ABSTRACT
Developments in China's health care system remain unique into the 1990s. Health policy issues that China's leaders have had to face are basically no different than those faced in other countries, be they Western developed nations or agricultural and industrializing third world nations. China, containing one billion people, organizes its health care system with relationships to important political units. The problems of distribution of services and personnel have been chronic, and constitute the single most difficult challenge to Chinese health policy. All policy innovations and programs attempt to diminish the inequalities in the health system. In June of 1965, on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao announced a new health policy: a Barefoot Doctor program designed to deal with the continuing shortage of physicians for China's vast rural population. The Great Leap Forward paradoxically forced the rural health care system into a real dilemma.
