South Korea and<\/a> Malaysia focus on services such as cosmetic surgery, IVF or physicals, China is trying to differentiate itself by providing some of the world\u2019s most advanced procedures.<\/p>\n\u201cThere are two reasons why a patient travels for medical treatments: availability of advanced treatments and price,\u201d said Victor Cao, operations director of Joyful Medical, an agency in Shanghai that connects international patients to advanced cancer therapies in China. \u201cChinese people used to travel overseas for treatments that were not available at home, but now the tables have turned.\u201d<\/p>\n
As\u00a0expanding visa-free policies eased travel in the past year or so, videos are proliferating on social media of foreigners recounting their positive experiences of treatment in China, usually for consumer procedures like acupuncture and tooth scaling. But one treatment that\u2019s more quietly gaining traction is CAR-T,\u00a0among the most promising breakthroughs in oncology but\u00a0unavailable in most countries, or extremely costly.<\/p>\n
The process sees doctors collect T cells from the patient\u2019s blood then modify them in a lab to produce a special receptor, CAR, that can bind to a specific protein on cancer cells. These engineered cells are then multiplied into large numbers and infused back into the patient. The CAR-T cells seek out cancer cells carrying the target antigen and kill them.<\/p>\n
In the US, one single infusion can cost between US$300,000 to US$475,000, according to the American Cancer Society. In China, the equivalent costs about US$150,000 to US$180,000, and it could get even cheaper \u2013\u00a0its drug regulator recently accepted a marketing application for a therapy aimed to be priced below 300,000 yuan (S$57,000).\u00a0<\/p>\n
China\u2019s medical tourism market remains in its infancy.\u00a0Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone in Hainan, which was designated as the country\u2019s only special medical zone in 2013, treated just a few thousand\u00a0foreign medical tourists last year, compared to\u00a0hundreds of thousands of domestic patients who visited. There, patients can access advanced drugs, devices, and therapies approved in other countries but not elsewhere in\u00a0mainland China.<\/p>\n
But China is pushing to\u00a0upgrade its economy and reshape its global image from just a manufacturing hub into a provider of high-value services, and demand for medical tourism is surging. Globally, the\u00a0market is estimated at around US$34 billion and expected to reach US$126 billion by 2035, according to San Francisco-based Grand View Research. Meanwhile, China\u2019s sector is\u00a0projected to grow from US$1.3 billion in 2025 to US$3.4 billion by 2035, according to New York-based firm Market Research Future.<\/p>\n
Lye\u2019s experience underscores how China\u2019s longer-term strength may lie in advanced treatments, complex surgeries and even emerging technologies like brain implants. SinoUnited Health, a Shanghai-based healthcare provider, has already received about 30 foreign patients for CAR-T therapy since it treated the first in late 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe patients chose China for something they can\u2019t get at home,\u201d said Shi Haoying, the group\u2019s founder and chief executive officer. \u201cI think the growing attention to medical tourism to China is the inevitable result of long-term accumulation and development in many areas, such as growing medical technologies, quality of service\u00a0and cost-effectiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is not only about cost, but also availability. Although its first CAR-T product was only approved in 2021, China now has seven approved commercial therapies, matching the US, where the treatment originated. China also leads the world in the number of CAR-T clinical trials, according to ClinicalTrials.gov, the world\u2019s largest public registry database of clinical studies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Foreign patients also come to China for faster access. Demand is lower at its hundreds of international hospitals, as such therapies are often not covered by China\u2019s insurance system and remain too expensive for most local patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany new treatments, including in very advanced areas, are made in China but too advanced for the state of its healthcare system and the ability of its patients to pay for these things,\u201d said Jeroen Groenewegen-Lau, an analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies. \u201cIt\u2019s in China\u2019s interest to integrate into the international system.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
China has rapidly emerged as an important player in global medical research and innovation. By 2024, it had reached parity with the US in the number of experimental medicines entering clinical testing, and completed trials two to five times faster than the US and Europe, according to a McKinsey analysis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In recent years, China has been first to test some complex treatments and clinical trials. Its doctors used a homegrown cell therapy in 2024 to treat children with lupus. In 2025, it carried out Asia\u2019s first cross-species kidney transplant. And in March, it became the world\u2019s first country to approve a brain implant for commercial use in people with spinal cord injuries.<\/p>\n
Allowing desperate patients to participate in clinical trials for a fee, however, raises concerns that hospitals could prioritise profit above safety. The field of cell therapy is still haunted by the death in 2016 of a student who spent over 200,000 yuan on an experimental cell therapy to treat a rare type of tissue cancer.<\/p>\n
\u201cPersonally, I would certainly have reservations about rushing off to get into a clinical trial in China,\u201d said Jacob Becraft, co-founder and CEO of Strand Therapeutics, a biotechnology company in Boston. \u201cBut China has incentivised many clinical trials and, for a lot of patients, that\u2019s the only option.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In May, China started banning\u00a0hospitals from charging patients fees related to clinical research. At the same time, it allowed qualified hospitals to commercialise some advanced procedures such as cell therapies, brain-computer interfaces and xenotransplantation \u2013 animal-to-human transplants \u2013\u00a0without requiring traditional drug registration.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The new rules come after \u201cyears of concerns over a grey market of unapproved and insufficiently regulated cell therapies\u201d, said Zhao Bing, a healthcare analyst at China Renaissance Securities. \u201cThe regulations are intended to shift China\u2019s emerging medical technologies from a period of rapid, loosely supervised expansion toward stronger oversight and regulatory compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, the gap with traditional competitors like Thailand and Singapore remains wide. China\u2019s healthcare system has not historically been designed around foreign patients, leaving services fragmented. Access to information is also limited, and the country lacks a dedicated medical visa scheme allowing patients to stay longer. On Facebook, cancer patients gather on groups such as CAR-T Cell Therapy Group to ask about logistics issues such as visas, payment systems like Alipay and language barriers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy has Thailand been able to develop medical tourism successfully? It had tourism first, and then medical tourism,\u201d said Zhao. \u201cEven foreigners who have lived in China for years still encounter many inconveniences in daily life, so travelling to China for serious treatments will unlikely become mainstream anytime soon.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, for patients like Lye, the decision has paid off.<\/p>\n
Today, he lives quietly with his family in Hamilton on New Zealand\u2019s North Island. Monthly blood tests have so far been showing stable results. He quit his police job and now works about 20 hours a week as a caretaker\u00a0at a primary school, plays golf and has become a point of contact for other patients considering similar treatment in China.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not a cure,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cBut if I need to and if there is the opportunity, I would go back to China to do it again.\u201d BLOOMBERG<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SHANGHAI \u2013 Stuart Lye, 58, was living in New Zealand and on borrowed time \u2013\u00a0doctors had told him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,137,500],"class_list":["post-729125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}