The War for China’s Wallet

Chapter 6 Fear, Wellness, and Understanding the Chinese Consumer

Shanghai, China, 2016

“Two months to live,” Carrie sighed. She went on, “Doctors at a famous public hospital in Hangzhou gave my mother two months before she would die from cancer.” Carrie then smiled, “But then I took her to see doctors in Hong Kong. They gave her cancer treatments not available on the mainland, and she is still living two years later.”

I was interviewing Carrie, a forty-five-year-old woman, about why so many Chinese were seeking medical treatment abroad rather than at home. We were dining in a bustling restaurant nestled next to the Bund’s Peace Hotel, an Art Deco masterpiece built between 1926 and 1929 by Sir Victor Sassoon, a British Sephardic Jew. Like Sassoon, ...