China Engages Global Health Governance

"Lai-Ha Chan's book is an important contribution to the growing literature on the nature of China's integration into the international community. As the first book-length study of China's participation in global health governance, it provides a valuable in-depth analysis of the tensions between China's attachment to the traditional Westphalian world order and US efforts to generate a new world order based on freedom and democracy. It reveals China's failure to adequately support the developing world in matters of global health and highlights and explains the unstable nature of China's current relations with both the developed and developing world in the area of global health and beyond." - Ann Kent, ANU College of Law, Australian National University

"The rise of China challenges global institutions. Anyone curious about how liberal international regimes can accommodate China's difference and how far China is ready to adapt to global institutions should consult Dr. Lai-Ha Chan's careful and thoughtful research into China's participation in international institutions for public health. Drawing from her own experience in the front line of the 2003 SARS epidemic in addition to extensive research into China's approach to global integration, Dr. Chan examines what has traditionally been seen as a 'low politics' area of engagement to provide a useful index of China's identity and participation in international institutions. Her sober analysis of China's readiness to compromise national interest for the sake of the global commons yields insights both for students of global governance concerned about future trends and foreign relations scholars watching China's impact on the world stage." - Jeremy Paltiel, Professor of Political Science, Carleton University, Canada

"This is the first major study of China and global health governance. The rapid development of the country over the past thirty years is impacting fundamentally, not only on China's domestic health system, but on its engagement with global health issues. This book offers much needed analysis of the implications of these changes for the field of global health, as well as international relations more broadly. Global health is yet another field where China's rising status is likely to mean it will no longer be business as usual." - Kelley Lee, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine