It’s been a while since my last Doctor’s Notes, and high time for an update!

I’ll be spending all of April in China, mostly across Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou. I try to use one trip each year for deeper research and more intentional insights (here are my reflections from last year), where I catch up properly with government, public sector, health policy, biotech and digital health, and wider industry circles.

I’m really looking forward to meeting old and new faces alike over the next month. If you’re in any of those cities and would like to meet, please do reach out.

And if there’s something you’d like for me to keep an eye on while I’m there, whether a question, trend, company, policy signal or just something you’re curious about, do send it over!

The timing feels especially good this year. April is one of the loveliest months to be in China, with good weather and blossom, and it also looks to be a particularly interesting moment to be in the mix of things: only a few weeks after the 2026 Two Sessions and the 15th Five-Year Plan, and with Trump’s possible visit to China still pending…

The volume of coverage on China biotech and healthtech only continues to rise, but here are a few things to read and listen to that I’ve been part of, or liked recently.

保持联系!

Ruby

Notes from my 2025 research trip:

Subscribe now

Articles & Reports

📰 Jack Ma-Backed Ant Bets on AI Health in $69 billion Sector Race - Lulu Chen & Amber Tong, Bloomberg News, 10th Feb 2026

I was interviewed in this Bloomberg piece, which explores the rise of Ant Afu, one of China’s most prominent digital health platforms, and the country’s broader race to integrate AI-powered care services more deeply into everyday digital life. Ant Afu’s explosive growth (over 300 million users in less than a year) in an already competitive and maturing market, offers an important window into the commercial logic, platform competition and care pathways that are defining how AI is succeeding in becoming embedded into daily life in China.

See my follow-up substack post on Ant Afu for more reflections:

📰 China’s overstretched healthcare looks to AI boom - Rebecca Bailey, AFP, 3 March 2026

I also spoke with AFP about the broader conditions behind China’s healthtech boom: including its years of digital infrastructure build-out and ever-rising pressure on hospitals and clinicians. We discussed why these tools are gaining traction now, what problems they are actually being used to solve, and what their spread reveals about China’s attempt to manage demand, workforce strain and uneven access across the system.

📰 China approves brain chip to treat paralysis: a world first - Rachel Fieldhouse & Xiaoying You, Nature, 16 March 2026

Out of the many health and technology stories coming out of China, this one caught my eye: NMPA regulators have approved what is being described as the world’s first commercially available implantable brain-computer interface, designed to help patients with severe paralysis restore hand movement through brain-driven control of an external glove. The device itself is highly specific and still early in its real-world clinical relevance, but the wider significance lies in what it suggests about China’s growing ambitions in frontier medical devices and neurotechnology.

📰 Why more foreigners are seeking health care in China - The Economist, 5 Feb 2026

A recent Economist piece on why more foreigners are seeking healthcare in China, in a reversal that would have felt surprising not long ago. The story is still niche and concentrated in major cities, but it is a striking sign of how much times are changing.

📰 China’s Evolving Global Health Leadership - Gareth Jones, Zhida Shang, Ruby Wang, Think Global Health, 13 Jan 2026

An essay I wrote with fellow Schwarzman alumni on China’s evolving global health leadership, and how Beijing is expanding its role through the Health Silk Road, bilateral partnerships, local manufacturing and digital health cooperation.

📝 Roundup of population & fertility proposals at China’s 2026 national “two sessions” - Yuzhe He’s Substack

There’s been plenty of analysis around the recent 15th Five-Year Plan, but I thought this was an especially useful deep dive from Yuzhe He’s Substack into population management and the wider health system and public policy issues tied up with it.

Share

Podcasts

🎧 China’s Biotech Rise and the Future of Global Health - Perspectives with Wenchi, 14 Jan 2026

A fun conversation with Wenchi Yu on how China’s biotech sector has become a major force in global health innovation. We explored the drivers behind that rise, including long-term state planning, regulatory reform, R&D investment, and clinical scale, as well as the tensions this creates for Western governments and companies navigating both opportunity and “China risk.”

🎧 The Hale Report, with Ruby Wang - Lyric Hughes Hale, EconVue, 2 Jan 2026

I joined Lyric on The Hale Report Podcast for a wide-ranging discussion on China’s healthcare system and what it reveals about technology, governance, and global risk. We covered everything from digital infrastructure and AI to ageing, access, doctor-patient tension, and why Western assumptions about China’s health system often lag reality.

▶️ AI Meets Healthcare in China: Can Technology Fix a Fragmented System, with Winnie Yip & Ruby Wang - Lizzi Lee, Asia Society Policy Institute, Center for China Analysis, 18 March 2026

I recently joined Professor Winnie Yip at Harvard University and Lizzi Lee at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, to talk about how technology is reshaping China’s healthcare system. We discussed the speed and scale of China’s digital health transformation, why China has become such an important test bed for healthtech, what problems these tools are actually being asked to solve, and why the real challenge is not only innovation itself, but whether it is improving care in a way that is meaningful, equitable and sustainable in practice.

Youtube video here, and write-up here.

Recent CHP Podcasts you may have missed:

Books

And an update on some of the books I’ve been enjoying recently, all by authors whose book talks I had the pleasure of attending in London over recent months. They each somehow connect in different ways to questions of health, society and change in China, but they are also just very good books: thoughtful, well-written and worth your time.

📚 The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet - Yi-Ling Liu

My friend Yi-Ling has just published a beautifully reported exploration of the Chinese internet over the past three decades, exploring censorship and surveillance alongside subculture, creativity and the everyday negotiations of life under control told through human stories behind the firewall.

📚 Embedded Generations: Family Life and Social Change in Contemporary China - Liu Jieyu

A deeply researched account of family life and social change in contemporary China. Drawing on 260 life histories and ethnographic research, looking at how childhood, marriage, intimacy and ageing have evolved since 1949, to provide a layered picture of continuity, adaptation and difference across generations, gender and the urban-rural divide.

📚 An A-Z of Chinese Food (Recipe not included) - Jenny Lau

A sharp and funny series of short essays on food, identity and culture by HK-British cook and writer, .

Less than nine months ago, I created China Health Pulse as a newsletter dedicated to understanding China’s impact on patients, policy and the future of global health. Since then, it has grown to reach +3,000 subscribers and followers across almost 80 countries. A particular highlight has been the recent expansion and launch of the CHP Podcast, where I invite expert guests to share their perspectives through in-depth conversation.

