It really is a special feeling to hold my first book in print, and with publication coming up on 31 October, I’m looking forward to getting out, meeting readers and discussing the ideas in the book. You can already pre-order it online or request it through bookshops in the UK and US.

I introduced the book here on ChinaHealthPulse back in July, sharing why I wrote it, some of the personal stories behind it, and the questions it explores about China’s extraordinary transformations across healthcare, biotechnology and AI medicine.

At a time when China is making such remarkable advances in health innovation, while relations between countries are becoming increasingly complicated, understanding how this transformation happened and what it means for healthcare around the world feels particularly important.

I’ve already had some fascinating conversations about these questions, and wanted to share a few of them below.

There are plenty more to come! I’ll be speaking at events in London, Oxford and online over the next few weeks, with further dates planned for November, including in the US. I would love to meet some of you, hear your perspectives and find out what you make of the book!

Upcoming events

Friday 16 October | 2–3pm BST | Online

China-Britain Business Council: The Evolution of the Chinese Pharmaceutical Industry

In conversation with Elinor Greenhouse.

Monday 19 October | 10.30–11.30am | London

Lau China Institute, King’s College London

In conversation with Professor Kerry Brown, who very kindly wrote the foreword to the book.

Books will be available to purchase.

Wednesday 21 October | 12–1pm | Oxford

University of Oxford, Oxford China Centre

with Professor Todd Hall.

Friday 23 October | 4-5.30pm | London

Global Women Asia

Private residence; directly DM me for details and to RSVP.

Monday 2nd November | 7–8.30pm | London

London Business School.

Registration details to follow, books will be optionally included in the ticket.

More events are being planned for November, including in London and across the US East Coast. I'll continue to share details as they're confirmed.

Podcasts, webinars and conversations

Over the past few months, I’ve been discussing different aspects of China’s changing role in medicine, technology and global health with journalists, researchers and fellow China watchers. Here are some recent conversations and pieces.

Video: podcasts and webinars

• Sinica Podcast: From Barefoot Doctors to Biologics — A conversation with Kaiser Kuo about my book and China’s healthcare transformation, its historical roots and the country’s emergence as a global biotechnology power.

• Prof G / China Decode with Scott Galloway — I joined Alice Han and James Kynge to discuss the economic and national security implications of China’s rise in biotech.

• National Committee on U.S.-China Relations: U.S.-China Clinical Research: Speed, Evidence, and Global Competitiveness — A conversation with Dr Amy Abernethy, former Principal Deputy Commissioner of the US FDA, about why clinical trials can move faster in China, the trade-offs between speed and scientific rigour and what the US and China can learn from each other.

• Asia Scotland Institute: China’s Rise in Biotechnology, Digital Health and AI Medicine — I joined Hilda Fuentes, moderated by Jonathan Di Rollo, to discuss China’s rapid adoption of AI in healthcare, the opportunities and risks for patients and clinicians, and what healthcare systems in Peru, Latin America and beyond can learn from China’s experience.

Articles, interviews and media coverage

• Rest of World: China is excelling in health tech. That’s good news for the world — An interview about China’s biotechnology and digital health advances, and their growing international significance.

• Nature: China is changing the shape of global health. The terms are still up for negotiation — On China’s expanding health partnerships and how other countries can benefit from new opportunities while preserving local capacity and sovereignty.

• Journal of Medical Internet Research: When the Algorithm Starts Seeing the Patient First — On China’s rapid adoption of AI in healthcare and what this means for doctors, patients and health systems elsewhere.

• South China Morning Post: Rising US scrutiny on clinical trials could threaten China’s biotech advantage, by Xinmei Shen — On China’s advantages in faster, lower-cost clinical trials, and how growing US regulatory and political scrutiny could affect international biotech collaboration.

• Nature: China’s fast-track clinical trials are in the spotlight after child deaths, by Xiaoying You — On China’s investigator-initiated trials (IITs), the balance between speed, innovation and patient safety, and the growing importance of regulatory oversight as the country’s biotech sector advances.

Thank you to everyone who has followed and supported the journey so far. I'm very excited to finally share the book with you, and hope to see some of you at an event over the coming weeks!

I’ll keep this post updated with new events, interviews and articles as they come out.

For media enquiries, book reviews, podcasts or speaking invitations, please feel free to get in touch.

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Dear readers,

I am delighted to share that my new book, “China Cure: The Rise of a Biotech, AI Medicine and Global Health Superpower”, is now available everywhere for preorder - through bookshops and online (links below).

This book brings together a story that is usually told in separate pieces: China’s rise in biotech, AI medicine and digital health; its growing influence in global health; why these shifts now matter for economics, security, geopolitics and healthcare far beyond China, for patients, businesses and governments everywhere.

These have been the questions here at the heart of the ChinaHealthPulse newsletter and podcast, where I continue explore new developments as they happen, but China Cure brings them together into a single, longer account.

There are already stacks of great books out there on China’s politics, economy and technological progress, as well as many excellent volumes on global health, AI and the future of medicine. Beyond the bookshelves, there are also highly detailed industry and think-tank reports on pharmaceuticals, health security and strategic risk — some of which I have contributed to myself.

But an accessible book that connects all of these worlds in one place, or explains why China’s health innovation rise now matters to all of us, wherever we live and work? that did not yet exist.

So I decided to write my own.

I have spent my career moving across many of the worlds the book explores: clinical medicine, government and health diplomacy, global health and development, biotech and pharma, digital health and start-ups. That has given me the chance to see the same changes from very different vantage points — from hospital wards and policy meetings to company boardrooms and cross-border strategy.

China Cure is the first general-audience book focusing on this complex and fascinating space. And it is also my first book! Having been a voracious reader for as long as I can remember, writing a book of my own has been a long-held aspiration. The prospect of seeing it on bookshelves soon is enormously exciting, and I am deeply grateful to the many mentors, readers, colleagues and supporters who have helped along the way.

Endorsements

I am honoured that some of the China and health experts I respect the most, have so generously endorsed this book, including Kerry Brown, Rana Mitter, James Kynge and Siddharth Chatterjee, as well as:

“Ruby Wang offers a timely and incisive guide to China’s rising medical power and its international reach. This is a much-needed book”

Joe Studwell, author of How Asia Works and How Africa Works

“China is now a force to be reckoned with, especially in biotechnology and AI, with implications for patients and health systems everywhere. Ruby Wang is an exceptional guide to this transformation, uniquely combining clinical insight, policy experience and a deeply personal understanding to make this book compelling and authoritative.”

Dr , Professor Emeritus and former Special Advisor to the World Health Organization Director General

Why I wrote this book

CHP readers will already be familiar with the argument that runs through much of my work: healthcare increasingly matters far beyond health.

COVID-19 exposed the strategic importance of medical supply chains and the vulnerabilities created when countries cannot secure the medicines, equipment or expertise their populations need.

Biotechnology has become an arena of industrial competition. Medicines, health data and AI now sit inside debates about economic and national security in Washington, Westminster, Brussels and elsewhere.

And as Western development funding retreats, China is now playing a larger than ever role in how health systems across the developing world are financed, equipped and supported.

At the same time, China itself is still too often discussed in black and white: success or threat, opportunity or risk.

Through my consultancy, LINTRIS Health, I work with governments and think tanks, investors, biopharma and healthtech companies, and international organisations. They come to the table with very different priorities, but they often ask some version of the same questions:

What is happening in China? Why is it happening? And what does it mean for the all of us?

To answer, my instinct is always to step further back. I believe that, before trying to solve a problem, we need to understand the context and nuances of how it came into existence: the history, incentives, institutions, commercial pressures and political choices behind it. And in healthcare, we also need to ask who ultimately experiences the consequences.

A multibillion-dollar licensing deal (if it is not blocked by geopolitics or cross-border issues) may eventually become a life-saving medicine that someone receives, waits for or cannot afford. An AI health platform (if the regulations and ethics stand) may become continuity of care for a patient living hundreds of miles from a specialist, or someone too stigmatised or isolated to seek help in person. Those outcomes depend on regulation, evidence, economics and trust.

These are all reasons why I began this newsletter and podcast, and I will continue to explore these topics here, but the format of a book offers the space and structure to do something different, and exciting.

