China Research

Many foreign analysts are complaining about insufficient speed, volume and transparency when it comes to reforms of the (domestic) Chinese banking sector. Sure, such criticism may be motivated. It certainly is more urging to ambitiously reform the lagging domestic banking industry than speeding up the attempt of making the yuan an internationally widely used and acknowledged currency.

If one regards transparency of the banking sector and the official institutions behind it as poor, it certainly must be concluded that transparency of Chinese insurance business and insurance institutions is even much more insufficient. Particularly foreign insurance firms are waiting for more fairness, also pointing at the uneven application of regulations on domestic and foreign insurance companies. Foreigners feel discriminated.

To be honest, I do not consider Western insurance companies as very transparent either. However, I see transparency of the Chinese insurance business far behind the Western all the same. And this shortcoming is even more pronounced what concerns insurance products. China is an extremely underinsured country. The Chinese deserve better insurance options, even if not the whole people initially can benefit from all the necessary reforms (which, however, hopefully will not happen too far away).

Hubert Fromlet
Senior Professor of International Economics, Linnaeus University
Editorial board

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About a dozen years ago, I visited Japan and got there the opportunity of watching some demonstrations of it- related health/sickness treatment connections from patients’ homes to hospitals.

I really got impressed then which resulted in an article in one of the major Swedish morning papers, thinking about future applications in Swedish precautionary and medical care. However, too little happened in Sweden in this specific area.

Now I have visions that China may take advantage of all the new opportunities that e-health may offer already now but particularly in the future. Swedish firms and institutions should make every effort to be invited to this development.

The theoretical potential is enormous. China is a gigantic country with almost 1.4 billion people living there. Demographic changes will be substantial in the forthcoming decades. The Chinese are getting older. More sickness from the poor environment will show up. Precautionary healthcare will become increasingly important.

China’s healthcare system is still very underdeveloped. Hospitals are underfunded, affected by bureaucracy, corruption and long waiting times. Improvements are really needed.

IT solutions could help, for example, to prepare bookings, medical information, consulting, diagnosis, treatment, e-prescriptions etc. – not only in the regional neighborhood but all over the whole country.

However, there is still a major catch. Appropriate regulations for the e-health sector do not exist yet. We remember that deregulation is not the only word for China’s future. Sometimes even regulation may be more suitable.

Hubert Fromlet
Senior Professor of International Economics, Linnaeus University
Editorial board

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