What began as a dedicated platform for analysis and reflection has become an incredibly thoughtful community, and I’ve spent many hours in conversation with readers and listeners through emails, messages, events and meetings, and these exchanges have also informed wider media engagement and expanded my advisory work through LINTRIS Health consultancy. Taken together, it has been a year marked by learning and shared curiosity, and I’m deeply grateful to all of you for engaging with such enthusiasm.

You may have noticed that I posted less here toward the end of the year. This is because much of my recent writing energy has been channelled toward my forthcoming book: on the global impact of China’s health innovation - which I’m looking forward to sharing more about in due course! The book had begun as a broad intention to explain China’s health system, but has since naturally sharpened in focus towards biotech and digital health, reflecting where I see China’s real-world impact emerging most clearly, and where the implications for the rest of the world are already being felt.

Such reflections have been reinforced by my conversations overseas in recent weeks, including catching up with think-tanks, industry heads and academics on the US’s East Coast in November, and at an international development conference last week in Southeast Asia. Across very different health systems and political contexts, I was repeatedly struck by how similar the underlying questions were on global health, around access, innovation, affordability and trust, and how often China now features in those conversations across both developed and developing countries, explicitly as well as implicitly.

These experiences have strengthened my motivation to keep publishing and sharing my perspectives. I am not a journalist or academic, but first and foremost a doctor, and then a consultant and writer, with perspectives influenced by a personal and professional background that bridges East and West, and across government, multilateral institutions and industry. Whether in my writing or consulting, my focus remains on myth-busting through grounded insights, and to always keep patients, shared global challenges and real-world outcomes at the centre.

In 2026, I look forward to continuing to grow China Health Pulse with fresh perspectives and deeper analysis in my writing, to continue thoughtful conversations with health leaders on the CHP Podcast.

Below, I’ve pulled together a short roundup of highlights from the year, followed by a few links I’d like to recommend, as is usual in the Doctor’s Notes series. Thank you, as always, for reading and engaging - lots more to come!

Happy holidays ~

Subscribe now

Top Five Posts of the Year

Posts on China Health Pulse broadly fall into three pillars. Vital Signs pieces provide essential explainers that set the context for understanding China’s health system, covering topics such as AI health, biotech and global health. Real Diagnosis posts take a deeper analytical dive into current trends and key developments, including major policy moments, political signals, and market shifts - from the 2025 Two Sessions and tariff dynamics, to health ministry explainers and industry analysis such as Alibaba’s AliHealth. Doctor’s Notes are regular round-ups where I collate recommended reads and listens from other sources.

I’ve rounded up five CHP posts from this year that I think best capture the range of my writing - and which, judging by readership and sharing, seem to be the ones many of you most often return to:

1. This was my very first post, written to reset the starting assumptions many Western readers bring to China’s health system. It addressed the most common myths I encounter in practice and explained how the system actually functions on the ground. Since then, it has become the piece I most often send to those looking for a grounded, first-principles understanding.

2. This popular post tackled the hot topic of China’s biotech, dissecting the gaps between how the sector is often discussed publicly across general media outlets versus how it really operates on the ground for industry insiders.

3. A practical explainer mapping the ministries, agencies and incentives that impact health decisions in China. It is what I wish I had when I first started working across this system, and one that I reference regularly in conversations with policymakers and journalists. It's also the start of a continuing series of deep dives on China’s health ministries (Ministry of Health, China’s drug regulators - with more to come).

4. This two-part analysis (pt 2 here) unpacks how health fits into China’s wider political priorities. China’s governance structure and planning processes are complex and distinct from many other countries, but learning how to read them is essential to understanding how to operate successfully within the landscape. These pieces reflect the kind of analysis I provide for LINTRIS Health clients - paying close attention to what is being signalled between the lines, and not just what is formally announced.

5. With the retreat of Western aid, China’s expanding role in global health is becoming a scrutinised issue. This piece explores how and why many developing countries are engaging with China on health - looking at agency, incentives and power in order to try to bring in a more nuanced perspective that might be missing from usual global health debates - including, again, the key role of China’s technological rise.

China Health Pulse content has travelled beyond the newsletter through op-eds and features, as well as interviews and commentaries in external media and think-tank publications - including around China’s AI health (The Wire China Q&A, TechInAsia), biotech (Pharmaceutical Technology), and global health role (Nikkei Asia Op-Ed, National Committee on UK-China Relations, London School of Economics IDEAS, Asia Scotland Institute).

Share

The CHP Podcast

I started the CHP Podcast to branch into audio (and video) as a medium and spend more time with topics that benefit from being talked through rather than written down. Just as importantly, I wanted to bring more voices into the conversation by inviting health leaders who I deeply respect, who have spent decades working in and with China across policy, industry, academia and global health, to share perspectives from their respective fields of expertise in candid discussions.

Each newsletter video post is accompanied by a full transcript, and you can also subscribe directly to the audio podcast on Spotify & Apple. It has been a joy to record the episodes so far, and I look forward to many more insightful conversations as the podcast continues into 2026.

Subscribe now

Recommendation Round-up

📰 The changing shape of Chinese aid to Africa - The Economist, 27 Nov 2025

I provided comments for this recent article in The Economist that examines the changing shape of China’s health engagement in Africa, set against Western aid retrenchment and a more fragmented global health system. I noted that China’s approach is being welcomed by many developing countries for being speedy, well-resourced, tech-forward and, crucially, sovereignty-first, even as it remains selective, uneven and driven by political and economic objectives as much as development outcomes.

Related:

📰 China’s Search for an AI Magic Cure – Rachel Cheung, The Wire China, 14 Dec 2025

I was also quoted in The Wire China’s cover story earlier this week, which reflects on AI’s role in China’s health system, looking at how the maturing digital infrastructure, vast data pools and high patient and policymaker acceptance are accelerating adoption, from AI triage and diagnostic support to virtual doctor agents, while also highlighting unresolved risks around regulation, data quality, safety and incentives. I state that China has become a live experimental lab for health AI, with a level of real-world deployment and policy enthusiasm that few other countries can match. The result is a system moving unusually fast: technologically ambitious, operationally pragmatic and still grappling with how to scale innovation without undermining trust or care quality.

