Xi Jinping Outlines Healthcare Priorities for 15th Five-Year Plan

Chinese President Xi Jinping's forthcoming article in the official journal Qiushi frames the 15th Five-Year Plan period as a crucial window for achieving the national target of building a 'Healthy China' by 2035. The directive emphasizes preserving the public welfare nature of basic healthcare, reforming public hospital operations and insurance payments, strengthening primary-level medical resources, and advancing digital and intelligent health infrastructure.

The leadership's policy direction sets the agenda for China's upcoming 15th Five-Year Plan in health policy. It signals continued state steering of medical resources, intensified reform across the healthcare, medical insurance, and pharmaceutical sectors, and increased investment in primary care and health technology.

An upcoming article by Chinese President Xi Jinping in the official journal Qiushi highlights the 15th Five-Year Plan period as a critical timeframe to achieve the target of building a Healthy China by 2035, according to reports published by state media outlets including Xinhua on July 31, 2026. The essay, titled 'Accelerating the Construction of a Healthy China,' underscores that China's health strategy must remain aligned with its national realities as a developing country with a massive population and persistent urban-rural disparities. State media reports indicate that while specific policy measures will be adjusted to adapt to changing circumstances, core tenets—such as maintaining the public welfare character of basic healthcare and upholding the Party’s leadership over the sector—will remain unchanged. Xi's article outlines several priority areas for reforming China's health system. It calls for strengthening public health infrastructure through enhanced coordination between disease prevention and clinical treatment, alongside upgraded monitoring, early warning, and emergency response capabilities for infectious diseases. To address the healthcare needs of a broad population base, the policy direction emphasizes fortifying primary-level medical facilities, expanding services for rehabilitation, nursing, and hospice care, and promoting the integration of traditional Chinese medicine with Western medicine. Institutional and operational reforms form another central pillar of the guidance. The piece calls for deepening reforms in public hospitals and medical insurance payment mechanisms, while improving joint governance across the medical, health insurance, and pharmaceutical sectors—a policy concept often described as the three-medical coordination. Furthermore, the directive stresses the application of scientific and technological innovations to healthcare, specifically advancing the digital and intelligent transformation of national health infrastructure. To ensure execution, the essay calls for establishing a unified governance framework under Party leadership, embedding health considerations into overall public policy formulation, and reinforcing organizational discipline across the health sector to maintain industry integrity.