Xi Guides Healthy China Push as Plan Sets 80-Year Target

China’s average life expectancy has risen to 79.25 years, up from roughly 35 years in the early decades of the People’s Republic, as the country prepares to pursue an 80-year target by 2030 under a newly issued national health plan. A front-page feature in the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the CPC Central Committee, credits General Secretary Xi Jinping with personally directing the construction of a “Healthy China,” framing the effort as both a public-health drive and a central element of China’s modernization agenda.

Context: From Concept to National Strategy

Healthy China rose to the level of national strategy in 2016, when the Communist Party convened the National Health Conference and issued the Healthy China 2030 Planning Outline, which mandated that people’s health occupy a “strategic position of priority.” Since then, the People’s Daily article notes, the language surrounding the policy has escalated across successive five-year plans—from “advancing” Healthy China in the 13th Five-Year Plan, to “comprehensively advancing” it in the 14th, to “accelerating” it in the 15th.

The article presents a series of official statistics to mark what it calls historic achievements. By 2025, maternal and infant mortality rates continued to decline, and China’s main health indicators stood, in the paper’s words, at the forefront of upper-middle-income countries and nations with populations exceeding 100 million. The country has built what it describes as the world’s largest systems for medical services, traditional medicine, disease prevention and control, and medical security—comprising more than 1.1 million health institutions and over 16 million health workers. According to the article, more than 90 percent of residents can reach their nearest medical point within 15 minutes.

The paper attributes these gains to a health policy established in 2016 that emphasizes grassroots care, reform and innovation, prevention first, equal weight for Chinese and Western medicine, and integrating health into all policies.

Key Developments and Data

The feature highlights several areas of measurable progress, drawing on official figures:

Health system reform. Xi visited Shaxian General Hospital in Sanming, Fujian, in March 2021 to examine the city’s medical reforms, which center on linking medical services, insurance, and pharmaceuticals—a model later promoted nationally. In 2025, grassroots medical institutions recorded 5.65 billion visits, accounting for 53 percent of all national visits, according to the article. Basic medical insurance enrollment exceeds 1.3 billion people, with coverage holding steady at about 95 percent, and out-of-pocket spending fell to 27.1 percent of total health expenditure.

Public health infrastructure. China’s infectious disease surveillance system now covers 84,000 medical institutions and 1,323 sentinel hospitals, with the time from diagnosis to reporting shortened from 5.2 hours to 3.7 hours. Twenty-nine provinces have built biosafety level-3 laboratories. The article notes that China has been certified by the WHO for malaria elimination and has entered the ranks of countries with a medium-to-low tuberculosis burden.

Health literacy and environment. National health literacy reached 33.69 percent in 2025, with the 15th Five-Year Plan targeting 40 percent by 2030. By the end of 2025, rural sanitary toilet coverage reached about 77 percent and rural tap water coverage 96 percent.

Traditional Chinese medicine. TCM institutions exceeded 110,000 by the end of 2025, and the article cites UNESCO recognitions for the Huangdi Neijing and Bencao Gangmu, as well as the inclusion of a traditional-medicine chapter in the WHO’s ICD-11—the first such chapter originating from traditional Chinese medicine.

The People’s Daily also reported in April 2025 that China’s maternal and child health indicators rank near the top among upper-middle-income countries, with the World Health Organization listing China among ten high-performing countries in this area.

The 15th Five-Year Plan and the 2030 Targets

In mid-2026, the State Council issued the National Health 15th Five-Year Plan, which merges the development plan for health services with the plan for the health service system—described by health authorities as a “two plans in one” approach. Citing the National Health Commission, the plan’s targets for 2030 include consolidating healthy lifestyles, controlling the rise in major chronic diseases, reaching an average life expectancy of 80 years, and moving main health indicators into the ranks of high-income countries.

The plan’s background documents the demographic and epidemiological pressures shaping the strategy: an aging population, fewer children, regionally uneven growth, and a profound shift in the disease spectrum. Among its key programs are a project to strengthen the medical and health foundation, an expansion of rehabilitation and nursing capacity, support for about 1,000 county-level medical communities, expanded mental health services, and services for the elderly and children. The plan is intended to lay the foundation for building a Healthy China by 2035.

At a joint group meeting of political advisors in March 2026, Xi reiterated that China’s path of socialist health development and its new-era health policy “must not waver,” urging continued “strategic focus” on these fundamental questions.

Analysis

The People’s Daily feature is a state-media “guidance narrative,” aggregating official statistics and leader-directed policy achievements ahead of the 15th Five-Year Plan period. Its factual claims derive largely from government data, but it should be read as advocacy and documentary messaging rather than independent reporting—a framing consistent with the paper’s role as the official organ of the CPC Central Committee.

Even so, the underlying trends it describes reflect a genuine and substantial transformation. A life expectancy approaching 80 years, near-universal basic insurance coverage, and a shift in policy emphasis from treating illness to promoting health all mark a notable evolution in China’s approach to public health. The challenge embedded in the 2030 targets is equally clear: reaching 80 years, controlling chronic disease, and raising health literacy to 40 percent will require sustaining the momentum the plan describes against the headwinds of an aging population and a shifting disease burden.

What’s Next

The immediate test lies in implementation. The 15th Five-Year Plan sets out programs—from strengthening county-level medical communities to expanding rehabilitation and mental health services—whose success will depend on execution at the grassroots level, where the paper says 53 percent of all medical visits already occur. Whether the 80-year life expectancy target is met by 2030, and whether it comes with meaningful gains in health equity and quality of care, will be the measure of the strategy’s next phase. The plan positions these years as decisive for the broader goal of a completed Healthy China by 2035.