Long-form writing makes it possible to step back from the latest deal, policy or geopolitical dispute, so that we can look in greater depth at the whole, to better understand its parts: how China moved from importing Western medicines to exporting biotech innovation; why digital health expanded so quickly and how patients, doctors and health systems are responding; how state policy, commercial competition and global health needs interact; and why the consequences now reach far beyond China to all of us, everywhere.

Telling the story through people

I wanted the analysis to be rigorous, but the storytelling to remain accessible.

China Cure moves through the places where big, high-level problems are felt on the ground: hospital wards, family conversations, factory floors, embassy meetings and company boardrooms. The book draws on my own work across clinical medicine, government and health diplomacy, global health, biopharma and health technology, as well as the healthcare journeys of my family between China and the West.

• Twenty years ago, when my grandmother developed advanced cancer in Hangzhou, my family fought to obtain an extraordinarily expensive Western drug that helped save her life. Today, Chinese companies are developing cancer treatments that Western pharmaceutical groups are competing to license, and Chinese-origin medicines are beginning to reach patients around the world.

• My mother’s experience tells another part of the story. Living in Britain, she has increasingly looked to China for parts of her care, including advanced imaging, surgical technology and digitally enabled services, because of differences in speed, access and the technologies available. Her choices reflect a much wider change: China is no longer simply catching up in health technology. In some areas, patients are encountering tools and models of care there that remain less embedded elsewhere.

• And during the pandemic, I moved from treating patients in London to leading the UK government’s health team at the British Embassy in Beijing. Much of our work at the time assumed that expertise and best practice flowed from the West towards China. That direction now looks far less certain.

Through these personal stories, I hope to show how rapidly China’s role in health has changed, and why that shift now matters for scientific competition, commercial strategy, health security, global influence and the care patients ultimately receive.

What the book covers

China Cure begins with the crises, cultural forces and political choices that created China’s modern health system.

It then follows the country’s scientific and biotechnology rise; the development of digital health and AI medicine; what that innovation has meant for patients and doctors; and the institutions, companies, investors and policymakers that determine what scales and what stalls.

The final part looks outward, at China’s growing health role across borders and at the gap that can emerge between perception, policy and what actually happens on the ground:

• For Western countries, China’s rise raises questions about pharmaceutical competition, scientific leadership, supply chains, economic prosperity and national security.

• And across Africa, Asia and Latin America, the calculation can look very different. Chinese medicines, technologies and infrastructure may offer more affordable and scalable options at a time when many traditional donors are pulling back. They also raise questions about evidence, regulation, data, local capacity and dependence.

I hope this book can show readers just show how dramatically China’s role in health has reversed in such a short time, and why that shift has become so important not only for who develops new medicines, who controls critical technologies, how countries manage health security, but what care ultimately reaches patients.

I have tried to resist easy conclusions; the book does not present China as a model to copy, or reduce its rise to a threat to contain. Rather, its aim is to explain the progress, failures, incentives and tensions clearly enough that readers can better-understand, and therefore make better-informed judgements, about what these changes mean, and what is to come

Who this book is for:

I wrote China Cure partly for people working across healthcare, biotech, health technology, investment, policy, global health and China.

I also wrote it for anyone who keeps seeing headlines about China’s scientific and medical rise and wants one accessible account of what is changing, why it is so important, and how it may affect their own work, health system or lives.

We should not need a medical degree, a policy doctorate or an industry report to understand a transformation that is already affecting patients, companies and governments around the world.

How to get your copy:

China Cure is now available everywhere for pre-order.

Global: Amazon, or at your bookshop (ask for China Cure/quote ISBN 9781788219549)

UK: Foyles, Bookshop.org

US: Barnes & Noble, Columbia University Press

Pre-orders help publishers and booksellers assess demand, decide how widely to stock it and give it a better chance of reaching readers beyond those who already know my work.

Over the coming weeks and months, I will be sharing extracts and more details of in-person events in the UK, US and beyond - watch this space!

Please get in touch if you would like to feature or review my book in media platforms, podcasts and events.

Thank you, as always, for supporting CHP and being a part of this community!