China’s health and hygiene concept has had more influence across the world than inside the country in the last 40 years since the reform and opening-up policy was brought into force.

As health is a common desire and fundamental interest of all human beings, China has highly valued global health governance, advocated global health emergency cooperation and promoted the sustainable development of building a community with a shared future for mankind.

The Chinese government has always striven to undertake its international responsibilities and obligations, from helping in the fight against the Ebola epidemic that broke out in West Africa in 2014 to assisting with Nepal’s devastating earthquake in 2015. From the appointment of the first Chinese head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Margaret Chan, to the dissemination of more recognized traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), China has become an important “public exporter” of global health.

During the past half century, China has sent over 20,000 medical staff to 67 countries and regions, treating patients over 260 million times.

When an Ebola epidemic broke out in West Africa in 2014, China immediately sent 1,200 medical workers and public health experts to the affected areas. China’s constant health aid to the African continent has built a friendship bridge with African countries.

China has been actively working with the WHO in health sectors, especially in non-smoking campaigns and healthy lifestyle promotion, and the WHO has set up more than 60 collaborating centers in China.

Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun, the Chinese candidate, was elected as WHO’s Director-General in November 2006, the first Chinese to take the post since the organization was set up 58 years ago.

In November 2011, Chan was recommended by the Chinese government to run for a second term and was re-elected, as the only candidate, at the 65th World Health Assembly in Geneva on May 23, 2012. Chan ended her second term and 25 years of WHO service on June 30, 2017.

During her tenure Chan witnessed China’s active participation in pushing forward global health and massive aid for world health.

In 2015, President Xi Jinping announced China’s $2 million cash assistance to the WHO and 100 new hospitals and clinics in developing countries during his speech at the United Nations’ high-level roundtable on South-South cooperation in New York on Sept 26.

The next day, the president vowed that China would help developing countries to build 100 projects related to the healthcare of women and children, invited 30,000 women from those countries for training in China and offered them scholarship assistance as he addressed the global leaders’ meeting on gender equality and women's empowerment.

President Xi on Dec 4 of that year promised to implement a China-Africa public health plan, one of the "10 major plans" he announced for cooperation with Africa, during his remarks at the opening ceremony of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.

President Xi paid a historic visit to the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland in January 2017 during a Davos trip to meet WHO Director-General Chan.

Witnessed by President Xi and Chan, China and the WHO signed a memorandum of understanding on the Belt and Road Initiative that focused on health and agreed to jointly implement it. The WHO has become the first global organization under the UN to have signed such an agreement with China.

Xi also attended a ceremony to donate a bronze statue featuring China's traditional acupuncture to the WHO.

The highest level meeting in the health promotion area, the 9th Global Conference on Health Promotion (GCHP), was held in Shanghai in November 2016 and placed health promotion at the center of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which was hailed as a new start for health promotion.

Premier Li Keqiang attended the opening ceremony and made a speech on China’s role in promoting global health. WHO Director-General Chan, together with about 1,200 representatives from international institutions, as well as health ministers and mayors of healthy cities from over 120 countries, participated in the conference.

Two outcome documents, the Shanghai Declaration on Promoting Health in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Shanghai Consensus on Healthy Cities, offer pathways for advancing health promotion and addressing the determinants of health through good governance, healthy cities, health literacy and social mobilization.

“The tremendous change that China has gone through is merely a start after 40 years’ reform and opening-up,” said Chan. “The country will bring more surprises to the world in the following 40 years.”

Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, one of the world's most prestigious and best known medical journals, published an article entitled China's rejuvenation in health. He wrote, “China’s Government has made health a foundation for its development. These reforms are part of what China’s political leaders see as the country’s great rejuvenation. And here outsiders can only understand China’s thinking in the context of the country’s turbulent history.”

Health is a prerequisite for people's all-round development and economic and social development. 

Forty years after the reform and opening-up, China’s top leadership has put health at the center of the government’s policy and “Healthy China 2030” has been adopted as China’s national strategy.

As China pays tribute to the great reforms, the Chinese people are ready to march towards the next 40 years and a more glorious future with stronger bodies and a higher spirit.