Today China’s Press reported:
“All people in urban and rural areas will enjoy basic medical care and health services by 2020,” Vice-Minister of Health Gao Qiang said at a joint news briefing on the sidelines of the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
Really? On October 13th, a week ago, his boss, the Minister of Health, Chen Zhu, vowed to establish a medical service system which covers all urban and rural Chinese by 2010.
Maybe someone didn’t get the memo. Or maybe the press (or I ) am under an unintended (or deliberate?) semantic confusion which accounts for the decade of difference. The earlier announcement talks about coverage (2010); the second talks about enjoying basic care (2020). Whatever the case, the Ministers et al. need a better PR guy.
