Ninety percent of the polled farmers who joined the system said they were willing to continue another year, and 51 percent who had not joined said they would do so the next year.

The survey also revealed that ninety-one percent of the funds collected by the system were spent on farmers in 2005, while the figure was 71 percent in 2004.

From 2006, a farmer puts 10 yuan (1.2 dollars) a year into his personal medical care account and the government adds another 40 yuan (5 dollars). The government will pay a maximum of 65 percent of his medical charges a year.

The total allowance provided by the central government from 2006 would reach 4.23 billion yuan (529 million dollars), according to the Ministry of Health.

In the next five years, the central government will spend 20 billion yuan (2.4 billion dollars) to help rural hospitals and clinics improve technology, upgrade equipment and attract new talent.

The system will cover all 800 million rural residents by 2010, according to the ministry.

"When it comes to providing health care for its people, no country has discovered a panacea," said Vice Health Minister Zhu Qingsheng. However, he said, what is clear is that a system which embraces a market-based approach and also addresses the needs of the society works best.

A team of 11 State Council departments was set up this September. Their plan for a new health care system could be announced before next spring.

As Doctor Henk Bekedam, the World Health Organization representative to China, put it, "Health planners must look beyond the cold calculus of economics and into the core of the human values embedded in the very concept of health care, if they are to develop a truly healthy country."

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