In 2002, the Chinese leadership announced a change in national welfare policy:
Voluntary medical schemes at county level, called the “New Rural
Co-operative Medical System” should cover all counties by 2010. This
article addresses the main characteristics of this system, analyses the
introduction of local schemes based on our own field studies in one Kazak county
of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region since 2006, and argues that the fast
progressing of the local scheme and the flexibility shown by local
administrators in considering structural and procedural adjustments are not the
result of central directives but of local initiatives. Recentralization from the
township governments to functional departments in the provincial and the central
state administration is only one aspect of current rural governance.
Complementary forms of locally embedded responsiveness to the needs of health
care recipients are crucial in restructuring the administration and discharge of
health care. These new modes of governance are different from the hierarchical
control and institutionalized representation of interests of the local
population.