The Proposal of the CCCPC on Making the 13th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development has put forward the guiding thought of securing a decisive victory in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, as well as major goals and fundamental philosophy for economic and social development during the ‘13th Five-year Plan’. As emphasized in the Proposal, we should stick to innovative development, work hard to enhance the quality and efficiency of development, stick to green development, work hard to improve eco-environment, stick to open development, work hard to achieve win-win cooperation, stick to shared development, work hard to improve the people’s wellbeing, strengthen the Party’s leadership, so as to firmly guarantee the realization of the ‘13th Five-year Plan’. Concerning the people’s health, the Proposal has put forward a series of plans, goals and measures, such as implementing the healthy China program, improving social security system, promoting balanced development of population, etc.

Interpretations on China’s policies on health industry

The 18th CPC National Congress clearly defined the goal of completing the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects in 2020. Health is a necessary condition in promoting all-round development of the people, we need to stick to the orientation of serving the people in health work and the principle of giving priority to disease prevention, and improve national health policy.

The 18th CPC National Congress clearly defined the goal of completing the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects in 2020. Health is a necessary condition in promoting all-round development of the people, we need to stick to the orientation of serving the people in health work and the principle of giving priority to disease prevention, and improve national health policy.

On 8 August, 2016, as signed and approved by Premier Li Keqiang, the State Council printed and distributed the National Scientific and Technological Innovation Planning in the 13th Five-year Plan (Guo Fa [2016] No.43, hereinafter referred to as the Planning), which clearly stated the guiding thought, overall requirements, strategic tasks and reform measures for national scientific and technological innovation in the next five years. In the 70-thousand-character text of the Planning biomedicine has been mentioned for more than 30 times. It points out that, we should strengthen prevention and control of severe infectious diseases, promote the modernization of traditional Chinese medicines and the development of big health industry, accelerate the domestic, high-end and brand manufacturing of digital diagnosis and treatment equipments, build high-level scientific and technological innovation bases, and focus on solving major scientific and technological problems which limit economic and social development and are related to national security, through tirelessly capturing core technologies such as innovation and manufacturing of new medicines, prevention and control of infectious diseases, etc. Meanwhile, supportive policies shall be made for related fields. On the National Hygiene and Health Conference between 19 to 20 August, 2016, President Xi Jinping gave a key speech, in which he emphasized that, there won’t be a moderately prosperous society in all respects without public health. We should put the people's health in a prioritized strategic status, speed up the building of Healthy China,with popularizing healthy lifestyles, optimizing health services, improving health security, building healthy environments, developing the health industry as the key points, work hard to guarantee the people's health in an all-round and full-cycle way, so as to lay a solid health foundation for achieving the two centenary goals and realizing the China Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation.

The health industry will reach a scale of 8 trillion yuan by 2020.

With the implementation of the 13th Five-year Plan, Healthy China is also officially raised to a 'national strategy'. To exploit the blue ocean of the big health industry, domestic enterprises are rushing to propose the 'Re-startup' strategy. This wave of business startup is meant to follow the trend of global economic development based on the big health industry, in order to gain acceleration and increments, and achieve cross-industry integration and innovative development as well. The big health industry is a sunrise industry following the heels of IT industry, which claims close attention from countries all over the world. The output of health industry accounts for more than 15% of GDP in developed countries, while it's only 4% ~ 5% in China, less than many developing countries. Currently, the annual profit of health industry in China is approximately USD 90 billion, while the output of health industry in the USA has surpassed USD 1 trillion.

To improve this situation effectively, and bring out the huge potential of big health industry, the government has put it forward that, by 2020, a health service system covering the whole life cycle, rich in content and well-structured will be basically established, a group of famous brands and a health service industrial cluster running in a virtuous cycle will be forged, which will possess certain degree of international competitive strength and basically satisfy the health service demands of the people in general. The overall size of health service industry will grow to more than 8 trillion yuan, making it a major force in driving sustainable economic and social development.

The health care industry will reach trillion-scale by the end of 2016.

The government’s support to health industry has been increasing since 2013. Not only that nutrition and health care foods have been included in the 12th Five-year Plan for the first time ever, their direction of development, overall planing and development goals have been specified, what’s more, cultivating health service industry and related supporting industries has been mentioned in the document released by the State Council, i.e., Several Opinions of the State Council on Promoting the Development of Health Service Industry. The health care industry is an important part of health industry in China. Currently, health care foods, health care products and health care services have reached an output of 660 billion yuan. In the food industry, the development direction and routine as well as the development layout and targets for nutrition and health care food have been clearly defined, which witnessed a growth of 20% at the end of 2016.

Supply-side structural reform and the big health industry in China

The health industry is a special sunrise industry concerned with national economy and the people's livelihood, whose wide coverage and long industry chain will affect the development of many industries of the national economy. Developing health industry will certainly be an important direction in promoting economic structure adjustment and supply-side structural reform. The health industry has every possibility in the background of the grand “Healthy China” plan orchestrated by the central government! Strategically farsighted and holistic-minded entrepreneurs can emerge as winners in this stage of social and market transformation through adjusting company strategy on the “supply-side”, creating new consumer market and fostering new points of economic growth. Three key elements of supply-side reform are “capacity optimization”, “international cooperation” and “attaching importance to people's livelihood” respectively, among which “attaching importance to people's livelihood” is to earnestly develop the big health industry and industries oriented to people's livelihood. We need to clearly understand the laws of newly developed industries and the evolving path of global new technologies, and prioritize the development of the big health industry, with “people-oriented” as the core values, guided by people’s aspiration for a “happy life”, and by combining people’s desire for happiness and cutting-edge technological innovations all over the world.

Prospect Analysis of the Big Health Industry

Big health industry in essence is a generalized concept of health, which comes into being with the expansion of people’s ideas on health. It’s related with people’s clothing, food, shelter and means of traveling, care during childbirth, old age and illness, as well as burial arrangements, focuses on a wide varieties of risky factors and misunderstandings which affect the health, and advocate health self-management, that is to say, not only a healthy lifestyle required, but also correct ideas about health. Big health industry is an industrial cluster related with health which comes into being with the expansion of people’s ideas on health. Big health industry can be classified into two major sectors, i.e., the big health industry focusing on products and the big health industry focusing on services, both put the privilege on prevention and health care. According to related economic resarch data from the U.S. Department of Commerce, health industry in the USA is the fifth biggest industry following the manufacturing industry, service industry, finance & insurance industry and real estate industry, which is also the industry seeing the fastest growth in the past decade, accounting for 8.8% of the GDP. Big health industry in the USA is different from that in China. Compared with its U.S. counterpart, big health industry in China is still in the initial stage, there is a lot of space for upgrading and improvements concerning industry segmentation and structure optimization. China’s big health industry is increasingly taking up a bigger share in global market, and becoming more important as well. In the past 3～5 years, China’s big health industry accounted for less than 2% of global market. In the past decade, emerging markets of the “BRICS” with China as the mainstay, contributes only 6% to the absolute value of global big health industry, while so far as 2008, this figure has grown to be nearly 30%. It is forecast that in the following years, the fast-developing “BRICS” countries led by China will maintain the momentum of fast growth, which will bring its share of business opportunities.