Health Silk Road: The Chinese Way to Global Health Governance

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected millions of lives, triggering an unprecedented global health, economic, social and humanitarian crisis. While China aspires to participate in global health governance, WHO also hopes to strengthen global health governance by strengthening cooperation with China on China’s Health Silk Road (HSR). This study uses the critical and comparative analysis method, system analysis method, and literature research method. Analysis is conducted through Chinese and foreign policy documents, official speeches, expert and public surveys, Chinese and other national media publications; the source database for the study from 1949 to 2022 has been collected from the official Chinese government website, think tanks, WHO database for key health indicators, etc. The paper categorizes China’s participation in global health governance into four stages and summarizes the different characteristics of different periods; it reviews China’s position in global health governance and examines the interaction of China’s HSR with the international community on global health governance. COVID-19 accelerates the process of HSR, and the latter helps WHO to strengthen global health governance. China has provided valuable experience in global health governance “with Chinese characteristics” contributing to world health governance during the pandemic.