The growth of the Chinese health-care market is largely being driven by the changing age profile of the population, its rapid economic development, and urbanization. In particular, therapeutic areas such as type 2 diabetes have grown considerably in importance. Type 2 diabetes was a rare disease in China 20 years ago, but its prevalence has doubled in the past decade, with ∼56.7 million people affected today — a number that is almost equivalent to the total UK population and double the estimated burden in the US of 20.8 million4. Understanding population factors such as the age profile, lifestyle changes associated with modernization, and growing treatment affordability is important in predicting how the Chinese health-care market will evolve. In this article, these issues are discussed on the basis of population data and forecasts from Global Demographics Healthcare (see Box 1 for details).

Age profile

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