Related:

📰 China to eliminate out-of-pocket childbirth expenses from 2026 – Reuters, 15 Dec 2025

The National Healthcare Security Administration has announced that, starting in 2026, China will aim to achieve “no out-of-pocket expenses” for childbirth, and fully reimburse all policy-covered medical costs associated with delivery and prenatal care through national insurance. This move is part of a broader effort to ease the financial burden on families and address the long-term demographic challenge posed by persistently low birth rates and an ageing population. I predict we will see even more concrete direction at next March’s Two Sessions, when the 15th Five-Year Plan is published - which I will of course be covering, here at CHP.

Related:

📰 Will the next blockbuster drug come from China? – Eleanor Olcott, Financial Times, 2 Dec 2025

This piece adds to the growing media chorus on the rise of Chinese biotech, looking at how China’s drug industry has moved decisively beyond generics into globally relevant innovation, and pointing to faster development cycles, improving clinical quality, and a surge in cross-border licensing as multinationals increasingly source assets from Chinese biotechs. I would go one step further to say that blockbuster drugs and world-class assets are already coming from China - in 2025 we saw over 40% of global biopharma out-licensing activity involves China-origin assets - the pace, scale and quality of innovation coming out of China is now simply undeniable. The real question is now about how global markets, regulators and investors must adjust to that reality.

▶️ In China’s Crowded Hospitals, She Found a New Career - New York Times, 20 Oct 2025

This short video follows a “patient companion” in Beijing, a part advocate and part gig worker who helps patients and families navigate China’s crowded tertiary hospitals. These workers take on many responsibilities that nurses would typically provide in other health systems, and their role reflects long-standing gaps in nursing capacity within China’s hospital-centred model. Patient companions are quite well known to those of us who have worked or cared for patients in China’s healthcare system, but they are rather unfamiliar to outside audiences. English-language, on-the-ground reporting on China’s health system remains rare, and this clip offers a valuable glimpse into how care is accessed in practice, and the informal services that have emerged to address the gaps persisting in the system.

📘 Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future – Dan Wang, 2025

Breakneck examines China’s development through the lens of the “engineering state,” contrasting it with Western legal- and process-driven systems. While the book is not primarily about health, it weaves in social and public-health inflection points, including the One Child Policy and Zero COVID to contextualise how China approaches crisis management, social control and system-level trade-offs and illustrate the human consequences of large-scale, technocratic decision-making. It offers useful background for understanding the strengths and limits of China’s health governance model.

This was 2025 Wrapped at CHP. Previous posts for Doctor’s Notes, where I share a curated prescription of reads and listens on health and China : September, July, April and March.

Happy autumn to each of you - our community now stretches across more than 70 countries! 🍂 I hope you are staying warm and settling well into my favourite season of the year.

I always think of this season as one for sharper air, clearer thoughts and settling indoors with good reading, so it feels like the right moment to share some highlights that have caught my attention recently, on China’s health.

Here are my latest curated reads, listens and links. This edition focuses on AI x Health, drawing together stories that show where the debates and policy shifts are heading. I’ve included English-language sources for accessibility, as usual, alongside links to Chinese government releases or state media where the detail matters most - as well as some excellent analysis by fellow Substackers.

Do let me know what you think, and share what you’ve been reading, too.

AI x Health

📰 How Tech is Driving China’s Healthcare System: Q&A with Ruby Wang - Robert Postings, The Wire China, 14th Sept 2025

As part of The Wire China’s Q&A series, I talk through how far China has raced ahead in health–technology integration. Long before Covid, platforms like AliHealth and Ping An were already changing how patients accessed care, but the pandemic pushed digital from acceleration to inevitability. Today, Chinese patients can expect to manage the entire journey on their phones, from booking and prescriptions to payments, while Chinese hospitals are redesigning services around apps as their main front door. China is normalising a model most other health systems are still debating. It shows what’s possible when technology is built directly into the core of healthcare- at a scale and speed that is unmatched globally.

Related:

📰 My Mom and Dr Deepseek – Viola Zhou, Rest of World, 2nd September 2025

This piece provides interesting anecdotal insight into how large language models are already seeping into everyday healthcare in China. Reporter Viola Zhou shares how her mother finds DeepSeek to be more humane and attentive than real clinicians - feeding test results follows its detailed medical advice. Doctors reviewing those interactions warn of dangerous errors, but for many patients, the key is trust, not accuracy.

The Great AI Divide: Why China Embraces What the West Fears - Natalia Cote-Munoz, Artificial Enquiry Substack, 16th Sept 2025

A very good piece by on “the great AI divide” between China and the West. She asked users on Chinese platform Red Note how they view AI - and many were genuinely baffled by Western anxiety and fixation on corporate control, job loss, surveillance, and creative disruption, all often framed through dystopian futures and corporate doom. Instead, in China, AI means relief from exhausting work and a natural extension of tools like WeChat and Alipay that have already reshaped daily life for billions of users. This “experiential prior” makes advanced technology in China a story of empowerment and convenience, normalising large-scale disruption as positive transformation. As the author notes, when people have lived experience of technology improving their lives through state-coordinated development, they’re more likely to be optimistic. And this optimism helps explain why China has been quicker to bring AI into clinics and hospitals - transforming health experience and delivery in a way that is still unimaginable to much of the world.

China Releases “AI Plus” Policy: A Brief Analysis - Geopolitics Substack, 27th Aug 2025

A nice summary by of a major policy upgrade, setting out how AI will be China’s growth engine. In late August, China upgraded its old Internet Plus strategy into AI Plus, shifting from “connection” to “cognition” : 70% adoption of AI agents and devices by 2027, 90% by 2030, and a fully “intelligent society” by 2035. The policy spans six areas: science, industry, consumer apps, public services (including healthcare), governance, and global cooperation. For health, it promises nationwide AI assistants, smarter diagnosis and insurance services, and big pushes in elderly and primary care. Reading between the lines, this roadmap helps to tell us where pilots, budgets and opportunities will land in China over the next 5–10 years - do get in touch if you’d like health sector-specific strategic analysis on these implications.

