Since Communist Party charirman Deng Xiaoping launched his “open door” policy in 1978, China has witnessed probably the most dramatic burst of wealth creation in human history, writes The Economist. Its income per head has increased sevenfold in that time: more than 400 million people have been lifted out of severe poverty, according to the World Bank.
But as with any vast transformation, there has been a price to pay. One casualty of the freeing up of Chinas economy has been its state health-care system, which has in effect collapsed.
Life-expectancy in parts of the country, particularly in the west, may actually now be falling. Diseases like tuberculosis and measles, which had been thought tamed, are making their return, and amid the disarray of the system, a new infection, HIV, is rapidly taking hold, according to the World Bank press review Friday.
Burdened by the costs of modernizing its economy, but receiving only a modest tax take, the governments deficit has been increasing. Over the last 20 years, the share of health spending picked up by central government has roughly halved. Health insurance barely exists outside the cities, so even a minor illness can easily push a family into appalling debt. This means that in some areas poverty is growing.
Pollution is an invariable consequence of development everywhere, but in China it is reaching scandalous proportions. The World Bank reckons that China is home to 16 of the worlds 20 most polluted cities.
The World Bank concludes that pollution is costing China an annual 8-12 percent of its 1,4 trillion US dollar GDP, about 170 billion dollar annually, in direct damage, such as the impact on crops of acid rain, medical bills, lost work from illness, money spent on disaster relief following floods and the implied costs of resource depletion.
With health costs escalating, that figure will increase, giving rise to some grim prognoses that growth itself will be undermined.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
