BEIJING, July 13 (Xinhua) -- China aims to raise its average life expectancy to 80 years by 2030, from 79.25 years in 2025, under a national health plan for the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030).
The plan, issued by the State Council, forms part of China's broader efforts to improve public medical services and advance the Healthy China initiative. It sets out measures to expand fair access to healthcare, encourage wider public awareness of proactive health management, and bring the country's core health indicators in line with those of high-income economies.
The document further calls for reinforced public health emergency response capabilities and improved primary-level disease prevention and treatment.
It also underlines major tasks to optimize all-round life-cycle health services for all people, shore up robust health safeguards, build an integrated, high-quality medical network, cultivate new growth engines for the health sector, and advance health-centered governance in the sector.
LIFE-CYCLE HEALTH SERVICES
The plan urges advancing the construction of smoke-free environments and strengthening smoking cessation services to reduce the smoking rate among people aged 15 and above to 20 percent.
To improve life-cycle health services, it calls for modifying the policy framework supporting childbirth, and standardizing infertility diagnosis and treatment services as well as the administration and application of assisted reproductive technologies, with higher medical cost coverage for appropriate assisted reproductive technologies.
Regarding women's health, specifically, the plan highlights enhancing breast and cervical cancer screening and early diagnosis and treatment, and fully implementing free Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination under the national immunization program for eligible girls.
Since Nov. 10, 2025, girls aged 13 in China can receive two doses of bivalent HPV vaccines free of charge, with a 6-month interval between doses. Both domestic and imported HPV vaccines are currently on the market in China. The country's first homegrown nine-valent HPV vaccine was administered for the first time last September.
For the elderly, the plan calls for further guidance on the rational use of medications, and stresses efforts to develop general hospitals with distinctive strengths in geriatric medicine, advance community-supported home-based eldercare, and improve the care system for older adults with disabilities and dementia.
The plan underscores stronger health protection for the working population, with improvements in the identification and risk assessment of occupational disease hazards in emerging industries and new forms of employment.
It also highlights the health of people with disabilities and low-income groups, with efforts including formulating and implementing a new version of the National Disability Prevention Action Plan, enhancing rehabilitation assistance for children with disabilities, and improving regular monitoring and assistance mechanisms to prevent people from falling into poverty due to illness.
To address access to medical services, the plan calls for optimizing the allocation of healthcare resources. While strengthening the treatment and research capabilities of major hospitals, it also calls for tailoring the distribution of primary healthcare institutions to local conditions.
Additionally, it aims to expand the rehabilitation workforce by stepping up the training of specialized nurses and therapists, targeting 0.7 rehabilitation physicians and 1.6 rehabilitation therapists per 10,000 people by 2030.
BUILDING NEW DRIVERS
Digital technologies are expected to become a key driver of healthcare development over the next five years, with greater emphasis on data sharing and applications of artificial intelligence.
The plan calls for building a national smart healthcare platform to enable cross-provincial sharing of medical records, including real-time access to medical imaging, mutual recognition of diagnostic results and better integration of public health information.
It also calls for leveraging artificial intelligence to upgrade the entire pharmaceutical industry chain, while supporting the development and adoption of innovative drugs and medical devices.
Internationally, the plan calls for establishing health cooperation hubs based at leading domestic hospitals to advance global collaboration in clinical research, the application of cutting-edge medical technologies and international healthcare services.
It also underscores the need to deepen health cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, while expanding overseas medical assistance in areas such as public health and traditional medicine.
By the end of June 2023, China had signed an MoU with the WHO on health cooperation in Belt and Road Initiative partner countries, inked health cooperation agreements with more than 160 countries and international organizations, and initiated or participated in nine international and regional health cooperation mechanisms, including China-Africa Health Cooperation, China-Arab States Health Cooperation, and China-ASEAN Health Cooperation.
The plan also calls for improving the standardization system for traditional Chinese medicine and accelerating efforts to promote its international recognition and global development. ■