Nvidia and China; EU and rare earth magnets; US-China; Xi praises work on 80th anniversary commemorations - Bill Bishop, Sinocism Substack, 17th Sept 2025

breaks down this breaking news story in his always excellent Sinocism newsletter. He points out the ambiguity: is Beijing banning all Nvidia AI chips, or just the hobbled export-control versions such as the H20/6000D, that local players (Huawei, Cambricon, Alibaba, Baidu) can already match? After all regulators have reportedly told PRC firms that their chips are now comparable. The bigger play may be leverage: using a “massive chip order” as a bargaining chip in trade deals.

Chinese big tech including Alibaba and Baidu have already started using their own chips (T-Head designs and Kunlun P800) to train some AI models and power cloud services, but they hadn’t announced a full phase-out of Nvidia, and most compute-intensive tasks were still leaning on foreign hardware. For China’s digital health ecosystem, this Nvidia ban would lead to hospitals and health-AI services will be reliant on on domestic silicon, it remains to be seen whether cutting-edge applications like large-scale imaging and diagnostic LLMs may feel performance gaps until local chips fully catch up.

Related:

Other reads

📰 CUHK start-ups eye silver economy with wearable robotics – South China Morning Post, 21st July 2025

This article describes how spin-outs from the Chinese University of Hong Kong are betting on exoskeletons and assistive wearables to help older adults stay mobile and independent. China’s “silver economy” priorities, which I previously described (part 1, part 2) in my analysis on the Two Sessions earlier this year, are propelling robotics and healthtech in Greater China, yet the hurdles of scaling, investment and cross-border regulation remain, before such devices can reach mass adoption.

Related:

📰 China passes new Public Health Emergency Response Law – Reuters, 12th Sept 2025

Reuters frames this law squarely as Beijing drawing lessons from Covid. The legal upgrade (from regulation to law, effective 1 November 2025, direct link here) sets clearer lines of responsibility between central and local authorities, mandates faster reporting and introduces penalties for concealment or delay. It also requires hospitals to strengthen early warning, stockpile supplies and improve coordination between Chinese and Western medicine. Reuters stresses China’s political signal: to demonstrate institutional learning and reassure the public its system can handle the next crisis - but I would argue that the recent summer outbreak of the Chikungunya virus, which I wrote about here, also prompted the urgency.

Related:

📰 China Makes HPV Vaccine Free for Girls in National Program – He Qitong, Sixth Tone, 15th Sept 2025

China has added its first cancer-preventive vaccine to its “National Immunization Program”: a domestically developed HPV shot, free for school-age girls, targeting strains 16 & 18, which are responsible for most cervical cancers in China and worldwide. This is a major milestone: the first program update in 17 years, adding to the 15 infectious diseases already covered. Longstanding pilot programmes including in Guangdong and Hainan provinces since 2022, only enabled uneven coverage, but this national rollout now aims to guarantee equal access, as part of a broader “vaccination + screening + early diagnosis” strategy against cervical cancer. This move has major implications for China’s vaccine, women’s health and public health.

📰 U.S. Drugmakers Warn White House of Chaos as Trump Weighs Curbs on China - Rob Copeland & Rebecca Robbins, 12th Sept 2025

I am sure everyone is already following these headlines, but I wanted to recommend this NYT piece as one of the best summaries of the ongoing situation. While the US “Biosecure Act” and its aims to limit US partnerships with Chinese biopharma, has been floated for over a year now, Trump is now threatening to bypass congress with a draft executive order. This could restrict all Chinese-origin medical products, from APIs to generics to innovative drugs, raising the stakes for global pharma supply chains and potentially limiting access to life-saving treatments for US patients.

The move has triggered a fierce lobbying battle between investors tied to the White House and multinational companies dependent on China’s biotech pipeline. At LINTRIS Health, we’ve been discussing these scenarios with our clients and what they mean for trial pipelines and the global positioning of Chinese innovators - health, trade and biotech are becoming inseparable in US–China decoupling.

Related:

China’s Biotech Is Cheaper and Faster - Jacob Dreyer, New York Times, 17th Aug 2025

This latest NYT op-ed fits neatly into this year’s wave of writing on China’s biotech rise, highlighting the speed and price of China’s ambition: a hyper-efficient pipeline with trials cleared in weeks and drugs scaled within two years. I would add that the quality of Chinese drugs now at least matches that of Western peers. Whether cancer, cardio-metabolic or rare diseases, China’s biotech output is ready for the global market. That’s why the implications for patients are so large - just as Washington debates curbs on China-origin medicines under Trump.

Share

Podcasts

🎧 China and the Future of Global Aid, with Ruby Wang – Asia Scotland Institute Podcast, 28th Aug 2025

In this conversation with ASI, I build on previous writing (including at LSE and Nikkei Asia) to unpack how China is reshaping global health and development, not as a simple replacement for Western aid, but through its own strategic priorities. Eleanor and I covered China’s motivations in health diplomacy, its “selective multilateralism” and how developing countries are actively engaging with Beijing’s sovereign, bilateral approach. I talked about digital health and biotech as China’s new tools of influence, and why the traditional donor–recipient model is giving way to more fluid frameworks. It’s part of a broader thread I’ve been tracing here at CHP on how China is rewriting the rules of global aid.

Related:

🎧 Differentiated Understanding Podcast Season 1 - Grace Shao, AI Proem Substack

A great new podcast series by Grace Shao: with a broad yet grounded lineup of excellent guests, pulling together how AI is unfolding in China across sectors. Conversations will cover AI in the context of culture, supply chains, diplomacy, work, investment and startups. I very much enjoyed Jasmine Sun’s episode on AI culture in Silicon Valley vs China.

🎧 China’s Rise in Biotechnology – Alexander Brown & Jeroen Groenewegen-Lau, MERICS Podcast, 18th Aug 2025

This conversation builds on MERICS’ earlier Lab leader, market ascender report and unpacks why biotech has become one of China’s most strategic sectors, highlighting China’s R&D strength, growing clinical pipeline and government prioritisation, while also stressing where global market trust and late-stage capabilities still lag. It’s a useful listen for the Europe-China context in particular: the tone leans toward resilience and risk management, but underlines that China’s biotech innovation rise is inevitable.

This was September's curated prescription of reads and listens on health and China. Previous lists: July, April, March.

We’re now deep into summer, which marks just over four months since I launched this newsletter. The China Health Pulse community has grown to span readers across an incredible 58 countries and 36 US states, and this week we hit number 38 in the “Rising in News” section on Substack. Many small celebrations to be had!

