Exclusive: China’s Ambition to Be Health Superpower Has Boost from Pandemic

Exclusive: China’s Ambition to Be Health Superpower Has Boost from Pandemic

China seeks to vastly improve its domestic healthcare infrastructure by the end of the decade. Its ambitious plan could help further fuel the global rise of the People's Republic in yet another crucial field as the world continues to reel from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a report obtained exclusively by Newsweek.The 22-page report, produced by the congressionally mandated United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, is entitled "China's Healthcare System: Addressing Capacity Shortfalls before and after COVID-19."It details a range of successes and failures in the efforts of the Chinese government so far to enhance and expand health care at home. As COVID-19 gripped the world after first being detected in China's Wuhan city, this campaign has attracted new attention from the ruling Chinese Communist Party.The report states that currently China's healthcare system is faced with "capacity shortfalls and challenged by a rise in chronic disease," leaving some regions, especially in the countryside and in the far west, with a scarcity of "even basic healthcare to many of its citizens."But U.S.-China Commission economics and trade policy analyst Leyton Nelson, who authored the report, found that Chinese officials are prioritizing widespread reforms to address these issues, for both practical and