Priscilla Song
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780691174778
- eISBN:
- 9781400885282
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691174778.003.0008
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter takes a closer look at the institutional practices that have enabled medical entrepreneurs to survive and even thrive in the fluctuating regulatory regime of China's emergent “market ...
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This chapter takes a closer look at the institutional practices that have enabled medical entrepreneurs to survive and even thrive in the fluctuating regulatory regime of China's emergent “market socialism.” Rather than producing better modes of governance, formal regulation has encouraged experimental practices that circumvent administrative oversight. Facing increasing challenges to their professional identities and their very livelihoods, Dr. Huang and his compatriots deploy myriad borderline tactics ranging from exploiting bureaucratic loopholes to capitalizing on technological advances in order to evade government scrutiny and attract new patients. These experimental forms of health care are pushing the limits of medical practice as they remake the boundaries between public and private, legal and illegal, ethical and unethical.Less
This chapter takes a closer look at the institutional practices that have enabled medical entrepreneurs to survive and even thrive in the fluctuating regulatory regime of China's emergent “market socialism.” Rather than producing better modes of governance, formal regulation has encouraged experimental practices that circumvent administrative oversight. Facing increasing challenges to their professional identities and their very livelihoods, Dr. Huang and his compatriots deploy myriad borderline tactics ranging from exploiting bureaucratic loopholes to capitalizing on technological advances in order to evade government scrutiny and attract new patients. These experimental forms of health care are pushing the limits of medical practice as they remake the boundaries between public and private, legal and illegal, ethical and unethical.
