five-Year Plan period, General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed that building the Healthy China Initiative by 2035 is a strategic decision of the CPC Central Committee. The 15th Five-Year Plan period is vital to delivering this goal, requiring coordinated planning, accelerated advancement and decisive progress. We shall anchor the strategic goals set by the CPC Central Committee, uphold the Party’s overall leadership over health and healthcare work, unswervingly follow the Chinese path for health and healthcare development and faithfully implement the Party’s guidelines on health and healthcare work for the new era. Guided by the health-first development strategy, we will accelerate improvement of policy, legal and regulatory systems covering concepts, planning, resource allocation, governance and performance evaluation for health-first development. We will accurately integrate investment in material resources and human capital, speed up the formation of production and lifestyles and economic and social development models beneficial to health, shift medical development toward a health-centered approach, upgrade service systems for better quality and efficiency, and advance systematic and coordinated reform and governance. We will boost the equity and accessibility of health services, strengthen technological empowerment and talent support, better balance high-quality development and high-level security, and continuously meet people’s new health expectations. We strive to raise average life expectancy to 80 years by 2030 and deliver landmark contributions to Chinese modernization.

Anchor the Goal of Building the Healthy China Initiative by 2035 and Solidly Advance Key Tasks for the 15th Five-Year Plan Period

Reporter: What are the core tasks to accelerate advancement of the Healthy China Initiative during the 15th Five-Year Plan period?

Lei Haichao: During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, we will thoroughly implement General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important expositions on advancing the Healthy China Initiative as well as the decisions and arrangements of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council. We will fully implement the 15th Five-Year Plans for national health, revitalization of traditional Chinese medicine, disease prevention and control and other related fields, stick to one blueprint, strive for decisive progress in advancing the Healthy China Initiative, and lay a solid foundation for realizing the Healthy China Initiative by 2035.

First, advocate healthy and civilized lifestyles. WHO research shows personal behaviors and lifestyles account for 60% of health outcomes. As the disease burden from chronic diseases grows prominent, promoting healthy lifestyles is the most cost-effective measure to tackle chronic illnesses. In recent years, the National Health Commission has rolled out a healthy weight management campaign to curb abnormal weight gain among residents, which has won public acclaim. We will integrate health education into the national education system and build platforms for health education and science popularization. Medical institutions and practitioners will be encouraged to embed health knowledge promotion into all medical services. We will carry out rational nutrition and healthy weight management initiatives, advance smoke-free environments, and extensively organize national fitness activities. Focusing on major chronic diseases including cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory illnesses, we will strengthen monitoring of chronic diseases and their risk factors, develop full-chain prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and management services, improve systems for early screening, diagnosis and treatment, set up integrated chronic disease clinics, and strengthen coordinated prevention, treatment and management of multiple co-morbidities.

Second, improve the public health system. We will fully implement the newly revised Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases and the newly formulated Law of the People’s Republic of China on Response to Public Health Emergencies. We will strengthen Party leadership, implement the four-party responsibilities of local authorities, departments, work units and individuals, improve joint prevention and control mechanisms for major infectious diseases, reinforce core capacities including inbound prevention, monitoring, early warning and emergency response, and establish a smart multi-trigger monitoring and early warning system for infectious diseases. We will strictly guard against imported transmission of diseases such as Ebola hemorrhagic fever, strengthen prevention and control of major infectious diseases including AIDS, tuberculosis and viral hepatitis, and curb or eliminate harms from key parasitic and endemic diseases. We will mobilize the whole society for prevention and control, deepen patriotic health campaigns, strengthen vector organism control, and actively promote influenza vaccination and other immunization programs. We will vigorously cultivate interdisciplinary strategic talents skilled in medical care, disease prevention and administration. We will fully leverage experience gained during the COVID-19 pandemic including upgraded command systems and joint epidemiological investigations to prevent large-scale outbreaks.

Third, build a high-quality and efficient medical service system. We will focus on three priorities: strengthening grassroots services, stabilizing secondary hospitals, and regulating tertiary hospital expansion. "Strengthening grassroots services" means boosting primary medical and health capacity through full implementation of the Initiative to Strengthen Primary Medical and Healthcare Services, and sustained downward mobility of medical personnel and services. We will support the development of 1,000 compact county-level medical communities, promote distributed testing and centralized diagnosis, and realize full coverage of compact county-level medical communities and urban medical groups by 2027. We will optimize the layout of primary medical institutions tailored to local conditions, roll out itinerant, mobile and telemedicine services, and build a 15-minute primary medical service circle. Prefecture-level cities will establish unified referral and consultation centers; outpatient appointments at secondary and higher hospitals will be prioritized for primary medical institutions to guide rational medical seeking. "Stabilizing secondary hospitals" refers to steadying and optimizing the development of secondary hospitals, supporting underdeveloped yet in-demand disciplines including rehabilitation, nursing, psychiatry, pediatrics, geriatrics and hospice care. "Regulating tertiary hospitals" means controlling the pace and scale of tertiary hospital development, prohibiting public hospitals from constructing facilities beyond approved plans or taking on illegal debt to avoid over-concentration of medical resources in tertiary hospitals. We will leverage the radiating driving role of national and regional medical centers to channel high-quality medical resources toward central and western regions, grassroots facilities, underdeveloped disciplines and areas with net population growth.

