๐๏ธEpisode Details
Guest: Dr Ruby Wang
Title: Update on the Chinese Health Care System
Host: Lyric Hughes Hale
Producer: Sam Fu
Recorded: Tues Dec 16, 2025 ยท 60 minutes
Our last podcast of the year is about a subject that is close to my heart: the Chinese health care system. And I cannot think of a better person to discuss this topic with than Dr Ruby Wang, speaking to us from London.
Speaking of health, you might be able to tell that I was a little hoarse from a cold. but I am glad that I (hopefully) got that annual winter experience over before the new year.
If you have time over the long holiday weekend, I think you will enjoy this conversation as much as I did. A peaceful, prosperous, and yes, healthy New Year to all of our subscribers!
๐ฌ ๐๐๐๐พ๐ธ
๐๏ธ Host of the Hale Reportยฎ
๐Chicago
In Episode 76 of The Hale Reportยฎ Lyric Hughes Hale speaks with Dr Ruby Wang about how Chinaโs health care system actually worksโits strengths, fragilities, and contradictionsโand what it reveals about state capacity, trust, and notably, global risk.
About Ruby Wang
Ruby Wang is a UK-trained physician and global health strategist focused on Chinaโs health care system and its global implications. She is the founder of Lintris Health, a cross-border health care and life sciences advisory firm, and the author of China Health Pulse, a Substack newsletter and podcast.
Born in China and raised in the UK, Dr Wang brings a rare cross-cultural perspective to how healthcare, technology, and geopolitics intersect. She trained in medicine and neuroscience at Cambridge University and later earned a masterโs degree in health and technology policy at Tsinghua University as a Schwarzman Scholar. She has worked with the UK government and the United Nations in China and is currently an Honorary Fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
Why This Conversation Matters Now
Chinaโs rise has been analyzed through many lensesโtrade, technology, military power, and demographics. Yet one critical system remains deeply misunderstood in the West: health care.
Over the past decade, China has undertaken one of the fastest health care transformations in modern history, integrating digital platforms, data-driven medicine, biotech innovation, and state capacity at extraordinary scale. It has done so while confronting rapid aging, declining birthrates, a rising incidence of chronic disease, and intensifying geopolitical strain.
๐ค Key Moments
โ Chinaโs transformation has been so rapidโwhat was true five years ago is no longer true today.
โ China is always a paradoxโand that exists in the health care setting as well.
โ I see health care digital infrastructure in China being very mature in comparison to even Western systems like the UK and Europe and the US.
โ In China, when patients are treated, the doctors talk to the family members to make decisions rather than the patient themselves.
โ Disease surveillance requires every member of the population to use it for it to be successful.
โ You donโt encourage and foster original innovation in one area by cutting it off from somewhere else.
๐ Takeaways
In this 60-minute conversation, Lyric Hughes Hale and Ruby Wang discuss:
Why Western assumptions about Chinaโs health care system lag reality
Speed, scale, and state capacityโand why they matter
Innovation alongside inequality in Chinaโs ruralโurban divide
Doctors under strain: incentives, burnout, and patient violence
Who really pays for careโand why โuniversal coverageโ isnโt free
Privacy, data, and collectivism in medical decision-making
AI, biotech, and Chinaโs growing role in global health care innovation
COVID as a stress testโand the lessons still unlearned
Pharmaceutical supply chains, decoupling risks, and global cooperation
๐ฌ After we finished recording, our producer Sam Fu, who, like our guest is also a medical professional, Sam and Ruby had a wonderful conversation about the differences between the US and Chinese hospital systems. I wish we had recorded that discussion as well, but let me take this opportunity to thank both Sam for all he does for the Hale Report throughout the year, and Ruby for joining us.
In Closing: Health Care is More than a SectorโIt is a Lens
One point runs through this entire conversation. Chinaโs health care system is neither a dystopia nor a miracle. It is fast, hypercompetitive, technologically ambitious, and capable of operating at enormous scaleโbut it is also uneven, underinsured, and under intense social pressure.
Understanding that tension matters. It explains why doctors are under strain, why competition becomes corrosive, and why global cooperation, whether on pandemics, biologics, or supply chains, is far more complicated than it appears from the outside. And very hard to unwind.
Health care is one of the clearest windows we have into how China governs, how society absorbs stress, and how global risk travels. And if we donโt understand that system as it actually exists rather than as we imagine it, we risk misunderstanding far more than medicine.
