Pneumonia is one of the leading causes of death in adults and children in China [4] . In urban areas, pneumonia is the fourth leading cause of death, and in rural areas pneumonia is the leading cause of death [5, 6] . A recent article in the Chinese literature estimated that each year in China there are 2.5 million patients with pneumonia and that 125,000 (5%) of these patients die of pneumonia-related illness [5] . A 2008 global review by Rudan and colleagues estimated that there were 21.1 million new cases of clinical pneumonia annually in China in children under 5 years of age (0.22 episodes/person-year), which is second only to India in burden (43.0 million new cases, 0.37 episodes/person-year) [3] .