At the domestic level, the SARS outbreak exposed a fundamental shortcoming of China's health care system. As such, China required a national health reform in order to improve its surveillance system and reorient its single-minded pursuit of economic growth since the late 1970s to a more balanced development between economic growth and social infrastructure building [1±3] . The health officials in Beijing were also of the view that SARS could be seen as a turning point for China's health reform because it provided a political rationale for the government to accelerate the reform. According to the Asian Development Bank, SARS cost China US$6.1 billion, or 0.5% of its GDP, in 2003 [4] . This economic loss may seem insignificant, but for a regime that prioritizes economic growth and stability, the political repercussions of an economic decline caused by a health crisis cannot be underestimated. Indeed, SARS alerted the Chinese leadership to the pitfalls of a public health care system in disarray [2] . In order to maintain a sustained economic growth, the central government has increased its public health funding significantly since the SARS outbreak. For example, in 2003, the central and local governments altogether allocated 111.69 billion yuan for public health, an increase of 23% over the previous year. Between 2002 and 2006, the government's public health spending grew by almost 100%. There was a further increase of 29.1% in 2007 to 229.71 billion yuan. The share of public health spending in the country's GDP was 0.89%