(Over)eating success: The health consequences of the restoration of capitalism in rural China

This paper reviews and evaluates some of the changes that have occured in the Chinese health care system during the reform era associated with Deng Xiaoping (1978-1993). The reforms have helped to enrich the long suffering peasants in the Chinese countryside, and in many areas the peasants have experienced a significant improvement in the quality of their lives, including greater access to health care facilities, and better diets. The paper also considers some of the potentially negative side effects of the reform era, including the increasing income inequality between urban and rural areas; the commodification of Chinese medicine; declining access to health care for peasants in the poorest regions; and a concern about the changing patterns of diet and nutrition in the newly enriched parts of the Chinese countryside.economic restructuring, health care delivery, commodification, Mao Zedong Deng Xiaoping, dietary practices, epidemiological transition