We will further prioritize addressing weaknesses, strengthen underdeveloped disciplines, comprehensively upgrade emergency treatment, blood supply and emergency response capacities, advance revision of the Blood Donation Law, and expand emergency service outlets and vehicles. We will establish long-term mechanisms for livelihood healthcare projects. We designate 2025–2027 as the "Campaign Period for Pediatric and Mental Health Services". Building on eight livelihood healthcare projects rolled out in 2025, we will launch ten more initiatives in 2026: adding pediatric services at 1,000 primary institutions, opening psychological outpatient services in an additional 110 counties, setting up healthy weight management clinics in tertiary hospitals, realizing mutual recognition of over 300 testing items within prefecture-level cities, providing hemodialysis services in all counties with populations over 60,000, launching early pregnancy care clinics at 10,000 medical institutions, adding 150,000 inclusive childcare slots, providing free HPV vaccination for girls aged 13, training 3,200 key medical practitioners in Western medicine learning TCM, and hosting 10,000 health lectures. These measures will further boost people’s sense of gain from health services.

Fourth, deepen reform of the medical and healthcare system. We will improve coordinated development and governance mechanisms covering medical care, medical insurance and pharmaceuticals, advance city-wide medical reform drawing on Sanming’s experience, and leverage the demonstration role of 70 pilot cities for high-quality development of public hospitals and 107 upgrading projects. Centering on public welfare, we will deepen reforms to staffing, medical service pricing, remuneration systems and comprehensive oversight for public hospitals. We will improve fiscal input policies to better guarantee operation of county-level and primary medical institutions. We will deepen integration between medical education and clinical practice, continue rural targeted free medical student training and special programs for college graduate village doctors to expand the healthcare workforce. We will comprehensively strengthen Party building across the sector, implement the president accountability system under Party committee leadership, give play to the political and organizational functions of primary Party organizations, carry forward the spirit of combating SARS, the great anti-pandemic spirit and noble professional ethics, strengthen medical ethics and rectify misconduct and corruption, and foster a clean industry environment and a social culture of respecting medical workers.

Fifth, advance revitalization of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). We will uphold equal emphasis on both TCM and Western medicine, promote their complementary and coordinated development, strengthen TCM departments in public general hospitals and flagship integrated Chinese-Western medicine hospitals, deepen clinical collaboration between TCM and Western medicine for major and intractable illnesses, and raise comprehensive disease diagnosis and treatment capacity. We will sustain implementation of the TCM Culture Promotion Initiative and improve the TCM cultural communication system. We will leverage TCM’s strengths in preventive treatment of diseases, popularize health preservation techniques, and strengthen TCM-based prevention and treatment of chronic and geriatric illnesses. We will advance inheritance, innovation, modernization and industrialization of TCM by applying modern science to interpret its therapeutic mechanisms. We will launch the New Era "Shennong Testing Hundred Herbs" Initiative, expand global cooperation on traditional medicine, and accelerate the international development of TCM.

Sixth, promote high-quality population development. We shall fully and correctly view population trends, rejecting both population determinism and population irrelevance theories. We will strive to improve population quality and stabilize the number of new births, underpinning Chinese modernization through high-quality population development. We will improve the fertility support policy system, advocate positive marriage and childbirth attitudes, leverage childbirth subsidies and refine the maternity insurance system. We will vigorously develop inclusive childcare and integrated kindergarten-childcare services, and carry out demonstration pilot programs for childcare subsidies. We will strengthen women’s and children’s health services, roll out early pregnancy care campaigns, launch programs to boost capacity for maternity care and birth defect prevention, and carry out health promotion initiatives targeting children and adolescents covering weight, eyesight, mental health, spinal health and oral care. We will actively advance healthy aging, scale up rehabilitation and nursing services, implement long-term care insurance, develop integrated medical-elderly care services, improve medical care systems for disabled and demented seniors, expand inclusive rehabilitation, nursing and hospice services, and deliver home medical care and hospital-at-home services for disabled and elderly groups.

Seventh, vigorously develop new productive forces in health and healthcare. We will improve the health science and technology innovation system, optimize the layout of innovation platforms and bases, foster national strategic scientific and technological forces, and enhance research capacity of high-level medical institutions. We will organize major targeted research projects in health science and technology focusing on people’s life and health, bring into play national laboratories, national academies of medical sciences, high-level medical institutions and leading tech enterprises, advance deep integration of medical care, education, research and industry, and deliver landmark innovative achievements. We will support high-quality development of emerging pillar industries such as biomedicine and future industries including brain-computer interfaces and bio-manufacturing. We will advance digital and intelligent health development, and orderly apply digital technologies in auxiliary diagnosis and treatment, precision medicine, health management, medical insurance services, elderly care and disability support.

Source: People’s Daily, Page 2, July 31, 2026; Guangdong Health Online