Thank you all for your continued support. It’s deeply appreciated - and as always, please do keep getting in touch, I love hearing from you.

You may also notice that some older posts are now marked 🔒. These are the pieces most often cited by policy teams, investors and global health analysts, and they reflect topics we at LINTRIS Health analyse in-depth for our clients. I’ve moved them to subscriber-only as part of building a more durable knowledge library, if you find them useful, please do consider upgrading your subscription to keep accessing all content.

In the meantime, here’s a curated selection of recent reads, listens, and links - including some authored by yours truly, as well as an exciting announcement at the end.

Articles and Reports

📰 China Rewrites Global Health Leadership as US Retreats From WHO – Ruby Wang, Nikkei Asia, 15 July 2025

Last month, I covered China’s health diplomacy at the 78th World Health Assembly here at CHP. In this Op-Ed for Nikkei Asia, I expanded my analysis to make the case for China distinctive global health strategy, and how it isn’t simply filling a vacuum left by the US. I unpack how Beijing uses bilateral aid, digital tools and selective multilateralism to advance a health model that appeals to many low- and middle-income countries, especially those wary of traditional Western donors.

📰 Ask the Experts: China and the Future of Global Aid - Ruby Wang & Felix Brender, IDEAS, London School of Economics, 18th June 2025

After writing about China and USAID here, I was invited by the London School of Economics to share my perspective on China’s evolving role in global aid. Felix and I explore how China is rewriting the rules, not by copying Western aid models, but through sovereign, infrastructure-led engagement, including tactical presence in crisis zones. Digital tools, bilateral deals and Global South alignment combine to form a new development logic that many developing countries are now actively choosing.

📰 Lab Leader, Market Ascender – China’s Rise in Biotechnology - Antonia Hmaidi, Jacob Gunter & Rebecca Arcesati, MERICS (Mercator Institute for China Studies), 24 April 2025

This is a sharp, policy-grounded report on China’s biotech ambitions from the excellent MERICS which walks the line well between grounded facts and strategic framing. Core thesis: China has become a biotech R&D heavyweight, but its global market share still lags, especially in late-stage drugs and regulatory trust. The tone skews EU-centric (resilience > innovation), but very much worth reading for its breakdown of geopolitical friction and data governance, particularly for industry watchers and EU policymakers. Great graphics, too. Do go back and read my China biotech mythbuster post, as a grounding reference.

📰 Mapping Noteworthy Startups in China’s Healthcare Sector - Aya Lin, TechinAsia, 21 June 2025

I was invited to contribute to TechinAsia’s landscape map of China’s healthcare start-ups. This provides a pretty comprehensive and well-structured overview of the major names in the ecosystem at the moment, including most noteworthy Chinese health start-ups, Chinese capital raised, list of most active investors in the past 24 months and latest funding rounds. Of course, it’s always a rapidly evolving landscape, so don’t expect to see the same names this time next year!

📰 Seeking the next DeepSeek: What China’s generative AI registration data can tell us about China’s AI competitiveness - Kendra Schaefer, 29 April 2025

This is an absolutely standout analysis of China’s public registry of 3,739 generative AI tools (as of end April, so the numbers are sure to have accelerated even more by now, in July). It provides a comprehensive overview of the the genAI state of play in China right now. We are able to get this rare open window into its massive massive ecosystem, thanks to China’s tight grip on online platforms. I’m especially interested in what this means for health, whether that’s public-facing AI services, clinical copilots or regulatory transparency.

Share

On substack

A great post from Dr , who draws from a leadership career that spans decades across the WHO and Canada’s Grand Challenges, to make thoughtful recommendations on the role of philanthropy in a rapidly shifting global health landscape:

Global Health Insights

How Should Bill Gates Spend $200 Billion?

Bill Gates recently announced that the Gates Foundation will spend down its endowment over the next 20 years, contributing approximately $200 billion to global health and development. This is a bold move— and one that invites reflection. Given the foundation’s impact over the past quarte…

Read more

a year ago · 12 likes · 8 comments · Peter Singer

This piece by shares some key insights regarding China’s impact on the global biotech landscape:

Jacopo’s Newsletter

China's Impact on Global Biotech: Perspectives from the Front Line

The biotech industry operates on a well-defined financial model: venture capital powers early-stage innovation – funding the development of new technologies and clinical trials – and Big Pharma provides the exit strategy through acquisitions or licensing deals (with IPOs providing a source of liquidity for investors in the interim). This dynamic is not …

Read more

a year ago · 23 likes · 4 comments · Jacopo Gabrielli, Kush Desai, and Jamie Rintoul

And then to take it further back, a really fantastic primer on biotech landscape as a whole from Adu Subramanian: “This is for the biotech curious who don’t know where to start. Healthcare is an industry supposedly reserved for specialists: MDs and PhDs with years of training doing in depth research. Most investors avoid it like the plague with an “anywhere but healthcare” mandate. But the biotech bug catches a few of us”:

Bio Breakdowns

Some Tacit Knowledge in Biotech

TLDR: I think AI does a great job for basics, but it misses some of the more tacit knowledge. This list is a *somewhat* organized list of that information for biotech based on my experience…

Read more

10 months ago · 22 likes · 1 comment · Adu Subramanian

Two more, older goodies on healthtech, from and on healthcare innovation, all of which are relevant for the China landscape today. For reference, I wrote a comprehensive overview of AI x Health in China last month:

Pharma Leaders

Driving Healthcare Innovation in China & Hong Kong

👋 Hi everyone…

Read more

3 years ago · 6 likes · 1 comment · Julien Moussalli

AI Checkup

Re-Imagining the Healthcare Delivery Journey with Generative AI

Intro So much progress has been made since we shared our first article on the state of generative AI in healthcare…

Read more

2 years ago · 24 likes · 1 comment · Nick Chedid, MD, Ambar Bhattacharyya, and Justin Norden, MD

wrote a great summary of the recent Alibaba viral news, where an employee posted a resignation letter online. It’s a fascinating story. I wrote about Alibaba’s health strategy during my visit to HQ in May, and will be sharing part 2 of that post in due course:

Theoria

An Insider’s View on Alibaba’s Struggles

Earlier this month, a 10,000-word letter posted on Alibaba’s internal forum by a long-time employee just before his resignation went viral across the Chinese internet. Drawing on his firsthand experience working on multiple projects across different business units, the letter candidly exposed both internal and external challenges facing Alibaba in recen…

Read more

10 months ago · 42 likes · 3 comments · TheoriaCapital

Subscribe now

Podcasts

🎧 The World Health Assembly, Adolescent Health, and the Pace of Innovation - The Lancet Voice Podcast, 5 June 2025

The Lancet podcast team reflect on developments at the 78th World Health Assembly which they jokingly described as “a funeral for global health”, including the passage of the pandemic agreement and shifting dynamics in global health leadership. I referenced this podcast in my recent post about China’s central role at the World Health Assembly.

