Despite its increasing engagement with global health governance since the SARS outbreak, China's approach remains, however, fundamentally state-centric, contrary to the essence of global health diplomacy and governance. With grave concern about the loss of national sovereignty to external or nongovernmental actors, Chinese senior leaders have therefore attached primary significance to intergovernmental organizations, particularly the UN agencies. In evaluating the impact of SARS, Andrew Price-Smith has put the same point succinctly:``while the SARS epidemic may have generated moderate institutional change at the domestic level ¼, it resulted in only ephemeral change at the level of global governance'' [2] . In other words, national sovereignty is still of paramount importance for the Chinese leadership. Because of its sensitivity to foreign interference into its internal affairs, the Chinese government has not yet formally or officially endorsed the notion of``human security.'' Under the umbrella concept of national security,``human safety,'' instead of``human security,'' is discussed throughout all of China's five white papers on national defense since 2000 (i.e., 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008 ). Taiwan's participation in the World Health Assembly is predicated on the condition that it is considered part of China, not an independent entity. Having no tolerance in ceding its supreme authority, the central government has adopted a multi-faceted attitude towards its civil society organizations. While Beijing shows its willingness to cooperate with a wide array of actors inside China, it refuses to let its domestic NGOs and activists establish direct links with their counterparts overseas.