Lawton Robert Burns

I first wish to thank Wharton’s Vice Dean for Wharton Global Initiatives, Professor Harbir Singh. Harbir not only encouraged me to travel to China in August 2009 as part of a Wharton Faculty immersion but also arranged the site visit to the Guanghua School of Management and my first meeting with Professor Gordon G. Liu. Harbir subsequently encouraged me to teach Wharton’s first GMC on “India’s Healthcare Industry” (2010) and a subsequent GMC on “China’s Healthcare Industry and Reform” (2012). When asked to do the latter, I immediately reached out to Gordon to assist me with the course and stage it at the Guanghua School of Management.

I cannot thank Gordon enough for his willingness to co-teach the class with someone he barely knew and who was a relative newcomer to both global health and the Chinese context. Gordon shared a lot of research and invaluable insight into China’s healthcare system to help me get up to speed. Based on my experience at Wharton and other business schools, it is unusual for economists like Gordon to teach and write with management professors like myself. We are trained very differently, think very differently, and conduct research very differently. After six years of dialogue and collaboration, Gordon and I have found it very easy to work together in compiling this volume.

I also thank Professor Ziv Katalan, Managing Director for Wharton Global Initiatives, who steadfastly supported and encouraged me in teaching both GMCs. Ziv actually flew to one of the sites and attended class in order to assist me. I am also grateful to Wharton’s Dean, Geoffrey Garrett, who graciously attended a “master class” on China’s healthcare system that I taught in Beijing during the summer of 2014.

In fashioning the course curriculum and lecture material, I necessarily relied on a lot of people who have studied the topic for some time. These included, first of all, Professor Liu, a distinguished scholar of China’s healthcare system. I also relied heavily on several Wharton and Guanghua teaching assistants, all of whom were Chinese and had worked in the industry, or had studied various sectors in China. They include (in alphabetical order): Di Cai, Cang Fu, Vivian Hsu, Jennifer Lee, Tianyue Ruan, Yonghui Shi, Xi Xie, Ying Zhang, and Yanan Zhu. I have also learned a considerable amount from the healthcare industry executives who came to speak to our Guanghua class or sent me background reading material (again, in alphabetical order): Chuan Chen, James Deng, James Huang, Rachel Lee, Xiaofeng Liang, Roberta Lipson, Katherine Lu, Li Ma, Jeff Towson, Jian Wang, Xiaobin Wu, and Xin Zhang. Finally, I wish to thank some of my friends in the consulting community who shared with me presentations on China’s healthcare industry: Claudia Suessmuth-Dyckerhoff and Jonathan Wang.

Every author knows the singular importance of a good editor and editorial help. Many thanks to Chris Harrison and Paula Parish at Cambridge University Press for adroitly seeing the potential of a volume like this. My administrative assistant, Tina Horowitz, did excellent work in editing this entire volume. I hired her exclusively for this task and she did not disappoint.

Finally, I want to thank my wife, Alexandra, who initially suggested to me that I ought to get more “global” in my research and consider countries like China. She has patiently endured the last nine months as Gordon and I prepared this volume.

Gordon G. Liu

First of all, my greatest thanks go to Professor Robert Burns for inviting me to join in this great effort to prepare this volume. It has been an honor and a wonderful opportunity to co-teach the joint Wharton–Guanghua MBA course on China’s healthcare system and reform held four years ago at PKU’s Guanghua School of Management. It was really his idea, courage, and leadership to develop such a comprehensive syllabus for the class, followed by his highly professional and patient guidance in editing the book. I have enjoyed greatly and learned so much from Robert throughout the class and the editorial work.

Second, I wish to thank our teaching assistants for the class and my research assistants for assisting me in editing some of the chapters. In particular, I want to thank Mr. Sam Krumholz for his major contribution to a chapter we have co-authored in this volume, and also for his extremely helpful assistance in my other related research. Sam is currently pursuing his PhD in Economics at UCSD. I am also very grateful to the students from both Wharton and Guanghua, who took the class in 2012 and 2013, for their contribution through active participation, discussion, and feedback. Their contribution was crucial to making this volume more comprehensive and interesting.

Finally, I want to join Robert again in thanking all the chapter contributors for their input to this volume. I trust we will find more opportunities in the future to conduct collaborative work.