🎧 Malaria Free China, an Academic Medicine Revolution, and Retracted Data's impact - Medicine and science from The BMJ Podcast 7 May 2025

This BMJ podcast covers how China eliminated malaria by 2021 through persistent local action - a groundbreaking feat, and what new tools might help other countries to do the same.

🎧 The China Health Pulse Podcast

Speaking of podcasts, I’d like to hype up some excitement by saying…

Watch this space!

And finally, a CHP round-up

Here are some recent highlight posts you may have missed:

Hello CHP readers,

I can’t quite believe how quickly time has flown since I launched this newsletter in early March. From the start, my hope has been to draw on all of my experiences across cultures, borders and sectors, to provide perspectives that are missing from mainstream coverage. It’s been such a joy to receive encouragement from so many of you over the past weeks. I’ve really appreciated all of your thoughtful responses and messages, so please do keep them coming.

Of everything I’ve written so far, last week’s piece on China and the Global South is the one I’ve felt proudest to share. It’s a topic that I care deeply about and will keep returning to. All in all, I’m committed to continue writing in an accessible and informal way, while still helping you make sense of the crucial, often overlooked dynamics shaping health and China today.

Some exciting news: I’m heading to China very soon, and will be based across Hangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing for most of May. I can’t wait to eat my way across provinces, catch up with old friends and new faces—and most importantly, get back on the ground to absorb the latest in health, policy and tech. If you’re around, I’d love to chat.

Meanwhile, here’s my April round-up of reads and listens. See last month’s (on biotech, China-Africa and TCM Cocktails) here.

Subscribe now

📰 Short Reads/Articles

Big Pharma Faces Headwinds in China as Vaccine Sales Decline – Jenna Philpott, Pharmaceutical Technology, 26 March 2025
Foreign pharma struggles to keep pace in a shifting vaccine landscape dominated by domestic priorities.

👉 I was interviewed for this piece a few weeks ago, which looks at how multinational companies are navigating China’s complex and often unpredictable vaccine market, particularly the regulatory climate, localisation pressures, and shifting strategic landscape. As I shared in the piece:

“The foreign actors have good quality vaccines and drugs, but it's increasingly difficult to maintain good channels of influence with government, and good relationships. China's priority, like any country, is to boost its domestic capability, domestic market, and to make sure domestic pharma companies and vaccine developers win.”

I also spoke about the importance of government relations—not just for political optics, but for practical intelligence:

“[In China], these rules and regulations are often announced unexpectedly, and companies have to scramble to work out what it means... you can only get that insight through good relationships and keeping close comms.”

Revealed: Chinese researchers can access half a million UK GP records – Tom Burgis, The Guardian, 15 April 2025
New revelations about Chinese access to anonymised UK health data spark concerns over privacy and transparency.

👉 This Guardian investigation reveals that Chinese researchers have been given access to the anonymised health records of 500,000 UK citizens through the UK Biobank. The US came first in the 1,375 successful applications, and China was second (at nearly 20%). While legal, and part of international scientific collaboration, the scale and sensitivity of the data—combined with growing geopolitical tension—have raised serious questions from the British public and media about oversight, consent, and public trust in data governance. However, scientists and researchers argue for the importance of sharing and collaboration in health and science. Previously, Chinese researchers have used the data to study links between air pollution and health, and to identify biological markers that might predict. Cross-border health data sharing is evolving, and testing trust, transparency and governance in real time. In response, Prof Rory Collins, CEO of UK Biobank, penned a letter to the Guardian Editor to address safeguarding concerns and defend holistic benefits. This is definitely a topic I plan on diving deeper into.

China Biotech Startup injects CRISPR therapy into the brain for the first time – Ryan Cross, Endpoints News, 21 April 2025
In a world-first, HuidaGene delivers gene therapy directly to the brain of a child with a rare neurological disorder.

👉 This piece covers a milestone moment for China’s biotech scene: a 9-year-old with MECP2 duplication syndrome has become the first patient in the world to successfully receive CRISPR-based gene therapy injected directly into the brain. The results are still preliminary, but twelve weeks after the treatment, videos showed the boy able transform from struggling to walk without support to walking smoothly and independently. Shanghai-based startup HuidaGene is behind the trial, signalling how quickly China is moving into the frontier of high-stakes, high-complexity biotech innovation, as I recently covered in my post on China’s biotech.

China’s Obesity Crisis Is Big Business – Eleanor Olcott and Wang Xueqiao, Financial Times, 28 March 2025
Over half of Chinese adults are now overweight or obese, causing local drugmakers to target the weight loss market.

👉 This FT piece dives into the fast-growing demand for anti-obesity drugs in China. Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy has quickly gained traction, but with its patent set to expire in 2026, at least 15 Chinese companies are already racing to develop local alternatives. The article captures how pharmaceutical innovation and shifting consumer habits are colliding and reshaping China’s public health and commercial landscape. Chronic and non-communicable conditions including heart disease, cancer, diabetes and mental health were once labelled as “diseases of the West” due to associations with obesity and poor diet. But they are now huge health challenges for China too.

The Harvest: Dispatch No. 18 – Nathan Whittaker, This Week in Rural China, 18 April 2025
Rising childhood obesity rates and the launch of the "Healthy Villages" initiative in Jiangsu.

👉 I have previously talked about rural health inequalities as a persistent pressure for the health system. This great substack post at <This Week in Rural China> covers key recent developments in rural China, including increasing concern over childhood obesity in rural areas, where changing diets and reduced physical activity contribute to health challenges, an well as discusses Jiangsu government's efforts to improve rural health infrastructure and education through new initiatives and funding mechanisms. It offers valuable insights into the evolving public health landscape in China's countryside.​

China Plans 'Silver Trains' to Encourage Aging Boomers to Travel - Karoline Kan, Bloomberg, 11 Feb 2025​ China is launching a network of tourist trains equipped with medical and elder-care facilities to tap into the spending power of its aging population.

