Medical expenditure has become a heavy burden on the public sector and the family system in many countries. Expanding the coverage and reimbursement of medical insurance has become a common way to reduce the burden. This book will elaborate on how medical insurance may increase the burden instead. It explains why the existing medical insurance system results in increased medical costs, where higher costs may offset the benefits of certainty brought by medical insurance, forming the "paradox of medical care insurance". This assumption is verified by empirical evidence in China, through a new method developed to find out the actual medical costs, using two parameters: ratio of self-payment of medical insurance and the level of monopoly in the supply of medical services. The book also describes the history, the current situation, and the reform of the health care system in China.

Administrative Monopoly in China: Causes, Behaviors, and Termination is a further work of our previous book, China's State-Owned Enterprises: Nature, Performance and Reform. This new book analyzes the SOEs with respect to monopoly, and focuses on six industries: telecommunication, petroleum, railway, salt, banking and football.The book tells the history of how administrative monopolies were formed in China, analyzes the factors responsible for this, describes the behaviors of administrative monopoly, enterprises, and individuals against the monopolistic background, and presents data on the losses brought about by the administrative monopolies.

This book provides a comprehensive and unique perspective on China's oil and natural gas industry and a practical roadmap to reforms.The book begins with a thorough examination of the status quo of China's oil and natural gas industry. It explores the evolution, transition, and characteristics of the oil industry of China, and unveils the problems that caused ineffectiveness of the oil and petroleum products market, namely, the dominance of monopoly enterprises, price regulation, and restriction to entry. It provides an insightful analysis on the efficiency losses and welfare losses the monopoly system brings to the society as the current system distorts income distribution, violates the principle of fairness, and stands against the market rules and the legal pillars of the Chinese constitution. This book argues that the monopoly system in the oil industry of China results in a variety of toxic influences and that reforms are needed. It then offers a roadmap to reforms in the oil and petroleum products market in an incremental fashion.The findings and proposals of the Chinese version of this book have proved to be successful, as they led to immediate shifts in the policies of the Chinese authorities. This book provides valuable insights into the urgency involved in carrying out reforms in the oil and petroleum products market in China, with concrete and up-to-date statistics, comprehensive and detailed analyses, and authoritative and authentic sources.

This book provides a detailed description of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China with respect to both efficiency and income distribution. It demonstrates that state ownership in the form of SOEs does not use resources efficiently, holds a poor record in income distribution, and enjoys unfair advantages while competing with other firms. To illustrate this, the book presents data on how favored policies, monopolistic powers, and subsidies benefit SOEs.This book, with its rich empirical data and information, serves as an authoritative reference for researchers interested in SOEs. It is also a good read for students of social sciences and general public.

In China, the government controls a large part of resources, such as land, energy, bank savings, and so on. This book studies the efficiency and fairness of resources allocation by governmental administration in China. The book states that it is neither fair nor efficient to allocate resources by the governmental administrations. These resources should be allocated by the market.The book analyzes the resources allocation by government administration in three key areas namely education, health care, and land. A quantitive analysis is developed for describing more precisely the situation of unfairness in fiscal resources allocation. This book also describes how ordinary people address the misposition of resources by governmental administrations by migrating from the provinces with less resources to the provinces with more resources in education or health care. Thus, the book concludes that the actual allocation of resources is determined by the interactions between ordinary people and the government.