👉 I analysed China’s broad national plans to develop its "silver economy" in my deep dive Real Diagnosis series on the recent Two Sessions (part 1, part 2). With around 20% of the population over age 60 by the end of 2022, China wants to address demographic shifts and stimulate economic growth by catering to the needs of its elderly citizens. This piece details the "silver trains" project, highlighting China’s ambitions to integrate healthcare services into travel and leisure activities for seniors, to target what it sees as a growing market segment with significant potential.​

Share

📚 Longer Reads/Books

Two brilliantly different books on the UK-China relationship. One explores the complex history behind today’s mistrust; the other, the mismatches of cultural translation.

The Great Reversal: How We Let China Become the World’s Second Superpower – Kerry Brown
A clear-eyed account of how the UK, and the West more broadly, have misread China’s rise.

👉 Prof. Kerry Brown is one of the most thoughtful voices on UK–China relations, and this book is a concise yet accessible look at how the relationship has shifted, from cautious optimism to strategic suspicion, across over four centuries of entanglement. Understanding this backdrop is essential, especially as UK and US governments ramp up scrutiny of Chinese research partnerships. For those working in or observing global health and policy diplomacy, this context shapes how collaborations are built, how data and technology are shared, and how trust is won or lost. The book’s insights into the blind spots and missteps of the past, serve as useful lessons for us all today.

Sour Sweet – Timothy Mo
A beautifully written novel about migration, identity, and the quiet power of adaptation.

👉 Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, this novel follows a Chinese immigrant family trying to find their footing in 1960s London. This is one of those rare books I’ve re-read several times. The prose is absolutely extraordinary, and the story traces cross-cultural care, sacrifice and survival through both everyday joys and private tragedies. It’s not about health, exactly, but it captures the emotional terrain of living between systems and cultures, which feels just as vital to understand, especially for those of us working across borders.

🎧 Listens

How Trump is Affecting Health Around the World – The Lancet Voice, 6 Feb 2025​The global health community is bracing for impact as the US administration pulls back foreign aid.

👉 Dr. Gavin Yamey, the lead author of The Lancet’s Commission on Investing in Health, talks about what Trump’s return means for global health. Earlier this week, I wrote about China’s health role in the global south, with relation to USAID cuts and funding freezes. This episode provides sobering context for how geopolitics impacts donor funding, multilateral systems and the health of fragile states.

I highly recommend The Lancet Voice podcast as a great general listen, because the hosts and guests always remain focused on the technical outcomes. These scientists and real experts provide an informative, yet reliably grounded perspective of the latest global health and policy issues.

The Fallout of the US Aid Freeze - Catherine Nzuki and Andrew Friedman, CSIS, 6 Feb 2025
The implications of the USAID freeze on global health initiatives, particularly in Africa.

👉 This episode of the Afropolitan podcast explores how the USAID freeze affects organisations reliant on US funding and the broader consequences for international health programmes. This conversation sheds light on the interconnectedness of global health funding and policy decisions, including the dependency debate and how disruption may be a good thing for the African continent.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this round-up—until next time!

China’s health landscape is vast, evolving, and full of stories worth exploring together, and I want to make this newsletter more than just a one-way dispatch. I’ll keep listing what I like, but I’d love to hear from you too. Drop a comment, send a note and share what’s caught your eyes and ears recently.

Keep in touch,

Ruby

📝 This is a Doctor’s Notes post from China Health Pulse, where I share a curated prescription of my top reads and listens out there right now—so you don’t have to do the digging.

📝 Welcome to the first installment of Doctor’s Notes, a new regular series from China Health Pulse where I share a curated list of my most interesting reads and listens.

I live and breathe health and China, which means I spend a lot amount of time sorting through good, bad and completely irrelevant stuff. Here, I’ll be sharing the best of what’s out there—so you don’t have to do the digging.

There’s been a lot to make sense of recently in the big world of health.

The West is still processing recent sweeping global aid cuts from the US, UK and beyond; and earlier this week, China just wrapped up its biggest political event of the year—the Two Sessions (I’ll be doing a deep dive in my next post!).

But it’s not all heavy stuff. There’s space for the unusual and unexpected too.

Here’s what caught my curiosity recently.

Share

📰 Short Reads/Articles

China Ramps Up Investment in Africa to Build a Health Silk Road - Hannah Crowe, The Telegraph, 27 Dec 2024
Beijing wants to boost its influence on the continent by building local healthcare capacity.

👉 I was interviewed for this Telegraph article about what China’s motivations in Africa means for global health partnerships. It was written before the recent USAID and UK ODA cuts, but it complements the Brookings report above quite well, because it looks at how China is stepping up its investments in African health systems as part of a broader push under the “Health Silk Road” to deepen ties and grow influence on the continent. While China’s moves may not be purely philanthropic (or pure), it’s clear that its presence—whether in building hospitals and labs, or to locally produce vaccines and medicines, is shifting global power dynamics and reshaping how healthcare is delivered.

It's Not Just AI: China's Medicines Are Surprising the World, Too - The Economist, 16 Feb 2025
China’s pharma and biotech industry is making huge strides in innovation.

👉 This Economist article is a solid reality check on where China’s drug development scene is headed. Gone are the days of low-cost generics dominating the story. Chinese biotech firms are now developing first-in-class drugs and making billion-dollar deals with global pharma.

Can China Fill the Void in Foreign Aid? - Yun Sun, Brookings Institute, 11 Mar 2025
As Western nations pull back, can China step up?

👉 This Brookings piece examines whether China can fill the gap left by significant cuts in US and UK foreign aid budgets. While China's aid programmes have grown, they often focus on infrastructure and loans rather than traditional humanitarian assistance. Given its own economic challenges, China may not prioritize expanding its aid to cover areas neglected by Western cuts. This is a hot topic right now, and this piece provides more nuanced points than others about the future landscape of global development assistance. I will be writing about this important topic in a future post.

Why 'Catastrophic' Medical Bills Are Hurting China's Economy - Joe Leahy & Wenjie Ding, Financial Times, 26 Feb 2025
​Medical debt isn’t just a personal crisis—it’s a macroeconomic issue for the country.

👉 This Financial Times article offers a sharp look at how healthcare costs are burdening rural Chinese families and why that matters for the economy. High out-of-pocket spending is pushing households to save more and spend less, dragging on domestic demand. A good entry point if you're interested in the links between health access, inequality and economic reform.

China’s Latest Health Trend? TCM Cocktails - Fan Yiying, SixthTone. 13 Mar 2025
Bars are are mixing ginseng with gin—and it’s raising eyebrows.

👉 This SixthTone piece is a great window into the quirky collisions between tradition and modernity. Young people are sipping cocktails infused with traditional Chinese medicine ingredients like deer antler and goji, sparking debates over safety and legality. It’s fun, yes—but it’s also a reminder that the ancient roots of TCM are evolving everywhere in modern China, including in its nightlife scene, and public health regulators are finding it hard to keep up. I’m very keen to explore TCM’s deeper role in China’s health system in a future post, and SixthTone is always a great resource for insightful yet brilliantly offbeat commentary on China’s society—I’ll definitely be sharing many more reads of theirs.

📚 Longer Reads/Books

Deep China: The Moral Life of the Person - Edited by Arthur Kleinman
A layered, intimate look at how Chinese people make sense of illness, care and personhood.

👉 Professor Kleinman is basically a living legend in the world of medical anthropology—and this is my favourite among his many works. It’s an anthology of essays co-written with seven Chinese scholars, and it powerfully explores how Chinese people navigate suffering, responsibility and healing, as the self vs the collective (whether that’s families, communities or society at large). I’ve returned to it many times, not just as a health researcher, but in trying to understand my own Chinese roots and how I and my family view health and sickness in similar and different ways. This is an essential recommendation from me.

Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food - by Fuchsia Dunlop
A deep dive into how food shapes health and culture in China.

👉 I thoroughly enjoyed this well-researched and deliciously written book on Chinese food—not just as cuisine, but as a rich philosophy of nourishment and healing. Dunlop captures how ingredients and eating habits are bound up in medical thinking, regional identity and long-held cultural beliefs. But she also doesn’t shy away from the health costs of change: as diets shift with urbanisation and globalisation, so too do the rates of chronic disease.

🎧 Listens

China’s Biotech Boom - The Big Take Podcast, Bloomberg – Hosted by Sarah Holder, with guest Tim Opler, 10 Mar 2025

👉 This brisk overview charts the rise of China’s biopharma industry—spotlighting Big Pharma deals, global investment, and a new generation of drugs developed in China. Guest Tim Opler paints a picture of a country pushing into medical innovation fast, sometimes ahead of its regulatory guardrails. To note that some of the framing here makes sweeping assumptions about how China’s health system operates - thanks to Jordan at ChinaTalk for flagging this to me! With that said, I still recommend the episode, but for a more grounded take, I suggest that you read my post first: “Five Myths About China’s Health System” before hitting play.

How Alzheimer's Disease Will Test China - Drum Tower Podcast, The Economist – Hosted by David Rennie & Alice Su, 7 May 2024

👉 The Drum Tower podcast rarely ventures into health, but when it does, it’s worth tuning in. This episode digs into China’s looming dementia crisis—and how an aging population, limited eldercare infrastructure and growing rates of Alzheimer’s are straining China’s system. Like Europe, Japan, and the US, China now faces one of the biggest shared burdens of our time: the rise of neurodegenerative and non-communicable diseases. This is a thoughtful and sobering listen.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this round-up—until next time!

I’ll keep sharing what I like, and I’d love to hear from you too.

China’s health landscape is vast, evolving, and full of stories worth exploring together, and I want to make this newsletter more than just a one-way dispatch.

Drop a comment, send a note and share what’s caught your eyes and ears this month.

Stay in touch,

Ruby

Subscribe now

We’ve just lived through a pandemic that changed the world. COVID showed us how China is reshaping the future of the health landscape, in ways that are big, messy and deeply consequential.

The world is now watching China’s every move in health - vaccine diplomacy, AI medicine, regulatory changes - but few are explaining it in a way that is both accessible and engaging to read.

I see sweeping, breathless headlines - China dominates in biotech! The US is losing influence in global health! or else dry and impenetrable reports that make your eyes glaze over.

The middle ground is missing. That’s why I created this newsletter.

An informed but informal space that discusses these issues with reliable clarity. A place where I can ponder the big health questions that keep me brainstorming and daydreaming. A resource that brings analysis as well as heart - and perhaps even a bit of humour.

Hi, I’m Ruby. I’m a British-Chinese doctor, and I’ve spent my career traversing intersections of medicine, policy and industry. I have led teams in government, international organisations, multi-national companies as well as start-ups. I now run my own strategy consultancy, LINTRIS Health, splitting my time between the UK, China and beyond - sometimes in hospital scrubs, other times in Zoom or real boardrooms. No matter where I am, I’m always thinking about how to bridge the siloed health landscapes between East and West for my clients and my patients.

Practicing medicine remains one of the most meaningful parts of my work, and it reminds me that health is rooted within the everyday decisions made by patients, doctors, as well as those working at the higher levels. These choices shape lives, and these voices matter when it comes to connecting people, creating ideas and making change happen.

This newsletter is where I bring those multidisciplinary perspectives together. I report from up close to write about China’s health system as someone who has lived and worked inside it. I explain what’s happening, why it matters, and how it connects to bigger global shifts. I share stories from my own experiences—inside hospitals, strategy meetings, and cross-border negotiations—to bring these issues to life. That’s what I want to do here.

Subscribe now

What should you expect?

• Vital Signs - Key insights into major trends: biotech, health reform, digital health, geopolitics, and more.

• Real Diagnosis - Timely deep dives into evolving health policies, market forces, and global influence.

• Doctor’s Notes - Curated reads and listens: helping you cut through the noise and get straight to the best bits.

• The CHP Podcast - Conversations and stories: from my own experiences to insights from the people on the ground.

China’s role in global health is too big to ignore, and too complex to be reduced to soundbites. But understanding it shouldn’t require a medical degree, a PhD in policy, or a corporate intelligence report.

If you’re curious about how China is reshaping global health, please subscribe, share and say hello. I’d love to hear from you.

Email. Linkedin. X.

Subscribe now